Sequoia Capital
also referred to as: sequoia
includes Sequoia Heritage
28 statements across 20 episodes · 10 bullish · 10 bearish · 20 people on the record · first statement Jul 3, 2017 by Chris Douvos · said 155 times in 54 episodes since 2017 · across every show →
Mentions by year, the whole family
brought up most by Ted Seides (30), Sebastian Mallaby (20), David Rosenthal (12), Chris Douvos (8), Magnus Grimeland (6), Ben Gilbert (6), Tim Sullivan (5), Paula Volent (5)
tap a year for its mentions
2026 4 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2025 8 mentions in 3 episodes 3 per episode
2024 12 mentions in 4 episodes 3 per episode
- Magnus Grimeland – Day Zero Investing at Antler (EP.369)
- George Michelakis – Chess Master's Approach to Long-Short Equity at Gladstone (EP.362)
- Brad Jacobs – Masterclass on Leadership and Management (EP.368)
- Ana Marshall – The Climb to Investment Excellence (EP.360)
- every mention in 2024, scene by scene →
2023 5 mentions in 5 episodes 1 per episode
- Allison Thacker – Different Perspectives and Different Assets at Rice University (EP.348)
- Kimberly Sargent – Passion and Mission at the Packard Foundation (EP.333)
- Michael Carmen – Late-Stage Private Investing at Wellington (EP.332)
- Venture Capital Panel – Beezer Clarkson, Chris Douvos, and Joelle Kayden (Capital Allocators, EP.299)
- Marshall Boyd – Meat and Potatoes Multi-Family Real Estate at IEC (Capital Allocators, EP.295)
- every mention in 2023, scene by scene →
2022 86 mentions in 23 episodes 4 per episode
- David Rosenthal and Ben Gilbert – Acquiring an Industry. Venture is Eating the Investment World 1 (Capital Allocators, EP.229)
- Sebastian Mallaby – The Making of the New Future in Venture, Venture is Eating the Investment World 14 (Capital Allocators, EP.245)
- Chris Douvos – The LP's Perspective from Ahoy Capital, Venture is Eating the Investment World 2 (Capital Allocators, EP.230)
- Kathy Xu – Venture in China at Capital Today, Venture is Eating the Investment World 12 (Capital Allocators, EP.243)
- Ashvin Chhabra – The Aspirational Investor (Capital Allocators, EP.260)
- Arjun Sethi – A Technology Company that Deploys Capital at Tribe, Venture is Eating the Investment World 10 (Capital Allocators, EP. 240)
- Joelle Kayden – Canvassing the Landscape at Accolade Partners, Venture is Eating the Investment World 7 (Capital Allocators, EP.235)
- Ali Hamed – Novel Venture Investing at CoVenture, Venture is Eating the Investment World 5 (Capital Allocators, EP.233)
- 15 more episodes that year, every mention in 2022 →
2021 13 mentions in 6 episodes 2 per episode
- Paula Volent – Star Endowment Manager's Next Act at Rockefeller University (Capital Allocators, EP.219)
- Jamie Montgomery – March Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.26)
- Barry Sternlicht – Masterclass in Real Estate in a Post-COVID World (Capital Allocators, EP.216)
- Jarrid Tingle and Henri Pierre-Jacques – Harlem Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.24)
- Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09)
- Jeff Housenbold – Inside Softbank Vision Fund (Capital Allocators, EP.186)
- every mention in 2021, scene by scene →
2020 4 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2019 3 mentions in 1 episode
2018 8 mentions in 4 episodes 2 per episode
- Josh Wolfe – Seeing the Lux (Capital Allocators, EP.65)
- Stephen McKeon – Professor of Crypto Security Tokens (Capital Allocators, EP.69)
- Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63)
- Ali Hamed - Novel Asset Investing (Capital Allocators, EP.40)
- every mention in 2018, scene by scene →
2017 12 mentions in 4 episodes 3 per episode
- Chris Douvos – Venture Capital's Super LP (Capital Allocators, EP.14)
- Scott Malpass – The Fighting Irish's Twelfth Man (Capital Allocators, EP.25)
- Chatri Sityodtong – Warrior Spirit (Capital Allocators, EP.22)
- Ashby Monk – Asset Giant Futurist (Capital Allocators, EP.29)
- every mention in 2017, scene by scene →
Everything said about Sequoia Capital, oldest first
Jul 3, 2017 neutral
Sequoia Rejected Princeton's Endowment Lawyers' Document Comments in 2003 Fund Raise
“When I was at Princeton, Sequoia raised a fund in 2003, and they sent, Docs around, and we were very diligent. We sent our docs out to our law firm, and they came back with, like, three pages of comments, and we sent them to Sequoia, and we got a call from the…”
Jul 3, 2017 negative
Elite VC Mega-Funds Trigger Copycat Fund Bloat Across the Industry
“So Sequoia goes out and raises four billion dollars, and then, you know, Billy Bob Joe's venture firm thinks they can raise four billion dollars, and by the way, there's a lot of money coming to the asset class that, that they can. So, you know, this kind of v…”
Aug 21, 2017 positive
Sep 18, 2017 positive
Aug 6, 2018 positive
Sep 2, 2019 negative
Sequoia's 2008 'Rest in Peace' Doomsday Presentation Was Incorrect
“If you were around here in the valley at the end of oh eight, Sequoia, who's a very well-regarded and has been a very successful firm, Put out this presentation called Rest in Peace, and it had a skull and crossbones and a tombstone on the front of it, and the…”
Dec 7, 2020 negative
Sep 2, 2021
Helmsley Charitable Trust Targets at Least 5% of Each VC Fund
“The way that we size our positions is we start out with how much is the GP raising? We want to be at least five percent of the fund. Sometimes that's not possible with a firm like Sequoia, but we want to be at least five percent of the fund. We want it to have…”
Oct 4, 2021 negative
Sternlicht: Do not blindly trust top VC firms like a16z or Sequoia
“The key to investing is actually doing your own work. Then you triangulate other people's opinions and stuff, but do your own work. And I, the biggest mistakes like you often find when you find Andreas and Horowitz and Sequoia are, they're all in this deal. I …”
Jan 3, 2022 positive
Jan 3, 2022 bearish
Gilbert: Mid-sized venture firms decline slowly because downsizing feels unnatural
“If you aren't able to actually go compete with the New York Timeses, the Sequoias, you can't raise that much capital, you can't hire that caliber of partner, whatever it is, it's really hard to downsize and pick a lane when you kind of look around and you're l…”
Jan 3, 2022 neutral
Jan 20, 2022 bullish
Nubank Has 50M Customers and a $45B Valuation
“Nubank is the largest digital bank in the world with almost 50 million customers. It's now trading at a forty five billion dollar valuation. Warren Buffett Berkshire Hathaway actually invested in a private round and in the IPO. Sequoia, SoftBank are investors.”
Jan 31, 2022
Mar 28, 2022 positive
Apr 11, 2022 neutral
Sequoia investment memos require 'pre-parade' sections outlining maximum upside
“The way that Sequoia addresses this bias is that it says when you're going to write a memo to the partnership about a startup that you think we should back, the investment memo, it must include a pre-parade section, meaning the section where you dream about ho…”
Apr 11, 2022 positive
Apr 11, 2022 positive
Don Valentine's intervention at Atari birthed hands-on venture investing
“So he got into the hot tub, and he imposed discipline on that chaotic business culture. He took the genius of their games, and he compounded it and married it with a determination to actually make an organization that functioned. So Atari went from chaos to a …”
Apr 11, 2022 positive
Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins pioneered hands-on venture investing in the 1970s
“And these two companies, Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins, improvised two things in the 19 seventies. The first was this hands-on approach. Arthur Rock had been a financier by background. He had been important in things like devising equity stock options and devisi…”
May 9, 2022 bearish
Bloom: Mid-tier generalist VCs are a wasteland lacking clear value props
“The venture landscape had fundamentally changed. You were having this disruption where a barbell had formed, where on one end of that barbell, you have the Sequoia, Benchmark, Andreessen, Tiger Global, these like big name cache firms who, when they write a che…”
May 23, 2022 negative
Libby: Non-lead venture capital firms offering generic operational help are redundant
“If you're not going to get one of the top VCs, you don't need five VCs that are all doing the same thing. Like, oh, we'll help you with talent, and we'll do this and that. 10 years ago that mattered, but now all those tools are available to the companies.”
May 23, 2022 bearish
Libby: Lower-cost ETF equivalents will disrupt traditional venture capital fee structures
“I think that that's going to come to the venture world too. It's been a momentum trade. And so if you're Sequoia or Forerunner or Bessemer, you have services and tools. I think it's going to be hard to prove that you should be getting two in 20 versus an ETF e…”
Nov 28, 2022 neutral
Top Silicon Valley VCs Reject Corporate Pensions Due To Finite Fund Lifespans
“We have some growth in buyout mid-cap, and we just never went deep into venture, you know, seed or A round, partially because we just, you know, we're not interesting money to Sequoia and to Sand Hill Row, because Sand Hill Row says, you're not going to be her…”
Nov 6, 2023 bearish
Jan 27, 2025 neutral
Jul 14, 2025 negative
Sullivan: Power inverted as top VCs beg AI founders for 3% stakes
“When I started, if you were a smart guy in Silicon Valley, you crawled on your hands and knees up Sand Hill Road to Sequoia or Kleiner Perkins and begged them to invest. They'd invest Three million dollars and own 30% of your company. Now it's the other way ar…”
Jul 14, 2025 positive
Jan 5, 2026
Capital Group housed Sequoia Capital externally to maintain focus on public markets
“Don Valentine had worked at Capital Group before founding Sequoia, and it was determined at the time that it was best housed outside of the four walls of Capital Group to keep the focus on active public management.”