The Ledger
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Pincus: Feud between Peter Thiel and Sequoia killed early Zynga financing
“The first round I raised, Was impossibly hard, and I got caught in between a fight, in a fight in between Peter Thiel and Sequoia, and he had just started Founders Fund, and Sequoia didn't like that, and they were mad at each other, and Peter had said, I'm gon…”
Lin: Slightly overpaying for the right company beats buying cheap assets
“It's the same as true in the, in investing in private companies. It's still much better to pick the right company and slightly overpay than to invest in something that is cheap.”
Sequoia Capital prioritizes an employee's learning slope over their past experience
“At Sequoia, we hire for slope, not intercept. So experience obviously matters, but if you just hire for the experience and their slope is not fast, that's going to become a problem at some point. And so we really, really ask founders to think about what is the…”
Gupta: VCs sent wrong signals for years by inflating startup valuations
“Investors, you know all of us, we sent many of the wrong signals for a couple of years where people were rewarded. And so they could look at something of like, what are you talking about? My business keeps on getting valued higher and higher and higher.”
Collison: Sequoia is the only VC firm in top three for four decades
“And Sequoia has been, you know, the top firm or in the top three firms, obviously it's a subjective ranking, but call it, you know, a top, unquestionably a top three firm for essentially its entire existence. And there was no other VC firm that has been a top …”
Sequoia passed on DoorDash's seed round over student spending concerns
“It started on a, on, on a college campus, and the reason we pass on the seed round at Sequoia is we're concerned that the, this is, like, just something that college students did with their parents' money.”
Jacobs is investing $900M of his own money into QXO
“Last week we had a call with my 75 co-investors in my new company, QXO. So my wife and I are putting in nine hundred million dollars and then Sequoia And a few dozen friends and family, like really friends and family, like my sister and my brother and my niece…”
Founders should hire leaders one or two chapters ahead, not ten
“My observation is that when you try to hire someone that is from a company that is one chapter or two chapters ahead, they tend to work out better. And part of that is because they're only one or two chapters ahead of you. If you try to hire someone who you're…”
Many AI startups see massive initial adoption but suffer terrible user churn
“Right now there's a different example where lots of, there's a lot of test revenue, but the churn is very high because people don't stick, so there are a lot of things where You see very, very fast adoption, but the churn rate is very, very poor.”
Alfred Lin: Free cash flow provides total strategic freedom for startups
“Free cash flow equals freedom, because eventually a real business generates real free cash flow. ... The freedom that allows you to not have to raise money, the freedom to allow you to invest in new areas, the freedom to continue to grow, because you can inves…”
Startups building incremental AI refinements will become roadkill for Big Tech
“Other things that, you know, I'd say we try to avoid is things that are roadkill along the way of a company like OpenAI or Google or Amazon or Meta. So, small refinements into what the model doesn't do well today. That's just gonna be real cool along the way.”
Sequoia requires in-person meetings before investing to gauge a company's texture
“At Sequoia, I mean, we take a lot of first meetings over Zoom and during the pandemic when we were only doing meetings over Zoom, you just never got the right texture for the company, the cadence of the, how the company operated, and yeah, we might still take …”
Lin: Scaling Companies Must Prioritize Decision Velocity Over Process
“Like, the process becomes, instead of making fast, good, fast decisions, the thing that people value is having a good process that slows you down to make sure you have the right decision. You have to make high-velocity decisions at scale.”
Jacobs is investing $900M of his personal capital into QXO
“Last week we had a call with my 75 co-investors in my new company, QXO. So my wife and I are putting in nine hundred million dollars, and then Sequoia And a few dozen friends and family, like really friends and family, like my sister and my brother and my niec…”
Gupta: Sequoia Capital Partner Meetings Have No Scheduled End Times
“So like our partner meeting times, they don't have an end time. There is no backend. They go as long as they go. And the, and that I think is a really thoughtful, small thing. They start in the morning because the same point, we all think we're better in the m…”
Gupta: Every Investment Decision Rests on Identifying Three Critical Assumptions
“Every time you make an investment, you are kind of thinking, here are the three things that need to go right in order for this thing to work.”
Gupta: Reaching the Professional Pinnacle Is Not Worth Sacrificing Family Presence
“If what it takes to be the best in the world at the thing that I'm doing is to lose some of those aspects that we're talking about, then I don't want it. You know, I hope I can be. I want, I am ambitious. I really want to go and try to do that. But, you know, …”
Harvey Ran Live Personalized Demos for Lawyers During Sequoia Series A Pitch
“The riskiest version of this is we did it during our series A pitch to Sequoia, where Sequoia grabbed a bunch of lawyers that they knew, and they had us demo to them. And I just, I remember Pat Grady emailed me afterwards and was like, is that what you normall…”
Valentine dismissed Apple founders but connected them with Markkula
“Don Valentine at Sequoia dismissed them, but did connect them with Mike Marcula, 30 years old and already retired from Intel.”
Alfred Lin: Sequoia defines crucible moments as irreversible Type 1 decisions
“Crucible moments is, is the term we use at step, at Sequoia for things that are basically very important type one decisions, and I've had to deal, as an operator before Sequoia, we didn't call them Crucible moments, but I've gone through a fair share of crucib…”
Gupta: Sequoia Team Shares Top Weekly Priorities on a Single Google Sheet
“One of the things that we do at Sequoia now is every Tuesday,
Every single person writes down their most important thing for the week.
And we share it.
We like literally have it on a Google sheet.
Every person, what is the most important thing you are doing th…”