The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 30 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Lin: Top companies will reach $10 trillion valuations within ten years
“Today we have companies that are worth four and a half to five trillion dollars. If you give it another five to 10 years, those companies continue to compound. It will be worth 10 trillion or more.”
Alfred Lin: AI market is not zero-sum because intelligence generates revenue
“Our view is that it's not a zero sum game. And part of that is, there is really no price on intelligence. You, if you're more intelligent, if your system is more intelligent, if your product is more intelligent, is your company more intelligent and makes bette…”
Lin: Venture Valuations Are Paying 2 to 4 Years Ahead of Fundamentals
“So I think we're paying probably two or three or four years ahead of where most of these companies are. And It is a little reckless.”
Lin: AI startups are scaling to $10M ARR faster than ever
“You see companies today going from zero to ten million in ARR in very, very fast, ah, time frames, which we have not seen in the past.”
Lin: Sequoia's Most Successful Fund Had a 50% Write-Off Rate
“I work in a business where our most successful fund had a 50% write-off rate.”
Lin: Top engineers shipped 3x more code using AI tools
“The top five to 10% of their engineers shipped three times more than they did last year.”
Karp: Palantir delivered Sequoia-level venture returns to ordinary public investors
“We gave venture returns, not just venture returns. We gave venture returns as if you're like, you know, I don't know, you're like Peter Thiel, Sequoia, Coastal returns. To the average person who is willing to do their own work and stand up against kind of trie…”
Evaluating early-stage startups solely on revenue is a lazy metric
“I think revenue as the metric is is a lazy way of looking at the problem. You have to look at the underlying metrics and don't forget some of the best companies in the world over time have taken time to build before they reach revenue.”
Senra Systems Closes $65M Series B Led by Lowercarbon and Interlagos
“Senra Systems officially closed our Series B fundraising for sixty-five million dollars. We had Lower Carbon, Interlagos leading the round with a lot of our existing investors coming into the mix, such as Sequoia, Founders Fund, General Catalyst Andreessen Hor…”
Raanan: Sequoia held a 'how can we do better' meeting post-Google IPO
“A day after the Google IPO, which was back then the biggest financial event for Sequoia, there was a whole, all hands meeting at the office with the title of how can we do better?”
Raanan: Wiz raised a $20M seed syndicate at a $66M post-money valuation
“The company I was the seed investor for that company together with Doug Leone from Sequoia and Sherdul Shah from Index Ventures. And together we created a syndicate of twenty million dollars that Value the company at around, I think the number was sixty six mi…”
Lin: Sequoia's legendary wall threshold rose from $100M to over $1B
“When I first got here, So Sequoia what was required to get onto that wall was a hundred million dollar gain. Today it's a, it's, it is in excess of the billion dollar gain.”
Lin: Sequoia will soon look at $10B+ gains for legendary status
“And I'm sure in a few years we'll be looking at ten billion dollar gains or more.”
Lin: Sequoia measures success by LP distributions, not AUM
“The thing that we measure is being a net liquidity provider to our LPs. So we believe in alignment of interests, and we think about founders first, then LPs, then Sequoia, then our team, and then ourselves. And when you do that, we actually measure how much we…”
Lin: Airbnb, DoorDash, Snowflake, and Square drove Sequoia's $43B distribution
“Airbnb, DoorDash, Unity, Snowflake I'm sure I'm missing a few others. Mongo, Square.”
Maguire: Sequoia invested ~$1.2B in SpaceX, now worth ~$12B
“I first invested in, you know, and in cumulative invested probably 1.2 billion dollars, and across all the different funds, that position's worth, like, About twelve billion dollars today.”
Board members should be shock absorbers in bad times, sparring partners otherwise
“We partner with the founders and we know to be shock observers during bad times and to be sparring partners during good times.”
Vasavada: Vise went from seed to unicorn in 18 months via Sequoia
“So we went from seed to unicorn in like 18 months, which was kind of insane. Now it's happened a couple of times with, you know, these AI companies, but at the time it was kind of unheard of, especially for one company to raise continuous back to back financin…”
Sequoia's Shaun Maguire helped structure Stripe's acquisition of Bridge
“I mean, like one of the most interesting parts about the Stripe bridge deal was that it seemed that the, one of the investors from Sequoia on both boards was like pretty instrumental in helping to get that deal done, which you don't see very often. And it's a …”
McCord: Sequoia spoke to 100% of Nominal's customers during Series B diligence
“In our case, like they, I think the Sequoia team spoke to, I think a hundred percent. I think they spoke to every customer of ours which was amazing.”
McCord: Sequoia and Lightspeed co-led Nominal's Series B, Alfred Lin joined board
“The round series B led by Sequoia specifically Alfred Lynn is a partner there who will be joining nominal board. We're super excited about that. And the round is also co-led by Lightspeed venture partners.”
O'Shea: Sequoia has invested billions into SpaceX and Elon Musk companies
“I talked to Sean McGuire of Sequoia, who they've invested billions into SpaceX and Elon companies.”
Lin: Sequoia internally rejected Kalshi four times despite his memos
“I wrote four memos and got four no's for a Kaoshi investment.”
Alfred Lin: Sequoia partners make only 1-2 investments per year
“Each partner only makes one or two investments per partner per year.”
Lin: Sequoia required three internal investment memos to approve funding DoorDash
“I had to write three memos for DoorDash investments.”
Lin: Sequoia spent 2.5 years pursuing Ken Griffin before Citadel deal
“Our partner, Constantine, met Ken at a conference. And went up to Ken and talked to him and struck, developed a relationship. And over time, I think it's over like two and a half years where he kept asking Ken, could we ever invest in Citadel Securities? And I…”
Lin: Airbnb raised debt instead of equity in 2020 to avoid dilution
“Obviously we needed to raise money. Do we do it in equity? Do we do it in debt? Equity would be very punitive at that time. We decided to do it in debt.”
Sequoia evaluates 1,000 companies before making a single investment
“That's pretty consistent to how many companies and how many founders we have to see Before we make one investment on typically we see about a thousand companies before we make one investment.”
Mansoor: Kalshi has raised nearly $110M from Sequoia, Schwab, and Kravis
“It's raised close to 110. We, I mean, the main investor, Sequoia, YC Schwab Kravis and I mean, a bunch of others.”
Jacobs: Sequoia Capital names office conference rooms after its non-profit LPs
“If you go into their offices you walk in, all the conference names are their LPs. It's Ford Foundation or whomever else is the sort of the causes that back them. And whenever they have an IPO, the you know, the CEO of the company is on the front of the page, b…”