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 23 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 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
Yampolskiy: Founders Should Ignore Advice from Investors Who Never Operated
“Do not listen for advice from people who've not done your job. That's my number one advice. It doesn't matter if you have a Investor from Sequoia or Andreessen. We've taken money from top investors, including Sequoia. It doesn't matter if you are a board membe…”
VCs warned Caldbeck his burnout post would make him 'dead to Sequoia'
“And there were three VCs who I did not mention. I love these people, but I did not mention them. And the three VCs said Hey, look, love it. It's very emotional. You should know you will be dead to Sequoia. When you write this, you'll be dead to a VC”
Hess: Transitioning from SMB to enterprise is harder than starting over
“Moving from small business to enterprise focus will be as hard or harder as starting your company over. Starting your company in the first place. And it was actually really good advice and I've appreciated that because even though I knew it was going to be cha…”
Amit RG turned down Y Combinator after raising from Sequoia
“We also got selected by Combinator, but we decided to not go ahead with it. Because this thing happened like one week before YC, YC was all remote. I'm a big YC fan, but it didn't make sense, you know, to dilute so much when we were already getting, they wante…”
Falk: Top VCs like Sequoia and a16z always take 20% equity
“If we go with a big VC, like a Sequoia, an Andreessen, I say goes, if we're fortunate enough to go with one of them, they, they're always taking 20%. Like that's the way they work. So they'll increase the valuation, but they will, no matter what, take 20%.”
Campbell Booked Pitch Meetings With Sequoia and a16z via Cold Email
“I ended up having a meeting with Sequoia, with Andrew Horowitz, and with August Capital, many other, like, firms, again, through just cold email.”
Sequoia gave Cohesity its highest enterprise Series A valuation in four years
“In Sequoia's own words, they have not given that high valuation to any enterprise company in the last four years before.”
Kannan: Top-tier VC backing provides an essential talent-recruiting edge
“We were actually profitable when we raised the money. What I think in Silicon Valley especially is whether you like it or not the type of venture firm you partner with kind of sets up your brand, right? So with a thousand companies, startups around, and like y…”
Bendov: Gong raised $200M Series D, reaching nearly $340M total funding
“The most recent round is the Series D two hundred million. Dollars led by Code Two, Thrive, Salesforce, and Index. This is the fourth round, so the total to date is like 300, almost three hundred and forty million dollars. The last round was led by Sequoia in …”
Top-tier VC backing secures favorable debt financing terms for startups
“What I found is, in having done this at Rocket Fuel as well with debt financing, is there a bunch of banks that are just lined up with the VCs, the top VCs in the world, and they got these different deals that they do, and they invest in the portfolio, and you…”
Halligan: HubSpot lifted net revenue retention from 75% to 100%
“When we did our round with Sequoia,
Our customer retention rate was something like 70%.
What's that?
Logo.
Around 70.
I don't remember exactly.
Our revenue retention rate, including upsell, was maybe 75.
Since then, our customer logo retention rate, you…”
Halligan: Sequoia's Pat Grady introduced HubSpot to two-axis pricing
“Then we raised our round from Sequoia, and this guy named Pat Grady at Sequoia, Sequoia, who is an expert on pricing, and he was the one who schooled us on this kind of two-axis pricing. It's like, you need a second axis around something like contacts receipts…”
Accel and Sequoia have co-invested in only 8 to 12 companies worldwide
“No, no, they, there are a very few I mean, there are like I don't know, eight or 10 or 12 companies in the world that they have both invested in Dropbox being one of them, Clevertabs being another one.”
Meehan: Sequoia is the biggest VC player in Asia
“Sequoia is the biggest player in Asia right across the board.
Interesting.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, they're amazing in Asia.
Very, very strong.
They are the biggest in Asia.”
Richpanel raised $2M from Sequoia at a $20M valuation in 2020
“I did raise two million dollars from Sequoia at a twenty million dollar valuation. I did that in 2020.”
Kannan: Sequoia invested in [24]7.ai in 2003; Mike Moritz on board
“And then we did one round of funding with Sequoia in 2003. So Mike Moritz is on our board.”
Elon Musk told Yampolsky he reverse-engineers his daily schedule for impact
“When I asked him, how does he know that what he's working on during the day is really making a difference? He said to me, at the end of each day, he reverse engineers his day and says, how did I spend my time? Which meetings did I attend? Who did I speak to? W…”
Animoto pitched Sequoia the exact week the 2008 financial crash hit
“We were actually about to raise kind of our first serious round, like literally the day, the week of that, where everything kind of like everything crashed and Sequoia posted their rest in peace, you know, memo or whatever it was. And we were like sitting in w…”
Kahuna has raised close to $50M from Sequoia and Tenaya Capital
“Kavuna is backed by Softech, Sequoia Capital, and Tanaya Capital and we've raised close to fifty million.”
Avner: Sequoia Invested $2M Seed Check into Taykey Before Launch
“Sequoia Capital came in and wrote a check before we started the company, and to get the employees going... We raised two million dollars.”
Resnik: Sequoia partners do majority of own sourcing and diligence
“It's a pretty flat organization where the partners do the majority of their own kind of sourcing and deal flow and due diligence.”
Suter: Early LinkedIn investor Mark Kvamme serves on Notion.ai's board
“Mark was actually the original investor from Sequoia that invested in LinkedIn when they were less employees than we are now. And so we've got somebody on our board that was on LinkedIn's board for like eight years, and he's, his experience that he's brought t…”