Sequoia Capital Part II (with Doug Leone)

0:00 Hey, acquired listeners. Instead of a cold opener, We want to use this space to dedicate today's episode to the late Don Valentine, who passed last year. We are excited to be working with Sequoia today to bring you something really special for part two. And with that

0:14 On to the show. Welcome to season six, episode two of Acquired. the podcast about great technology companies and the stories behind them. I'm Ben Gilbert. I'm David Rosenthal. And we are your hosts. Today we tell part two of the Sequoia Capital story.

0:41 We are going to pick up where we left off, in nineteen ninety six, when Sequoia's legendary founder, Don Valentine, Turn the firm over to Sir Michael Maritz. and Doug Leone. In this modern era of Sequoia since 1996, Sequoia has been the investing partner behind an absurd number of the industry defining companies of the last 25 years. Including

1:03 Yahoo, Google, PayPal, LinkedIn, YouTube, Reddit, 23andme, HubSpot, WhatsApp, Dropbox, Airbnb, Docker Stripe, Instacart, UiPath, DoorDash. And Robin Hood. Woo. No kidding. And while David and I spelunked into part one of Sequoia's history on our own, we have the very best person in the world with us today.

1:23 to help us do part two right. Doug Leone. Now David. Who is Doug? Doug is the global managing partner of Sequoia Capital in charge of overseeing the firm's many diverse businesses, which we will get into, from seed to global growth investing across the US, India, and China.

1:40 Doug first joined Sequoia in nineteen eighty eight after famously cold calling Don Valentine. And was the champion of Sequoia's expansion from a single hundred and fifty million dollar early stage fund to the multibillion dollar global powerhouse it is today. Welcome, Doug, and thanks for joining us. Thank you very much for having me. It's my honor to be here. Great to have you.

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4:24 Over to David to take us into Sequoia. With Doug. We're gonna talk a lot about Sequoia during your time and its evolution. But before we do, we want to ask you To tell your story a little bit.

4:36 Your family w immigrated from Italy to New York when you were eleven years old. What brought Your family here. So We had a bit of a World War Two heritage.

4:48 Where My dad's sister got married to a lieutenant. Ended up in America. Had a child. Call mom.

4:57 And so now we had grandma for me and Aunt in America. And uh we were the Italian family with the American Ben. My first name was Douglas, but in the church you cannot be called Douglas for the simple reason that you need to have a name From one of the three hundred and sixty five saints. So in Italy I was Mauro Douglas Leone, or Douglas, as my mom called me and my dad called me. And in school I was Mao. When I came here I just flipped the two names. But a long story short, my dad saw an opportunity, maybe his career

5:33 It was not going so great in Italy, so an opportunity to come to America. He came here. Uh it took uh me about two years and my mom to come here. I went two years without seeing my dad. Uh and then we finally came here in August first, nineteen sixty eight. Wow. What what did your dad Do in New York? Uh uh in New York he was a service engineer for a marine equipment company. And the most he ever made, I remember, was twenty five thousand dollars.

6:03 That's amazing. So when you arrive finally in nineteen sixty eight. in Lake America in nineteen sixty eight by boat. But I Michelangelo passed the Statue of Liberty to the west side of Manhattan. Do you remember the first time you saw the Statue of Liberty? Absolutely. I remember being outside I remember crying day one or day two and just being in a fog for the next five days when we did the crossing. Wow. That's amazing. So America in nineteen sixty eight.

6:30 Must have been pretty Different than the world you left in Italy, right? How was Adjusting and you know High school.

6:39 So it was really interesting because It is what I am here today is really a product. Of those times. I was an only child with aunts and uncles with no children. So I was overloved.

6:55 Very warm, very warm upbringing, lots of trust, lots of love. And I came here and it was a shock to my system. And it was abusive in high school. Imagine, you know, it's not Like being school where right now everybody preachers, you have to be good to your fellow kid and all these wonderful things there, you get the crap beaten out of you emotionally. physically and so on. And Jan in WhatsApp. Same deal. Integrated in high school had the same experience. And so that makes up the two sides of me, which is the very warm side, the very big heart, and the super tough side where where I just don't give an inch. So you've talked about um

7:37 in other talks you've given that we've listened to, uh that you do the Myers Briggs Test. Exactly. How do how do those combine into what your Myers Briggs type is? I'm not sure those affect a Myers Briggs, but this is how I test it. early on and how I changed. People think of me as an extrovert for the simple reason that if I have to turn that on I can

7:58 Especially as I get older, I went from insufferable to charming. It's amazing how it happens. Uh but What I really am, I'm halfway between an introvert and extrovert, exactly halfway in between. And and early on I was tested as a process driven person, meaning my whole mind is a tree structure, there's a lot of logic to it, and so on. And in twenty twelve when Mike Moritz stepped down and the relationship I had with Mike, he was the intuitive one. He was really the leader of Sequoia. I was one A. I was The COO if it helps.

8:35 I understood that would not be a winning formula. I always thought that great COOs would make lousy CEOs. Now I'm not the CEO, but you get the point. And so I took myself completely out of the comfort zone and understood I had a rely on intuition. And when I was tested in MyS Brig by a lady that tested me She was shocked by the transformation, and she said, You and Michael Dell are the only two people I've ever tested that have made that change. And when I hear people can change, I chuckle a little bit because I felt like I changed. I felt like I had to rely on my gut.

9:13 And I can't have all the answers in tree structure prior to, you know, letting people create I can't manage every inch. I just left I have to let terrific people do their thing. Yeah. I can totally imagine, you know, the things that we're gonna talk about that you championed here at Sequoia Doing that is I think what led to a large part of your success.

9:35 So You finish high school, you must have been a pretty good student. You go to Cornell and then Columbia to study engineering, right? So I was a great student. Until I grew up. I went to Cornell. I got thrown out of Cornell after my first year. My my my first two semester My first two semester grades were one three four and one two two.

9:57 Which is not easy to do. I d I I did not see half of my professors because I just never went to class. Um was behind that? Uh and I'll mention in a second. What was behind that after being abused in high school, I was never abused when I was in Italy. I was a smart kid who was athletic in high school. Oh my God, that was rough. At Cornell I became normal again because when I went to Cornell I could speak English.

10:23 And all of a sudden I was one of the very accepted kids. And I kind of lost my mind. In some ways I lost the opportunity to learn, but I became normal again. Now for a fall term I went to a two year school to make up a couple of classes where I got Fs. mainly math and physics, which are my strongest classes. I mean, I love math and physics.

10:46 And I also was working part time, doing the deliveries, talking to truck drivers, and it just showed me a range of life. of what life could become. Nothing wrong with truck drivers, don't get me wrong. Was it right for me? Probably not. So a little bit of the carrot in the stick. I w I went back to Cornell I did fine. I graduated and uh I went to work and I decided that I needed to do something. And that's something you end up in sales. Was prime computer your first job? No, the the first job was selling computers for Hewlett Packard. I remember there were three people there were two people in a room age forty five to fifty, and they said, quote, kid, don't worry, we'll split Manhattan into thirds.

11:29 And I didn't know anything, so I trusted him. One got all of Wall Street. One got from Wall Street to ninety sixth street. Midtown. And I got and by the way, th th this is nineteen seventy nine where It wasn't safe to walk north of seventy ninth street. And that's your territory. This is pre uh Giulianian Bloomberg. Oh yeah, pre Giuliani and Bloom well, pre the fact that we became urban and so on. uh burned out buildings uh and so on. But that was a lucky break because one thing that's up there

12:03 Is Columbia. And I remember there was a dean of the school of engineering, doctor Troub, but still remember his name that came from CMU. And he explained to me what the ARPANET was. And he explained to me what open systems were. And yes, I went to Prime for a year and a half because I wanted to sell computers on Wall Street because I knew that's what the money was. But that was where the short term money was. Was there prestige associated with that, or was it just literally Selling money on Wall Street was was money. It wasn't prestige, it was money. And Prime was the second youngest company to be invited in New York Stock Exchange. It was a go go company. I chosen well.

12:40 But I realized that was only a sales career and I was beginning to crave for something more. I wanted to quote make it. What does that mean? I remember walking on Sixth Avenue s and and seeing all these buildings. I said, How do people become successful, clearly there must be more. And so I said probably I want more risk. So I call call Vinod Cosla. Well actually it was Owen Brown, which was the the CEO of the C At sun at that time. I got a job, uh because you heard about Sun because of open systems. I went back to Columbia open system, call Sun Microsystem, employee number, I don't know, fifty sixty, I can't remember. First people in the first person in five states. And I started doing volumes of business, so much so that the board

13:28 Wanted to know who this Kidd Was Veno Kosla wanted to know. Scott McNeely wanted to know. And I had an idea. To open Wall Street. And the reason I did that, I learned of a machine called Convex, which back then was a high processing math.

13:45 Processing type of machine. And I read in Business Week that PHEs were dropping out of Yale going uh to Bear Stearns on Wall Street. What does that mean? And and I don't know if you want to hear the story, but the story was I got a call from Bear Stearns. They said, can we get a budgetary quote? A budgetary quote is somebody you haven't met just wants to know how much I gave someone and my quota was two million. I gave someone a budgetary quota I hadn't met for two point eight million. I went on vacation for two weeks. I came back and th there was a purchase order on my desk for two point eight million. I said, truly Holy

14:19 No. Holy cow. I think that is the definition of product market fit right there. Exactly. And so what I did is I poured all my time on Wall Street. So much that my office was a depot. because Sun could not support these systems. So my office, my desk was a printer stand that had a hole in it for the paper with messages all around it. I had computer systems that were missing out of sun all around me because if you were down, I brought you back up in an hour and a half. I just drove to Wall Street with a machine. And Scott McNeely. So you're a support engineer. I was doing all this volume. I go, what's going on? And Scott came to see my office. He was impressed and horrified at the same time. Yeah, this is the COS on Microsystems. And we just did lots of business. And long story short, I met uh Vinod Kosla, venture capitalists. What the heck is that? And I wanna be one of those.

15:15 Uh, boy, one three four one two two, how do you get into business school? So I went to get a master's at Columbia. I got in luckily, uh, and I did extremely well, which patted the resume a little bit, so I can get into business school. And I went to business school and then I co call my way uh into the venture industry. Yeah, from what I could read, you you sent and called eighty different So th there was back then the there was a big green book called Pratt's Guy to Venture Capital Sources. Connecticut No, no, four. Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, California.

15:57 And I just actually wrote letters. because you wrote letters during those days. And in California I would say things like I'm going to be in California. Of course that wasn't gonna be in California. Follow up as if As if you know God knows it was coming to California. How many entrepreneurs do that to Sequoia now, too? Well be down in the Bay Area in case it happens to work. Well, I pushed a little, and in the case of Sequoia, there was an assistant, a spicy New York person called Barbara Russell that worked for Don, did the distribution, may have been a receptionist, you know, it was at a time with somebody did it all. And so I sweet talked my way with Barbara. And she tells me she's become a very good friend. She's no longer here. She's retired up in Seattle. She said she went into Don's office and she said, This kid may have something. You may want to spend some time with him. And so on a five o'clock on a Monday

16:54 I was interviewed by Don. What did he ask you? One question. What's important? And I talk for three minutes.

17:02 And silence didn't bother Don. He could just be we could be quiet for an hour and be okay with him. And he waited 20, 30 seconds would seem like an attorney to me. And then he said, What else? And I laughed. I said, Down, what do you mean what else? I just told you everything. But you know, he liked my how genuine I was, I think. He loved

17:25 the sales approach because A great company has product from the inside out and sales from the and the customer from the outside in And he read correctly that I'd be a hustler, but not in the word hustler, that I would hustle that I was smart I was human

17:44 And He knew the question was can we reprogram him? Can we break them down to pieces? And will he build himself up? Doug, what do you think in retrospect are the differences between what has made you

17:59 an amazing technology investor versus what you thought. would make an amazing technology investor at that point in time. Uh It's a difficult question for me to answer because I don't think I thought. I didn't know anything.

18:14 about what would make a technology investor. What as let to my success is I hustled a lot. There's people like Jim Getz. who can product manage with a founder of product.

18:29 There are people like Mike Moritz who have incredible intuition. Guess what I did? I bet you can guess. I made thousands of cold calls. I get in front of everybody.

18:40 I am not kidding when I said I went from being insufferable to sufferable over time. Charming was maybe the last five years. Uh and so exactly, it was a complete journey. And so I just worked and build knowledge and I developed a network. And Some luck. There's always some luck.

19:02 Лоцо хуране, сал. I was able to generate some of the right deal flow. And had a very lucky good start. My first three investments were IPOs, which was good, but it also build a false sense of confidence because after that I thought I knew something, and I woke up one day in two thousand and one, I looked at my ten boards and I said, Oh my God. There's not a winner there, en so it was an early success. go through the abyss and I see investors here go through the abyss

19:34 And when someone goes through the abyss, you gotta let them pull themselves out. If they come out the other side, they're terrific. Yeah. And so I went through the abyss. And and then I went. What were those first three that were IPOs? There was Arbor Software, which is a Darling software company that went public and then merged with Iperion. Okay. When it went public, it was the largest swin Sequoia ever had. A company called INS, which was a services company built on the notion that companies cannot swallow routers as fast as they'd like to swallow routers, and therefore we could have a services company. A company we took public and sold for seven billion dollars to to loosened.

20:15 Seven billion in nineteen ninety. Aid was a lot of money. And a company called Renaissance software which was a Wall Street trading system. Which was really my strong point. I I understood what I was looking there. And a funny story in a case of Arbor Software, if you want to know the real story, I was here for three years, I almost got thrown out. People wanted me out, Don is the one that saved me. Give quote give the kid more time kind of attitude.

20:48 And I needed to get something done. The founders of Arbor were two weeks from bankruptcy, personal bankruptcy. That night they came to my house, I said, You gotta get a deal done, I gotta get a deal done, I think you're investable. We created the presentation. Wow that pr that got presented the next day to Sequoia and the insight I had and Don Valentine helped for that, they understood the problem they and as consultant they understood the domain of the pain

21:16 And they just didn't know how to articulate it in a fundraising pitch. And so we created a pitch. And uh we got the company f I say we because even though it's a Sequoia, we got the company funded. The partners trusted me so much, the one partner I won't tell you who, the only reason why I did it is because there was a credible coinvestor in his mind. Nothing to do with what I knew or said. But we got the deal done and uh we we got the investment made.

21:44 Just starting with two people, not a line of code. Yeah. A seed, if you will, back then, although it was a series A, two million. And we made it. All right, listeners, now is a great time to tell you about a longtime friend of the show, Vanta. AI has scrambled the whole security picture. It used to be that you proved that you were secure once a year on audit or a static PDF, then everyone would nod and you're done.

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23:36 And just tell'em. That Ben and David sent you. So We ended part one of our Sequoia history with Don in nineteen ninety six calling you and Michael into a conference room and

23:49 Passing the firm over to you. What was that? Day like for you. I could imagine the conversation to we should make Doug a partner. I'm sure it was an easy one. In in in one case I had a tracker it in the other case

24:06 Remember the insufferable part. And the conversation must have uh gone around what is he gonna be like if he's a partner, is he gonna turn into a monster. kind of conversation. It's not as black and white as Don. turned it over to Mike Moritz and me. I actually went back

24:22 and looked at carry allocation, not because I wanted to see how much carry I got. I wanted to see if my memory served me right. It turned out that Mike and I had more carry than the other folks. It it wasn't the black and white. It's yours. We were We were the ones with the track, right? Well I got promoted to GP. I had one you know, one tenth of the carrier down Valentine in Sequoia six, and a year into the fund Don said we ought to change all the carry and make us all equal.

24:50 He understood that he needed to make sure the young people were Not gonna act. Like uh Like associates, even though they were partners. And so he flattened the partnership and in Sequoia 6, and now it's Sequoia 7. It was more Mike and I were the

25:08 the more s aggressive ones, the the ones that had a bit of a track record. I remember Don sat with Mike and I and he didn't say you're the leaders. He did not anoint us, but he had a conversation just with two of us. And Don had a green sheet of paper with all the things an investor does. And check marks. Next to what he's willing to do. And he pushed a paper as he always would And said you figure out if you want me around.

25:32 And this is what I'm willing to do. He wanted or we offered Carrie in that fund. We gave Carrie Don the next fund, which turned out to be the Google fund. We actually took good care of Don. We gave carry some carry, not GP Carrie, of a couple more funds. Never aggressively asked for it. I remember when I had to walk into Don's office and tell him no more carry three funds later. And he chuckled. He said, What took you so long? Uh and uh

26:01 And but Mike and I w were were the two, if you will More senior. We rotated the partners meeting, who would write down the company, who's who was the leader of the partners meeting for a year or two until Mike stepped up and said, This is not gonna work. He offered to be the one doing it.

26:20 We all agreed. He did it and so it became that Mike was really one and I was one A, just to it I don't want to rewrite history. Yeah. One A. We we you know we had similar we had exact comp. Mike was a CEO, if you will. I was a CO we're a partnership. And that's how we ran Sequoia. Uh until twenty twelve. Wow. Uh when Mike stepped down for health reasons. And Doug, as a point of clarification, when you say Sequoia Six, Sequoia Seven, can you explain a little more than that. Sequoia SIC was a six fund. Where I became a general partner was the last

26:56 really true partnership where Don was full full time. Sequoia seven. Don was an general partner. He had less Uh, you know, and and and the partnership was run by five or six other partners. And then Mike Moritz took the lead and I became one A. And and give us a sense of uh what early stage fun number are we on now. We are in seventeen. Got it.

27:20 Okay. So right right when this happens The transition to Sequoia Fun seven. The whole world. It's changing, right? Like

27:29 'Cause I originally and Don came from the semiconductor industry and then there was the PC software wave, but now the internet is here. Yeah, well not yet. Th the the actually a few parts. And part was first of all, Sequoia five was sixty seven million Because of truly lack of ability to raise more money. We had raised a growth fund for a hundred and sixty five million. that we didn't know what to do with.

27:53 In fact, we invested the growth fund. And the average check size in that fund was two milyen dollars. That turned out to be a four point five X net funds, which is a terrific performance because we invest like a venture fund. Uh when we raised Sequoia six, which turned out to be the Alf the Yahoo fund, the returns from five were not yet visible.

28:15 When Mike and I went out fundraising Sequoia Seven, the limited partner said who the heck are you guys? And we lost some big clients. And we lost some big clients. Wow. And Sequoia Five turned out to be a fabulous fun. Sequoia six, an incredible fun. Sequoia seven a spectacular fun. Sequoia eight, the Google fun, an amazing fun. So Mike and I and the other partners got an incredible start. And then nineteen ninety nine, two thousand happen. We did not know the meaning of the word clawback.

28:48 For you listeners, what clawback means is when your funds are doing so poorly that now you owe a lot of money back to your limited partners. Yeah. And we had war room meetings here at Sequoia in two thousand where we owed more than our net worth. And how do we get ourselves out of that? And is that Fees and carry. Maybe we had an early win and we took carry and the rest of the fund is a turkey and we owe not only because you assume when when you have early wins you assume that the fund is gonna be in the carry, but if it's not let me make things more difficult, in that early win you're given shares that you hold and they go to zero. So you didn't even have that.

29:25 So you you hold the shares in your account because it's 1999, those are not real companies, the shares gazero. So we had w warm conversations and we had a choice to make. And the choice to make is to borrow a line from golf and I don't play golf called Mulligan. Most of the venture industry considers the funds in their period called the Mulligan funds. They're they're crappy, they lost money, but you know what? It's a do over. We took the opposite approach. No one was gonna lose money. So we took funds that were

29:55 Point three X. meaning if it was a hundred million dollars the phone worth thirty, or in that case it was three hundred or five hundred is worth thirty percent of that. And we brought them up to close to two X just by giving up fees. Not collecting'em and reinvesting money. Every time we had a game, we reinvested it. Reinvested it because we wanted to have the pride of never losing money. Yeah. And so those were formative time for the country. And most other venture firms did say call Muggin's. We're gonna take the loss on this. We'll start a new fund that we get fees on. You got yeah. Well think about it. Sequoia four is the Cisco fund, Don Valentine's. Sequoia five, younger team, older team, terrific fund. Sequoia six, Yahoo, and many others. Nvidia and many others. Sequoia seven, many companies. Sequoia eight, Google.

30:43 It would have been so easy for us to call it and we just refuse to. And uh we just refuse to. Doug, it reminds me a lot of the two thousand eight story where Ford refused to take the federal government bailout and say, Yeah, yeah, it would be easy for us to do this, but uh reputationally it's important to us and all of our customers or your clients for the next decades to come. that we don't do this. Absolutely. And while I tell clients

31:08 Those times won't be chapter one. In a Sequoia book. There'll be a chapter. There should be a big chapter that's the voted. It is maybe our proudest moment at Sequoia Capital. It is not when we've had, you know, we have had funds close to twenty x. It is not those twenty X fund. The most proud time is when we decided no one's gonna lose money at Sequoia Capital and we're gonna go to work. And we went to work.

31:32 For ten years. Because there's Yeah, the other aspect, you know, less listeners think this is just about reallocating fees or whatnot. It's the You You had a lot of work to do with those companies because you still had those investments.

31:46 It would have been easy to say Yeah, these are zeros, we're just gonna, you know, do whatever. But you roll up your sleeves and say, No, we're gonna turn these into returning capital at a minimum. So Mike Moritz Is a Brit.

32:01 Things fourteen step ahead. I'm a gregarious Italian. And I'll tell you. It hasn't always been easy. Mike would say the same thing. But we made it work for twenty years.

32:12 And I'll tell you, during those times we thought exactly alike. You can burn us cigarettes in our arm and we're not gonna flinch. We're gonna bring these funds home. And it was amazing how two different cats В твір багнус, від тіфер стайс. Who get along a lot.

32:31 And and really argued. Some as you would imagine, which is terrific because that means we pour two different views on issues. That is a strength. During those times. There was no question. What we're gonna do.

32:43 Yeah. I don't think we ever have the conversation. I don't think we even said should we do this? I just think we had to. Yeah. That's a special thing to be able to to get in that lockstep with another person.

32:55 Do you feel like that's sort of that rare thing that happens once or twice in a person's life? And and how do you attribute Sequoia's success to you you two being in lockstep like that. On that issue. Yeah. Look, it it it happens And sports teams. It happens when people go to war.

33:14 They never again feel why do people keep on going To Afghanistan. The reason they do that, they miss that sense of camaraderie. I don't know if you study situations like that. That was war time, make no mistake. Mike we weren't it it wasn't our lives. I I I don't for a second. I I love and respect the people that serve our country. The things they do are far more important far more courageous than what Mike and I did. I want to make that crystal clear. We should be grateful to them. But it was a similar sense of camaraderie. It was your business lives. No, nothing to do with business lives. It was

33:51 It was the fact that Each one of our cells in our body. could not do that. Nothing to do. We gotta save our career, our money, none of that. It had to do with Being a badass. And doing what nobody else would do.

34:05 That's what it has to do with. Do the right thing when it's inconvenient to you. Yeah. Yeah, that's'cause it yeah, it would have been So many other firms did.

34:15 Throw in the towel, get them all again, their business lives were. Fine. We're talking about this era right around Google's founding and we're we're talking about your partner Michael. There's a quote that I I've heard you mention in the past where I th it's something along the lines of Michael telling you a few months after making the Google investment, we've we've never paid so much for so little. I think that quote is what John Dor told Mike Moritz. We didn't know what Google did for a long time. Uh we knew we had smart founders. Yeah. We knew we're aimed at the internet.

34:47 And we just knew we had to be patient. Sometime patients sit on your hands. Uh, you know, I had a similar but a smaller story in Maraki. Smart founders couldn't figure out which way to go. And if you talk to them, what what did Sequoia do most? They left us alone and let us figure it out. We hear that from so many founders on this show that have partnered with you guys. That th that's one of the biggest differentiating factors is

35:13 Let us you know. We're in the driver's seat. Let us figure it out. If it's creation time The founders create. Now, there could be execution time where But in a

35:26 The thing I tell founders you get to do product market you should do product market fit. We can't help you there. If you got product market fit, we can help you with everything else. And so when founders are meandering their way Early on. and focusing on something that's gonna work later on, you just let'em create.

35:47 Um They're they're the creators. All right listeners. Now is a great time to thank our longtime friend of the show, ServiceNow. If you are running a large enterprise, AI agents are likely spread across every team, and deploying them is uh no longer the hard part.

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37:18 And in a future, that isn't going to be one AI, it's going to be thousands of AI agents working across every function of the company. But the question is, Who's managing them all? So if you're trying to turn AI ambition into real business outcomes and make it work safely, securely at scale, go check out service now.com slash acquired and tell them that Ben and Davidson you. I wanna make sure we dive deep into What you and presumably you and Michael created here at Sequoia in your time and Storage here.

37:47 Which is you know Sequoia was uh I think the phrase uh that Don at least used to use was you invested in companies that were a bicycle ride away from uh headquarters here. the decision to expand, not just geographically, but also product wise in terms of investment products you offer. How did how did that initiative happen? So th the first thing I I don't like the notion of you and Michael

38:15 It is we're all standing on each other's shoulders. Michael stood on Don's shoulders. I'm standing on Mike's shoulders and Jim gets his shoulder and Rulov shoulders. So it is really we. It is really a we effort. And the other thing, when confused, there's only one curve I look at for the decisions I have to make. It's

38:38 the exponential curve of accelerated change. It's not linear. It increases through time. Which means If you believe in that

38:49 Which means that doing nothing is the worst thing can do. It's the riskiest thing you can do. And then we also know that in the early days of the curve you overforecasts because you're linear thinker in the later days of the curve when the curve is steep, you're on the forecast. So I'm not that smart a person, but I know these simple principles and I and I know that doing you know, do stuff.

39:11 Take the shot and we'll talk more about what that means. But turn the clock back to Uh, two thousand three, two thousand four is Mike and I are both immigrants. There's other immigrants here, founders we look at. are immigrants, more and more founders. And so I I started wondering what happens

39:30 If the world becomes globalized, they're gonna go home and I thought of NEA's offices with posters from India companies in India and they US India founder coming here And we don't have those posters. I thought, Oh my God, defense. But defense alone should make you do things. And then You think of the world that's more globalized, the world is flat, blah blah blah, and

39:54 I thought maybe we should go there. I learned that other firms were doing flyover. Going there and flying and flying and making investment. Or or making investment dual brand. And so You know, uh a a few brain cells said if we're gonna do something, where are the large and growing economies? That brought us to India. So China.

40:15 in India. It didn't as I say, didn't bring us to Vietnam because it grows but it's small. It didn't bring us to Europe because it's big but not growing. So those were the two geos. So we started making trips In trying to meet teams, trying to figure out how to get there. Investing teams or founding teams? Investing. Founding investing team. And I'm very mindful of a line. From an old sitcom, from a a scene. The the sitcom is Hogan's Heroes. You know Hogan's Heroes? So Colonel Clink.

40:44 Is the commander. of a POW cam. And you know, he's a putts, obviously, in the show. And Colonel Hogan is the American who's very smart. And Hogan and Cling have a safe. And if you turn the handle one way, you open a safe and there's money. If you turn the handle the other way, it blows. It it blows. And Hogan looks at Clink and says, Clink, which way? And Clint goes left.

41:09 And Hogan pulls it right and it opens. And Clint goes. How did you know? And Hogan says I wasn't sure whether I'd get it right, but I was sure that you would get it wrong. And believe it or not, that scene is the scene that caused me to say I know for sure Mike Moritz and I if we make investments

41:30 in China will get it wrong. Yeah. We didn't know if the team we found would get it right, but we thought that was the least riskiest thing to do. And so we're shopping for teams. Uh and we came across it's funny, I made twenty trips to China and then the team we're introduced what was introduced to us by a a founder of Bill Point, which is which was a predecessor to PayPal, sold to eBay. Uh she introduces two Chinese Nationals that have Uh Grew up in China.

41:59 had gone to school here, which is exactly what we wanted, had moved back to China, had served on the on the board of the same company, Focus Media. One was an investor, a DFJ, one was a founder, co founder of a company called C Trip. Yep, yep. We met him on a Tuesday. We met up again on a Thursday. And on a Friday morning in a conference in a Sequoia, we did a handshake deal. No contract, no anything. They were going to another venture firm in the afternoon, they canceled that meeting. By Monday morning, Mike Moritz, God bless him, had a PPM, private placement for Sequoia China one and gave it to them. With a notion that you want to delight your partners. When people do a deal, after the deal's done, you always find out it wasn't as good as you thought. We love doing the opposite. We want people to be blown away. Holy cow. Wow. Culture.

42:47 And uh course the second person there was Neil Shuttle. It was Neil Shun. There were two founders. One of them w was Neil Shun. And so we went fundraising. We still didn't have a signed contract and and we raised a hundred and sixty million dollar fund. We were ridiculed by limited partners. We held the annual meeting in Beijing in a brand new hotel with a heat broke. Uh everybody's freezing. We were slightly abused. That that has turned out to be a spectacular fun. And the rest is history. Yeah, what are some of the companies that Sequoia China has invested in? Pindodo, Alibaba.

43:20 May Twan, Bike Dance. We've had somewhere near 50, 60 IPOs. And so I had the idea on a one page sheet. But if I tell you that that would leave you with the wrong impression. At critical times Where we needed and th th this is kinda funny, when we needed operational's move. It was Mike.

43:45 that had the insight that we needed to make those moves. It was Mike that made the moves. So I I I've never told Mike this. I was incredibly grateful that Mr Intuitive, as I had him slotted in my brain, became operational. At key times. Even better than I was. Mm. If truth be told.

44:05 And so it wasn't me, it wasn't Mike, it was all Sequois because it was as we're doing this, other people were carrying the load in America. You know, and so it was a team it it was truly a team effort. So while you were and y you and Mike were sort of championing hey hey, we should be doing this because we think that the rest of the world's gonna hit this inflection point or at least these areas. Did you have this this is sort of a basosism that's more recent, but was there this sort of disagree and commit mentality for anybody who was here that knew that they had to hold down the fort, even if they weren't pounding the table like you were? How did that go? Lo for many years there was sniping. In the troops.

44:43 Why we doing this? Why we wasting time? Because keep in mind that this is not about money. No one's making any more money because we all contribute the same amount. China contributes, we contribute. You know, it is not a mid two thousands when you know Tencent and Alibaba exist, but like it's not clear that they're gonna be China's gonna be what it is. world class global powerhouse that at the same time can act very local because the foundation of our business is seeds. If фюлю сед а венчур. you become, as I say, private equity firm because later on all you have to compete is on price. And so how do you at the same time go global

45:27 While not losing an inch. On the local side. And some of the best seeds were made during those days. And so we somehow managed to pull that off. Uh by isolating Well the thing I I initially became the global person.

45:44 Nobody else had to do that. Somewhere along the line Mike and I reverse roles where he was Mr. International. I spent more time in the US. And in twenty twelve when Mike stepped down due to health reasons, Yeah, we we thought about should three of us run it, you know, and we made the decision that I should run it, but we should have second in command. And the logical wasn't was someone from the US, Jim Getz at that time, and Neil Shen. Mix.

46:13 But Incredible story. Thank you for Sharing all this. At the same time that you're expanding geographically. You're also

46:21 Expanding the suite of funds in each Geography, right? Yeah. in terms of adding the growth funds, then ultimately the global growth fund. How did you how did you think about that decision and

46:33 doing that as separate funds versus one fund together. And obviously the company needs were evolving with stay private longer and everything. So The most important thing, as I said, is to be the first

46:47 $100,000 to help that founder. So whatever we did, we understood that is the strategic part of the house. We've always done seeds, but we thought both for clarity of thought, marketing, we should do it C fund because we're starting to have a lot of C programs. Such as a scout fund and a whole bunch of others we don't really talk about. then th the world continued to change and while it's never been cheaper to start a company And by the way, I think the world change with Netscape, or at least it had a major change, which meant

47:20 that we went from being deep technology investors, where we really only invested in technology pre Netscape to being application layer investing across many market segments, travel shopping. iPhone. Internet being part of the reasons. So a thing started to happen. It's never been cheaper to start a company I seed investing. W when when you're doing deep tech investing, there's no need for seeds. It takes you two years to build a product. But now A V and B seed was six hundred thousand, I think. The Dropbox was one point two million. But that's because an app can be built. In a month.

47:53 At the same time, though, it's never been more expensive to launch a company. Why? You've got businesses that have the words you in that economics, the O to O online to offline. Uber, DoorDash, Instacart, and so on. And then if you don't have those businesses Turn the clock back twenty years ago, we used to launch the US, let's say in B to B. We used to be profitable. Five years later we used to go to Europe. You can't do that anymore because you wait. But you can't do that. You launch the US. Six months later you launch Europe, because if you wait, by the time you get to Europe, there'll be twenty competitors, half of which want to come to the US. So you've got to run fast, which means you have to spend a lot of money, which means it's bigger and bigger rounds. So we were seed and venture when we understood the companies needed more money.

48:38 And keep in mind, we're we're the folks carrying the suitcases. We're we're there from day one. We we're carrying the the luggage. And we thought to ourselves, yes, we want partners, but why are we letting other people come in and dictate terms to our companies we were vulnerable and weak. So we got deeper into the growth business. We vertically integrated. And then when when rounds became even larger and we have this incredible portfolio today of maybe five, six, seven hundred companies, we launched a global growth. The global growth is a global vehicle. To double and triple down in the best company in the Sequoia portfolio. And yes, we partner with other firms and so on, but we're able to enjoy the full ride.

49:19 I view those a being more tactical product versus C being more strategic. That's the most important one. And then we also had a hedge fund because we realize that it's way tougher to go from zero to a hundred million in revenues from from zero to five billion in market cap than from five to twenty five. And this is something we talked about this a lot in part one of um of this our Sequoia history. The vast majority of the magnitude of gains of returns happen post. Late post post IPO. And so we you know we learned to distribute shares to our clients carefully, not the week after the IPO or s or the week after the lockup. We learned that a public investment vehicle Would help us many ways, including how to look at these companies retrospectively. If you're in a hedge fund, you look back to y to youth and you explain how youth can grow up.

50:10 Most of us that invest in CM Venture look up. We you know, we we look from zero to something. The hedge fund guys look from a lot to something. So we were able to have deeper conversations about companies and what companies could become. Dare to dream of what companies could become. And so we found that to be quite useful. And then we launched the heritage business, which is to make it easy, it's a family office endowment style. And the reason for that. We have founders and friends at Sequoia who had done quite well. And wouldn't that be a terrific way to maintain a relationship for another thirty years? And so that's why we did it. These were just To try to build a global powerhouse, which is what we want, where we can serve founders.

50:57 From idea. To IPO and beyond. To personal needs. I'll go it'll go so far beyond when they have the personal needs, so we can have these relationships that would last a lifetime. We all take A equal percentage of our profits.

51:14 group is is is walnuts. China is peanuts. The heritage fund is cashews. Yeah. We blend them and then we redistribute'em so that we all get a share of mixed nuts, but no one but no one gets more nuts. It's just different kind of nuts that financially intertwine us. I see. But Nobody makes more money.

51:37 But we all have bought in that we're part of this team, this global team, where we help one another. While doing the very right things for the founders. Because it is all about the founders. Founders come first. By far. Limited partners, most of ours are nonprofits come second, and we come third.

51:55 And it's not because we're altruistic, because that's if we achieve that then it's the way to run the business for the next a hundred years. An interesting takeaway here is as it became more and more expensive to get to your IPO or to get to be a scale global company because you have to do things exactly like you're talking about, launch new geos faster, grow more quickly to get ahead of your competition in these winner take all markets. You know, a major takeaway is a lot of firms took the specialization route where they say we're purely series A and they stay smaller, or we're dedicated seed, we're this new asset class, we're pre-seed, we're growth, or you know, these these large public equity institutions come private and just stay growth capital. But what Sequoia said was look we're just gonna grow with the company the entire life cycle and take a very different approach rather than specialization, exactly what you're saying, to follow them and have the right products for them along their entire growth curve. It's just a very different approach than than a lot of people took. And and certainly there are other people doing something similar today, but it feels five, ten years later than

52:55 than when you did it at Sequoia. I I'll make two points. The first thing is I will add I agree with everything you said, and to get there as early as possible. Yeah. If we said we're an only an A firm

53:10 What happens when and no company has a linear trajectory. Remember your Google question. They all have a little bump. What happens when that company is a little bump and you have to invest in that questionable round? If you're an only quote A firm or only C firm and you own twenty percent Where's your capital?

53:31 to show to the new investor that you believe. And so Because it's never linear, because it's never slammed down from day one. By being there. you can support the f the the companies

53:45 At times where there are darker clouds in the sky. Which helps attract other investors. To then get to the sunny skies. This is the Perfect time since I know we're running out of time.

53:57 To switch over to playbook. I think there are two questions I really want to ask you. And Playbook uh for listeners and for you, Doug, Playbook is we talk about let's abstract out some of the themes from this conversation to what's applicable to entrepreneurs running their businesses, to

54:14 us as we think about partnering with companies It's just struck us in doing part one of the Sequoia history. What actually like at the core makes Sequoia successful is some pretty It's

54:28 Focus on the market. Founders come first. Listen to what entrepreneurs tell you, you know, don't run your mouth, be a business partner, not an investor. How have you guys and you thought about Staying disciplined on those core things as you've grown so much. I'd imagine it takes a lot of active focus and effort.

54:47 Yes, there are many answers. I think are Little secret is our culture. And when I was young in business, I used to hear COs talk about culture. I used to thought it was a talking point handed to the CO by marketing. Nothing could be more incorrect. Mm-hmm.

55:04 And the culture at Sequoia, if I can spend ten seconds on it, is finding these quirky individuals who've had shock to their systems, who have something to prove, who as I say, were not the quarterback of the football team in high school, and you know what I mean by that. They were the shunned ones, if anything. Maybe a couple IQ points high or something to prove. in an environment of teamwork and trust where relatively flat at Sequoia, so we've taken comp off the table. Letting them know it's okay to make mistakes. And instilling a culture that we're looking for the truth. Not your truth, not my truth, the the truth.

55:40 in the middle of the table that helps the founder. A number of times I said in a partners meeting after proclaiming a point, I hear one of our young partner is making a point, I say, hold on a second. I didn't think of that. His point is better than my point. I changed my mind.

55:56 And so And applying that to everything that we do. And realizing that we've done nothing, realizing our worst enemy is the success we had. Realizing that by virtue of our market position, not because people hate us, because who else are you going to attack? Number not the number fourteen firm, number them are three firm. It's just more fun to attack the number one firm. It's what I would do. You know, it it's just more of a sport. Nolan Bushnell told us uh sometimes or no, it was Trip Hawkins. Uh sometimes you don't want to be number one because then there's people sniping at you from behind. I'm perfect. I actually w argue that Don used to say that. Don Valentin said, let's let somebody else be one.

56:32 Uh it's better to be two. And so how how we do that is making sure we have a mindset that we've done nothing. We have a mindset that we are here from going out of business. If you're Amazon, you've got customers, you've got billions, you've got a relationship. If you're Sequoia, you have twenty chickens walking in the back. That's all you have. Twenty chickens and a reputation. So I tell people take the darn shot. Everybody at Sequoia would know we'd rather go out of business in a week than in five years.

57:02 For sure. And so it's just have the mindset of take no prisoner, do the right thing when it's painful to do so, help the founders. Recognize when there's no product market you know, it's not always helped it sounds so wonderful. At some point there's no product market fit. then the market has spoken nineteen times, then you've got to have a different conversation with the founders. Or five VPs come see you and they say it's either him or her or all of us. Those are tough times, but that happens once out of twenty times. Some firms do the calculus that says, Oh, we don't want to ruin a reputation, let bygones be bygones. We can't do that. It just goes against remember the nineteen ninety nine thing? It goes against every bone in my body. You have to help as much as you can. It's interesting that you you talk about how it's a negative

57:46 all all the previous success. And I've heard you talk before about how you pulled down all the poster on the walls here of all these IPOs that you've had. Baron. No posts in this room. It's very true. It's still very lovely. It is lovely. Some would argue that the way that the venture model works, a firm like Sequoia has massive benefit from this momentum of you've made great investments. Which then in hindsight make you sort of look like a kingmaker. And so then you get all the best deal flow now because everybody wants to be a part of this aura that you've created. Do you think there's s truth to that or you think that's totally modicum truth to that, but success is a drug. You know, and you can't fall prey to that. You know, we've had investors here that have been successful, made some money, and didn't work as hard. You know, we have ten tenants at Sequoia.

58:32 Number one is performance. The other nine are important, but you're missing one, the other nine don't matter. You could have clarity of thought, you could have teamwork, but you're not performing. You're not here. And I tell people we are not a family. Make no mistake.

58:46 We're a team. If you don't like teams, we are a show of production. Maybe the investors are the actors, but you know the actors don't look so good without a script, without the lighting person. W without a director. And so everybody matters are the team. especially the people that make us lunch and and breakfast. They're the ones we have to treat with the most kind of dignity.

59:09 They are our team members. They're the ones that make this place run. And that's how Sequoia works internally. Michael wrote. One of my favorite books, so the last ten years uh called leading uh with Sir Alex Alex Ferguson about His career.

59:23 I don't you know, obviously all of that applies to Squay as well, but But yeah, it's a it's an organization that you're building. It's Not a family. That's fantastic.

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1:00:33 Alright, so Doug, on the show, when we grade an acquisition, the you know, we big company buys little company, Facebook buys Instagram, and then we grade um how how good of a use of capital that was. And that instance, as you're well aware, is uh one of our far and away A plus of A pluses. And we thought about how do we do grading on an episode like this? And the way that we wanted to pose it to you are What are some of the things as you reflect back you know, in your stewardship and and all your time at the firm where you would say that was an A plus and some things where um you swung and missed or you watched one go by and you say, actually You know, that's a C D or F, um and you know, we made up for it in this way, but

1:01:13 This is a way to be critical of of a previous decision. First of all, I'll tell you the overall grade I'd give us and then I'll drill down. Somewhere between a B plus. That is what I would give us. I'd give ourselves an A for

1:01:27 The war room times of nineteen ninety nine. Those were our best days. I'd give a self an A for the times when we had those fifty one, forty nine conversation where we're lean the right way.

1:01:43 And then I give ourselves a lot of Fs. in things that came to this conference room. And we just got'em wrong. And we tend to get'em wrong. For The most often reason is that we overthink things.

1:01:58 Sometimes we see revenue growth even early on. And we overthink, well what can this company be Well, you know, and we are and g at some point revenue growth. Speaks for itself.

1:02:11 I'd give a self fairly high grade on how we treat people. how we wrap everybody in Sequoia. I give us high grades how we bring everybody in. in this teamwork approach. When we have an IPO A big one will send an internal node. about how many people touch a company.

1:02:27 You would be shock to see how many names are attached to success. I'd give us grades on how We embrace failure. Our failure. It's always us.

1:02:39 Uh, I'd give us a much lesser grade anemicis. I'd give us Fs. Because a lot of them came through here. So my blended grade. If I'm in a Mike Moritz mood, I'll give ourselves a B. In a Doug Leone mood, I'll give myself I'll I'll give ourselves a B plus. It well thank you for that. I mean it's really is hard to imagine

1:03:00 You know, a company at some point not coming through the the halls here. I'd be remiss not to ask you, can you tell us the the Facebook story? This has been in a freaking Hollywood film at this point. How'd that actually go down? So my daughter from Cornell told us about Facebook very, very early on. Kristen George who's now product manager at Instagram. And I told it to Ruloff.

1:03:24 And For a number of reasons. Some good, some bad. Some justified, some not. we were never able to get in. And we knew about Facebook for a very long time, which culminated in that presentation at Sequoia where Zuck

1:03:42 Mistakenly and he's since said that, obviously. You know, we've all grown up. We don't hold it against Zuck. came to Sequoia, I wasn't in that meeting because I was in China looking for teams. But then we had another shot of Facebook. We had a shot of Facebook early on at a very high price. And then we were asleep at the switch. When all those eight, nine, ten billion dollar rounds

1:04:03 We're done. Completely asleep at the switch. Hm. I'd give us lower than an F. I don't know what's lower than that. I'd give us a G. Well you did have

1:04:12 WhatsApp. So Yeah. You get some extra credit. Yeah. Fantastic. Thank you so much, Doug, for joining us. This has been really special. Um last question. How can People and especially entrepreneurs

1:04:29 Get in touch with you and get in touch with Sequoia. Send us an email. I remember I was on a panel once. And m about ten years ago, and that same question they asked to three venture person. And the venture person next to me said Well, we like to go through law firms, intermediaries to screen. It was my turn I said eight five four three nine two seven which was our phone number. Does that still work? It still works.

1:04:56 That was I had it written down in the notes that I've been. But it's a email us. And make it a thoughtful email. If you send an email to fourteen of us, no one's gonna answer. Send us an email. That's I don't say spend a month on it, but well thought out. You know, I'm the the the uh I I was uh this I wanna start a company. Would you be interested in meeting something like that.

1:05:17 There are some emails that just don't respond. There's no chance that you know that there's no chance we're gonna do that and just too many. But if you send an email anywhere near the viability that somebody may one in ten thousand chances ever make an investment, you'll get a response. Love it. Be aggressive. Fantastic. Mm-hmm. Well Doug

1:05:39 Thank you so much. Um, listeners, feel free to email Doug and uh With that Listeners, if you aren't subscribed and you like what you hear. You should. We're available in any podcast player of your choice. If you want to become a limited partner, subscribing gets you access to our bonus show, where we go deeper into the nitty-gritty of building companies.

1:05:59 in real time. To listen, you can click the link in the show notes or go to glow.fm slash acquired, and all new listeners get a seven day free trial. With that. We will see you next time.

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