{"id":675026,"date":"2026-11-04T20:26:08","date_gmt":"2026-11-04T20:26:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/675026\/"},"modified":"2026-11-04T20:26:08","modified_gmt":"2026-11-04T20:26:08","slug":"sequoia-hits-rewind-undoing-20-years-of-expansion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/675026\/","title":{"rendered":"Sequoia hits rewind, undoing 20 years of expansion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sequoia Capital posted a memo to X<\/a> on Wednesday morning titled \u201cThe Sequoia of Tomorrow\u201d that\u2019s full of surprises. The firm has raised roughly $10 billion in new funds, it says. It is also closing its London office, shutting down its Arc accelerator and its Scouts program, merging its early-stage and growth teams into one, flattening its partnership, and killing the Monday partner meeting.<\/p>\n

The framing is forward-looking, but the messaging is very much about rewinding to an earlier time when the team was smaller and focused more narrowly on Silicon Valley.<\/p>\n

Sequoia says as much itself. The firm describes coming out of a roughly 20-year expansionary phase during which it built multiple businesses in multiple geographies and says an unintended side effect was hierarchy. Nearly everything being undone here was built during that stretch, under a succession of stewards running from Doug Leone to Jim Goetz to Roelof Botha.<\/p>\n

One of the most surprising developments is that the firm is killing two programs that put Sequoia closest to young founders. Scouts<\/a>, which Sequoia launched around 2009 and, anecdotally, half the industry has since copied in some form, gave small checks to founders and operators to invest on the firm\u2019s behalf; it was a way to see deals through people closer to interesting new founders than any partner could be. Jason Calacanis famously pointed Sequoia to Uber through the program. Sam Altman brought Stripe to Sequoia as a scout, too. Other early scouts included Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky and Dropbox founders Arash Ferdowsi and Drew Houston.<\/p>\n

Arc<\/a>, launched in March 2022, was Sequoia\u2019s answer to Y Combinator: a batch accelerator for pre-seed and seed founders, running several cohorts a year for seven weeks, with admitted companies getting $500,000 to $1 million up front.<\/p>\n

Both were bets on being early and being everywhere. Now Sequoia says it wants to put more energy behind fewer people and things.<\/p>\n

Also gone is the firm\u2019s London office, which Sequoia opened in 2020. Several people will leave the firm as result. \u201cWe simply don\u2019t see the need for a local presence,\u201d the memo says, adding that Europe will keep producing \u201coutlier founders\u201d and that Sequoia can support them from the Bay Area. (If founders didn\u2019t already feel pressured to move to the Bay Area or open an office in the region, they will now.)<\/p>\n

Luciana Lixandru, hired from Accel in 2020 as Sequoia\u2019s first partner in Europe, says she was offered a move to San Francisco<\/a> and declined. (\u201cEurope is where my family is, and where I want to build,\u201d she wrote on X.) She says she remains a partner and will keep her board seats while investing personally in European founders.<\/p>\n

For European entrepreneurs, the message is going to be particularly difficult to digest, especially as it follows Andreessen Horowitz shuttering its London office last year and Coatue closing its own in 2024. Sequoia didn\u2019t say it won\u2019t fund Europeans, but it\u2019s definitely reinforcing here that the center of gravity is once again in the Bay Area.<\/p>\n

The rewind extends to people, too. The memo notes that Carl Eschenbach, the former Workday CEO, is very much back in the fold (he returned as a full-time partner in March). It also says the team has \u201creinvigorated the GOAT,\u201d Doug Leone.<\/p>\n

Though the nomenclature at venture firms is all over the place \u2014 including Sequoia \u2014 the memo makes clear there are now seven general partners who primarily own and operate Sequoia: Alfred Lin and Pat Grady \u2014 who are the firm\u2019s co-stewards \u2014 along with Andrew Reed, Shaun Maguire, Konstantine Buhler, Sonya Huang, and David Cahn, who joined the firm in 2023.<\/p>\n

There are other changes as a result. Jess Lee, the firm\u2019s first female partner and an early-stage investor who oversaw its Arc program, is no longer shown on Sequoia\u2019s investor page but rather as an operator in the role of its chief product officer. Stephanie Zhan, an investor who had joined Sequoia in 2015, has meanwhile left the firm entirely, announcing last month<\/a> that she is launching her own new firm.<\/p>\n

Sequoia rarely lets anyone go entirely. Founder Don Valentine famously kept turning up at partner meetings for roughly a decade<\/a> after handing over the firm. Goetz, who stepped back from his management responsibilities in 2017, is still featured on the firm\u2019s site. Botha is the exception. He was voted out as senior steward last fall in a surprise shake-up days after sitting down<\/a> with this editor \u2014 the firm framed it as a handoff to Lin and Grady \u2014 and he completely cut ties with Sequoia this summer, around the time he joined SpaceX\u2019s board<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The changes are sure to make waves. Still, none of them are completely out of character. Sequoia iterates routinely, including, at times, reversing out of earlier moves. Most notably, in 2023, it separated from its China and India\/Southeast Asia arms, which became HongShan and Peak XV, ending a two-decade run as a global franchise under one name.<\/p>\n

The rest of the memo is structural. It says the team has decided to dispense with its \u201cearly\u201d and \u201cgrowth\u201d team approaches and operate as one. It also notes the Monday partner meeting \u2014 a ritual at Sequoia and at nearly every firm \u2014 is finished on the theory that founders operate around the clock and their investors should, too. (These may be going away more generally. At least, in a sit-down with TechCrunch at Disrupt<\/a> last month, the entire Benchmark team suggested it now mostly uses Monday meetings to socialize<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Sequoia acknowledges the moves come at some cost. \u201cIt is scary to break something that\u2019s already working just fine,\u201d the memo says, and painful to say goodbye to good people. Now to wait and see if these were the right calls.<\/p>\n

Here is Sequoia\u2019s post in full:<\/p>\n

We live in a world of accelerating change. The best founders reinvent themselves over and over again. We must do the same.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a year since our generational transition. We\u2019ve been busy! We\u2019re no longer evolving the Sequoia of yesterday; we are now building the Sequoia of tomorrow.<\/p>\n

Here are a few of the changes we\u2019ve made, and what they mean for founders.<\/p>\n

Focus We are best at high-conviction, highly selective venture capital investing. This is our focus. We have removed much of the complexity associated with the Sequoia Capital Fund, sunset our batch accelerator (Arc) and Scouts programs, and streamlined both operating and investing teams. Putting more energy behind fewer people and things means better support for the founders we back.<\/p>\n

One Team There is no more \u201cEarly & Growth\u201d. There is only Sequoia. We are one team, operating under one shared mission. This should make things more seamless for founders as they go from stage to stage.<\/p>\n

London We are closing our London office, which means several people will be leaving Sequoia. This is not about the team \u2014 they are excellent. We simply don\u2019t see the need for a local presence. We believe that Europe will continue to produce outlier founders and companies, and that we can continue to provide world class support from our home base in the Bay Area.<\/p>\n

Partners We are coming out of a ~20 year expansionary phase, during which we built multiple businesses in multiple geos. One unintended side effect was hierarchy; it required real management to run the operating side of our business, and this crept over into the investing team. We\u2019ve made several internal changes that have the effect of flattening the partnership. This allows every partner to flourish, and every founder to receive the full benefit of Team Sequoia \u2014 regardless of who your lead partner happens to be.<\/p>\n

Firepower We\u2019ve welcomed two rising stars (Liam and Sonali) and one transcendentally talented founder & operator (Dev). We\u2019ve reunited with a legendary leader (Carl) and reinvigorated the GOAT (Doug). We\u2019ve elevated and empowered killer operators: Hem, Natalie, Rishi, Stacey, and Theresa. We\u2019ve raised ~$10Bn in new funds. Talent and capital are two of the key ingredients in building legendary companies. Our talent density and capital base are stronger than ever.<\/p>\n

24\/7 There is no more Monday partner meeting cycle. Founders operate 24\/7, and so do we. Founders shouldn\u2019t have to adhere to our process \u2014 we will do our best to adhere to yours.<\/p>\n

Reinventing Ourselves<\/p>\n

Some of these changes were obvious. Others less so. Many were hard. It is scary to break something that\u2019s already working just fine, and it is painful to say goodbye to great people. We ask founders to do the right thing even when it is hard, and we are committed to doing the same.<\/p>\n

Some things remain unchanged. Our mission is to help the daring build legendary companies, from idea to IPO and beyond. Our objective function is not scale, but quality: delivering the best possible returns to LPs, and being the best possible partner to founders.<\/p>\n

The Sequoia of Tomorrow<\/p>\n

Excellence is a moving target, so we will always be changing. But for now, this is Sequoia.<\/a><\/p>\n

We have seven General Partners who own and operate our organization, and we are on offense: building our business so that we can support you in building yours. We are true believers, and as we enter a golden age of multiple tectonic shifts in parallel (AI, space, biology, reindustrialization, and perhaps more), we are so fired up for what\u2019s to come. Let\u2019s build something legendary together!<\/p>\n

\u2014 Alfred, Andrew, David, Konstantine, Pat, Shaun, and Sonya, on behalf of Team Sequoia<\/p>\n

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sequoia Capital posted a memo to X on Wednesday morning titled \u201cThe Sequoia of Tomorrow\u201d that\u2019s full of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":675027,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[72,191,61,60,12121],"class_list":["post-675026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entrepreneurship","tag-business","tag-entrepreneurship","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sequoia-capital"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=675026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675026\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/675027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=675026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=675026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=675026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}