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  • [MUSIC]

  • Well we're all really happy to have you here today.

  • Welcome to the GSB.

  • >> Thank you.

  • >> I remember one of the first times that we spoke when you

  • were talking about coming here and

  • you asked me if this was a forum where you could be, quote unquote, provocative.

  • And so while recognizing that, some members of your family are in

  • the audience today and we don't wanna get too far across the line.

  • I wanna make sure we give you a chance to push the envelope a little bit.

  • So, over the next 40 minutes or so we're gonna cover a, a few topics.

  • I wanna talk about your leadership at Sequoia and

  • how it's gotten to the point where it is today.

  • And about the Silicon Valley ecosystem as a whole.

  • As you mentioned before there's a lot of ecos,

  • there's a lot of confusion out there about it.

  • But first I wanna touch on what makes you who you are, your background.

  • The Dean talked a lot about you coming over here as an immigrant at the age

  • of 11.

  • Working blue collar jobs and vowing to succeed in business.

  • Forbes wrote Leoni still carries himself like a hard luck striver, scrambling for

  • his first decent break.

  • And you said a lot of what keeps you going is fear.

  • So tell me a bit more about that experience coming over here as

  • an immigrant, and why that drives you today and

  • how that makes you a, as a person today.

  • >> Well you know, it's quite amusing when I think back of all the seemingless,

  • very small things that really played a pivotal role.

  • I remember in my first job,

  • when the CEO of a small company said, go clean the bathrooms.

  • And I read, and I heard that boy, it starts at the bottom.

  • It starts by cleaning the bathroom.

  • And I remember cleaning the bathrooms that day and

  • saying, I got you now because you led me into the business world.

  • So that's a vignette that says, I'm now in and now I'm gonna get you all.

  • And get you all I didn't mean in a bad way now,

  • you know, now I only have one place to go but up.

  • The other thing, as I look back that was quite formative, being an only child,

  • lots of love around my family.

  • No means, but lots of love.

  • And that was a blessing.

  • But a pretty rough high school, three or four, four years.

  • You know, the high school years are tender years.

  • It's the first time that girls come into play and so on.

  • And those were not easy years.

  • And to this day, I have to catch myself.

  • I have to catch myself from letting my ego and

  • my insecurities get the best of me as I want my high

  • school friends who I haven't seen for 40 years realize how wrong they were.

  • And I think it's humorous that at the age of 57,

  • I still think about the high school friends.

  • So, those are the little things that really, really,

  • really push me to want to, to want to achieve.

  • And my life really wends into, into three different groups.

  • In the first few years, it was about making it.

  • Can I make it, can I make it, can I make it?

  • From the age of 35 to 50, I just wanted to be the very best.

  • That really, really drove me.

  • From 50, 55 to this point of 57 and hopefully through the end of my career,

  • the thing that really, really drives me is working with younger people.

  • It's a kind of a rude line, but I don't wanna hang out with people like me.

  • I don't wanna hang out with old people.

  • I wanna hang out with people like you.

  • And so at Sequoia Capital, finding a young,

  • talented partner, investor, employee, and

  • helping them in the greatest way possible is really what keeps me going now.

  • >> That's great. Well I

  • wanna get to how you recruited Sequoia.

  • Cuz I know a lot of our classmates may be interested in

  • that right now given that it's recruiting season.

  • But just backing up a bit to okay.

  • So you're a New York immigrant.

  • You vowed to succeed,

  • but the path to success is one that I think is not an obvious one.

  • You graduated from graduate school in the East Coast and decided to

  • come back to the West Coast and work at Sequoia after having a sales background.

  • You know, why, why'd you make that choice?

  • Silicon Valley was something-

  • >> Yeah. >> Then but it's not what it is today.

  • Sequoia was good but it's not what it is today.

  • What drove you to come back here, what did you see?

  • >> So I think luck played a great role.

  • So my first job in sales was selling north of 96th Street in New York City.

  • Now it's cool to be north of 96th street.

  • Let me tell you, 1979 it wasn't cool to be north of 96th street.

  • It was unsafe to walk north of 96th street.

  • And, but, but that location had one important thing,

  • it had Columbia University, where someone explained to me what the Arpanet was.

  • And that caused me to get a job at Sun Microsystems.

  • Again, that crappy sales territory, and

  • you could say I made my own break because I asked some questions.

  • But that unlucky break led to a lucky break.

  • Sun Microsystem employee number 50 something, I can't remember.

  • And I really thought I was a big shot.

  • I was 26, 27, selling you know, a boatload of computer.

  • Got promoted, and then I met Vinod Costla.

  • Holy Cow.

  • This guy's as old as I am, he's a board member.

  • Scott McNeilio came here.

  • Holy cow.

  • This guy's, [UNKNOWN] I mean, he's the president, the CEO.

  • And then I learned the words venture capitalist.

  • I had no idea what that was, but it sounded pretty good to me.

  • And so, I just figured out what a venture guy was, and

  • I decided that I wanna be one of them.

  • And I figured that I should get a masters, learn a little more, need to get a second

  • masters, and then I wrote 80 letters to venture firms, letting them know,

  • I'm gonna be in California, trying to sweet talk all the assistants.

  • I got an interview with Don Valentine at five o'clock on a Monday,

  • who took me to his office and asked me, what's important?

  • [LAUGH] Of course, I knew what's important.

  • I spoke for about seven, eight minutes.

  • I gave it, I, I mean, I gave it all.

  • 30 seconds of silence, and he said, what else?

  • [LAUGH] I, I'd just given it all and

  • I said, Don, I gave you everything I know I can't give you any more.

  • But the fact that I was so candid, and the fact that I told it like it is, and

  • the fact that I had a sales background caused me to be hired but

  • to make a long story short, it was a lucky break to sell at Columbia.

  • It was a lucky break to ask a few questions, it was a lucky break to learn

  • about Sun Micro Systems where I wrote a, a letter and

  • got a cold call interview and so in some cases I think you make your own break.

  • But make no mistake.

  • A great deal of the reason as to why I'm here has to do with luck.

  • I firmly believe that.

  • >> If you if, if you hadn't come back to Silicon Valley,

  • do you think you'd still be in sales or what, where, what was your vision?

  • >> So about six, seven years ago I was in New York City.

  • And I got a call from someone, there's an HP reunion in

  • New York City in some restaurant on 22nd Street.

  • And back in Hewlett-Packard, back in 79, it was the Italian mafia.

  • John Colucci, Tartaglia, I mean all these guys,

  • the same names as The Godfather in some ways.

  • [LAUGH] And, and so I decided to attend this gathering.

  • And it was one of those scenes from movies that you

  • occasional see where your life would have been.

  • And let me tell you, it would not have been a bad life.

  • I think everybody was a lifer, everybody had a home, their kids were happy, but

  • they got up and started singing song the HP way to Bill and Dave.

  • This is the two fantasy packet.

  • And they gave me a snippet of what life might have been, and

  • it completely freaked me out.

  • And so that's what it could have been.

  • I doubt it would have been that, but that was a very eye-opening ex, experience.

  • >> Interesting.

  • Well, I want to I wanna move now to what people have no doubt come here to

  • hear about, which is your leadership of Sequoia and the success you and

  • your partners have had over not only recently but over the last few decades.

  • >> Yes.

  • >> it's, it's obviously been an incredible year.

  • And it's been an incredible decade, for a few decades.

  • And I'm wondering what about Sequoia separates it from the others,

  • that's allowed it to maintain success for so long.

  • What's in the secret sauce as, as you've put it, and, and

  • how've you stayed on top for so long?

  • >> Well, I think it all started with Don Valentine, who's the founder at

  • Sequoia Capital who had two lessons that were pivotal in my mind.

  • One was really an appreciation for markets, and

  • second an ability to recruit non-conventional people.

  • So he recruited Mike Morads, whose name you probably know, who was a writer.

  • Had written a book at Apple, was the San Francisco Time Magazine bureau chief.

  • And he recruited him to be an investor.

  • Now you may wonder, how does, how do you recruit him to be an investor?

  • Because he liked the way Mike thought, he liked the way Mike asked questions.

  • Right after he recruited Mike, he, he hired me.

  • And he hired me because of my view of a business from the customer in,

  • versus from the product out.

  • And Mike and I could not be more different.

  • Mike is a, is a thinking man of few words, Brit.

  • I'm an Italian, a few too many words and so on.

  • But Mike and I learned to work together for 20 something years, but

  • it's to, to Don's credit.

  • And we kind of kept that going.

  • So we continue to hire people mostly from modest means,

  • people that have not followed a preset set of tracks.

  • People that have taken risks,

  • people that have achieved some kind of success early on.

  • People that are smart, but that goes without saying.

  • People that have both IQ and EQ.

  • And then our spec has product management, technical background,

  • has all these conventional lines.

  • And that has a line at the end that says, doesn't meet spec, but he or

  • she is special.

  • And it's the last line that's the most important line of the recruit.

  • And so, we meet a lot of people, we're always looking for people.

  • We're looking for people right now, both in the venture business and

  • in the growth business.

  • We get to know them quite well.

  • And then we asked them to listen to companies with us.

  • We just wanna see how they think.

  • And we look for highly imperfect human beings,

  • the type of people that were probably individual contributors early in life.

  • The quirky kids if you will, not the quarterback, or the football team, or

  • you know, the female equivalent of that.

  • But people that have a bit of an edge, people that have something to prove,

  • people that need to win, and

  • people that are not asses when you peel a few layers, because life is too short.

  • And we ta, and our real secret is take these heterogeneous individual

  • contributors, and showing them on how to work as part of a team.

  • To start using the we pronoun.

  • Take full responsibilities for failure, and share the successes.

  • And if there's one reason why we've lasted for 43 years near the top or

  • at the top of our business, is because of this.

  • The, this leads to a high performance culture that has only one goal.

  • A team-oriented spirit to help founders build great companies.

  • >> So you brought up Mike Morris and you two have led the firm for some time.

  • And he had a quote not too long ago where he said about Sequoia that quote,

  • we're always outgunned by companies that are far larger than us,

  • who have threatened us and the founders with extinction.

  • It's incredibly thrilling to prove everyone wrong.

  • You can't get a bigger rush than that.

  • Now you talked about your talent recruitment and recruiting hungry people.

  • But there's gotta be more to it to keep you hungry as a firm.

  • To keep you from resting you on your laurels,

  • to keep you from resting on your laurels.

  • How do you think about continuing to motivate yourself and motivating people?

  • What kind of Things do you implement with, as a,

  • as a firm wide culture to, to make sure that happens?

  • >> There's a few things.

  • First of all, I think we're paranoid as heck.

  • We're always one or two new investments alone from becoming a second tier firm.

  • And that is very clear in our minds.

  • Second, we have a different view towards risk, than most other people.

  • People hate to do things because they view them as risky.

  • We actually think that if you're a crystal clear thinker, doing nothing is risky.

  • So we're always changing and implementing.

  • And the old adage that if it ain't broke,

  • don't fix it does not apply to Sequoia Capital.

  • It is the exact opposite.

  • If something is working like a dream, break it,

  • because you know there are some competitors out there who are looking at

  • you from the outside and are trying to push you out of business.

  • So the last thing we've done in the last four or

  • five months, we've taken all the posters down.

  • We had all these posters, 200 IPO's, 20% of the NASDAQ blah, blah,

  • blah, take them all off the walls.

  • Take them all off the walls and let's act as if we haven't had one single win.

  • And so where we, screwing around, messing with the formula, trying new things,

  • we went into China, we went into India because we asked ourselves a question.

  • Where are the most valuable companies gonna come from in the next 20 years?

  • It was no longer clear.

  • They would come from the US.

  • So we went into India and China, and we did in a decentralized fashion.

  • We met some people over a period of 90 days and

  • we told them, we'd like you to be Sequoia Capital China.

  • You make all the decisions, not us.

  • No other firm has done that.

  • So always taking risks because taking risks is the only way to keep on going.

  • >> I wanna get to your success in China a little bit later, but first I

  • wanna ask something that I think a fair number of my classmates are interested in,

  • which is about how you pitch the VCs and how you pitch people like Sequoia.

  • The web is filled with stories of how difficult it is to pitch you, and

  • pitch Sequoia.

  • And I was gonna share some stories, but I,

  • there are a lot of words that I can't actually use on stage here.

  • So I'll just say there, there's some, there's some aggressive.

  • It's an aggressive pitch made in usually.

  • And so I'm wondering what you look for in pitches.

  • What what sets the best ones apart?

  • And what tips might you have for people that wanna come in and pitch you?

  • >> So, let me set it up, up first.

  • We're very cognizant that when somebody comes to Sequoia.

  • They prepared, we are very cognizant of the fact that in many case, it's their

  • big day, one of many large days, maybe they are going to [INAUDIBLE] and

  • maybe they are going to bench mark, so we did.

  • So we take that quite seriously.

  • The meetings at Sequoia start exactly on time,

  • they end on time and no one has their iPhone on, it goes against.

  • All our culture, no ones doing any else, just to be straight.

  • Now, we also don't have flower children at Sequoia Capital.

  • We do ask questions.

  • And, and I will tell you there are some partnerships who are afraid of

  • asking questions for ruining their reputation.

  • No we'll ask questions.

  • And we try to treat people the way we would treat someone in our living room.

  • But if you have a question about the market size,

  • if you have a question about some issues, we're gonna ask it.

  • And unfortunately, because we ask three or

  • four questions, once in a while, we have a founder who we realizes.

  • Oh my god, I, I just started a company that, that,

  • that's chasing a $42 million global market.

  • That does not feel good.

  • But it's not meant to be rude, it's meant to understand the person's business.

  • So, some of the best pitches.

  • Drew Houston who was gonna

  • launch a company in a crowded market, and yet could clearly articulate.

  • Why none of the existing products were gonna make it.

  • Crystal clear thinking is one of the things we look for.

  • Not a fancy slide pitch.

  • [COUGH] But crystal clear thinking and we pay careful attention to little words.

  • To the pronoun being used.

  • When someone says, I can ship you this thing.

  • It's a little warning flag.

  • What do you mean you can ship us?

  • You're not shipping us anything.

  • It's your company that's shipping us.

  • So we pay really careful attention to everything.

  • Or Fred Leddy who had a company that was growing like a weed and

  • all he told us was all the mistakes he made.

  • Those were the great pictures.

  • Those were people that were self aware.

  • They were crystal clear thinkers.

  • They were willing to learn, willing to listen.

  • And in some cases, willing not to listen,

  • because founders tend to not be the greatest listeners.

  • And in many cases they're right because they're doing new things,

  • trying new things.

  • >> On your on your investment philosophy, you,

  • you referenced this earlier that you look for investors who come from modest means.

  • And I think you also look for

  • entrepreneurs who come from from modest means.

  • You said, we want people who come from humble backgrounds, and

  • have a need to win.

  • So what types of entrepreneurs make the best founders?

  • You know, wha, in particular if, say, someone who had an MBA

  • from the Stanford Graduate School of Business walked into your.

  • Into your office wh, wha, what profile do you look for?

  • >> So I think entrepreneurs, like investors,

  • come in different flavors, and I will tell you, and

  • as I told my kids, that if you're desperate, it's a great asset.

  • If you have too many choices in life.

  • It clouds your thinking.

  • When you only have one way to go and that's forward, it's very easy.

  • You just go, go, go.

  • Failure truly's not an option.

  • Now, what we look for in entrepreneurs is people that have not followed the,

  • the same tracks.

  • People that, that have done quirky things.

  • That have taken risks.

  • We look for that we look for people that have knowledge in the domain.

  • Not so much the best of minded of business,

  • because they wanna make some money.

  • We actually look for people that are very interested.

  • And their product or service being used by the next ten, 20 million people.

  • And we also look for

  • people their little secret that solve a problem that they have.

  • And it just so happened, they don't know it,

  • we don't know it, but they're the proxy for the next 20 million users.

  • So Jan of WhatsApp understood privacy and low cost messaging.

  • He had that need.

  • He started WhatsApp.

  • Well, the founders of Yahoo from Stanford couldn't find anything on

  • the internet, so they built a search engine.

  • They built a yellow pages.

  • Or something as simple as Zappos.

  • The founders helpers couldn't find a pair of shoes, and so we looked for

  • people that l, that are trying to solve problems.

  • That they themselves have and hopefully a new problem.

  • And if we see that, that's a little tell for

  • us that we may be on to something, because we may find our first beta site.

  • The founder for the next generation.

  • >> Looking at, looking at Sequoia more broadly and

  • one issue that impacts Sequoia and the Valley as a whole is a gender gap.

  • >> Yes.

  • >> That there aren't a lot of women in, working in tech,

  • or engineering and so Sequoia itself has no female partners.

  • >> Yes.

  • >> And this is something you have spoken about before, but

  • it would be interesting to hear your thought son why there aren't more women in

  • the bell in general and Sequoia, what is the reason for that?

  • >> So look, clearly I can make a lot of excuses,

  • not a lot of women engineers and so on.

  • But all we need is one or two.

  • [COUGH] So I think that's just an excuse.

  • And I will tell you that our inability in the U.S we

  • have women investors in India and China.

  • Our inability to have [COUGH] women investors at

  • Sequoia U.S is an abject failure on our part.

  • Let me be crystal clear.

  • We have a heterogeneous.

  • Set of talents at Sequoia.

  • We have engineers, sales, marketing, CFO,

  • Italians, Chinese, Indian.

  • But we don't have the woman's point of view.

  • And if you just think about consumer internet investing,

  • half of the population is women.

  • So it is in our interests, both as good citizens and as selfish foun, and

  • as selfish investors to have that point of view.

  • We're, we have been looking and we will continue to look for women investors.

  • We actually hired someone from the GSB a couple of years ago,

  • spent the summer with us, and then she decided to become an operating person.

  • Now, yes but we do have some women partners.

  • Blair our marketing partner, came from Stanford.

  • Our global CFO is a woman, but you're absolutely right,

  • we do not have a woman investor partner and

  • that is a huge failure on our part and by the way we're looking.

  • >> [LAUGH] All right, well.

  • Maybe you'll get some resumes this afternoon.

  • So I, I wanna take us to the,

  • a bigger picture discussion here, about the Valley as a whole.

  • Maybe then we could talk about Sequoia all day.

  • You know, times in the Valley are, obviously, very good.

  • Sequoia had a notable success of WhatsApp.

  • But there are a number of big acquisition going on right now.

  • The WhatsApp acquisition at 19 billion makes it

  • worth more than the following companies.

  • Southwest Airlines, which flew me across the country last month.

  • Ralph Lauren, ConAgra Foods, which employs 26,000 people.

  • And even Chipotle which feeds me three to four times a week.

  • [LAUGH] The list goes on.

  • Harley-Davidson, I have a whole list here.

  • You know, you know this.

  • And, and, I'm not questioning the value to Facebook.

  • What I am questioning is whether these companies are really worth that much.

  • Peter [UNKNOWN] has a quote that says, we wanted flying cars and

  • instead we got 140 characters.

  • I'm wondering how you think about that.

  • Is this an overvalued bubble?

  • Are these companies really creating the type of value that

  • they're being estimated at?

  • >> Boy that's a lot of questions.

  • >> Yeah well. >> You asked me

  • if What'sApp is worth 19 billion.

  • >> Well no right.

  • >> You've asked me is there a bubble.

  • So a few answers.

  • Let's start with What'sApp.

  • Let me ask all of you, if you owned 100% of Facebook, and

  • you have 190 billion market count, and you have a huge

  • unprotected flank called Mobile, what is it worth to you,

  • to shore up that plan, that flank, is it worth 10% of your market cap or not?

  • It wasn't just What'sApp, it was Instagram as well.

  • That, that we sold them.

  • With those two properties,

  • no one talks about Facebook any longer being weak and mobile.

  • So the value of property is in the eyes of the buyer and the seller.

  • I can tell you from the eyes of the buyer.

  • It was definitely worth ten percent of their market cap to shore up

  • that plan, that flank.

  • Next. Whether we live in a bubble.

  • In I think the public markets are rational and

  • reflect the transformation caused across U in this, the,

  • the industries the US, and healthcare, manufacturing, so on, by technology.

  • As we're seeing the number of new Fortune 1000s,

  • the percentage of new Fortune 1000s every decade increasing and increasing.

  • 40 years ago 30% of the Fortune 1000 changed.

  • The last decade, 70%.

  • So think of that rate of change.

  • And you're, and

  • you're seeing it reflected in what some of these technology companies mean value.

  • Things are nutty in a private market.

  • And the one rule, that's the most fundamental rule of investing,

  • is that we live in cycles.

  • And every time you hear it's different for

  • this time, it's the first time this is gonna happen, that's all crap.

  • We live in cycles.

  • And the more time you hear, the, the, the words billion dollar market cap,

  • the more you know you're approaching a top of the cycle.

  • In 1999 there were a lot of companies with no business model, zero.

  • What we're seeing now is a whole bunch of companies that deserve to have, private

  • companies that deserve to have wonderful market value, and a whole bunch of others.

  • That if I hid the name of the company and I showed you the financials, you would not

  • ascribe the value that the private markets are ascribing to these kinds of companies.

  • Which is a long way to saying that as long as you have that,

  • as soon as you have a hiccup in a public market.

  • The hedge funds are gonna go away.

  • The latest stage money gonna go away.

  • The billion dollar funding's gonna go away.

  • And a whole bunch of companies with horrific business model.

  • Maybe revenues, but

  • terrible unit economics are not gonna be able to raise money.

  • And that's when it's, and then it's gonna turn ugly real quickly.

  • I think things in a private market, for

  • a large number of companies, are in Lala Land.

  • Because the companies are not worth anywhere,

  • near what the private market is describing to them.

  • Now why is all this occurring?

  • Because first you have the investors and

  • then you have the tourists that say oh my god we're missing out.

  • And so you have more and more money coming in that's investing at higher and

  • higher level of risks, but they don't realize that's happening.

  • And then something happens like, at this location in the public market,

  • an adjustment 500 point correction, all the money tends to disappear, and

  • all these companies that are used to burning 50 billion cash a quarter in

  • the private markets, are gonna be hurting.

  • That is what a forecast is gonna have.

  • >> So we are in somewhat of a bubble, you say?

  • >> We are, we're approaching the top of the market you know

  • in private market investing.

  • >> Okay, [LAUGH] so on the on the funding landscape.

  • You we, we spoke back stage a bit about some of the confusion that is out there

  • there's, there seems to be in the shift in the funding landscape.

  • People are talking about Angels and SIIDE funders you know increasing in power and

  • dis intermediate vcs.

  • What's your take on the, is it a trend, is it a real trend, what's you take on it?

  • >> So look it's quite simple.

  • With the advent of internet and mobile.

  • We saw the birth of what I call application, layer, and dusting.

  • Where, now you can buy a computer for $1,000 or less, or store your files on

  • Amazon, or use open source, and you can create a product for $200,000.

  • So the cost to start one of these companies is a lot less.

  • Remember, it's the cost to start, not the cost to launch.

  • And so for the first time we've seen the growth of Angel investing,

  • which is necessary, because there's so many founders and entrepreneurs.

  • We could not make all the investments that we see.

  • But at the same time, we've also seen these things called party rounds,

  • where instead of raising $250,000, or 500, or a million.

  • Money's being thrown at these founders, and

  • they're raising these four, $5 million rounds before they have a product.

  • Without calculating what that means,

  • keep in mind the Angels spend this much time with a founder in a company's life.

  • If a company's life is that long, the Angels spend that much.

  • And as a founder you have to figure out how much equity do

  • you wanna sell to a asset class, that category of partners.

  • Think of them as partners that will spend maybe the first nine months with you.

  • Then the venture guys come to spend the next seven years, and you have to

  • figure out, how much equity do you want to sell to a partner that's next seven years.

  • Then the public market will do the rest.

  • So in my mind, the Angels are necessary, especially for

  • these application level company.

  • If you're gonna go in the lab and build IP for 18 months before you come out

  • with a product, then Angel's not gonna do much for you.

  • But in these internet mobile companies,

  • the Angel play a productive role as long as you don't sell a ton of your equity.

  • And after the first round you've sold 62% of your company.

  • It's just nuts!

  • You oughta be totally selfish with the early shares,

  • including the shares with the venture guys.

  • Raise as little money as you can to get you to the next milestone,

  • the value goes up and then when you have got market power and you have got three,

  • four, five, ten, $15 billion value, Uber, 18 billion or in our case, on Airbnb,

  • ten, 12 billion, then go raise a lot of money, but you should guard those shares-

  • With your life, and you should architect your investors the same way you

  • architect your product and your engineering team.

  • >> How should founders think about raising money then?

  • Should they, you know if you wanna protect their equity but

  • they wanna raise money as fast as possible.

  • >> Raise as little as you can to get you to something that you can show,

  • plus maybe a quarter or two, so you have a little bit of cushion.

  • And then raise some more money.

  • Raise as little, not as much, as little as you can.

  • Because that's the most expensive equity you're gonna sell.

  • >> Raise as little- >> And, and

  • conversely be very generous with the early engineers that you hire.

  • Those are the ones you should invest in.

  • Because the first two or three engineers, if you get those wrong, you are done.

  • [LAUGH].

  • >> So we all should become engineers is what you're saying?

  • [LAUGH].

  • >> No, no, because if you're building a technical product,

  • an A plus engineer is gonna help you to recruit an A engineer.

  • If your first two or three engineers are B engineers, you're done, because you'll

  • never surround yourself wi, with the, you know, with the A plus talented people.

  • >> Got it. Well it's good to be at Stanford then.

  • We got some good engineers here.

  • We only have time for about one more question before we move to the audience,

  • and I just wanted to touch on Sequoia's success in emerging markets.

  • You know, you have,

  • have found success in Israel, India, and particularly China where others have not.

  • I'm wondering, you know, is this just another secret sauce kinda thing?

  • You hire the best people and

  • they do good things or what, what has led to success there?

  • >> A little luck, we found good people.

  • but, but we looked for a while.

  • And I think the courage and foolishness, because I think in retrospect with,

  • I mean, that we can believe that we did this, is to hire people and

  • work the attack side of the house,

  • which is the money making, the investing, the hiring, to have that decentralized.

  • To not have every decision go through California, because what do I

  • know about what goes on in China, what do I know about what goes on in India?

  • I traveled to India and China four to five times a year, but

  • at the end of the day, I don't really know what goes on there.

  • So we decentralize the attacks out of the house, and we centralize the defense.

  • The stay out of jail compliance.

  • The financial reporting.

  • No one has had the courage to do what we did.

  • To completely decentralize and have relationships and

  • trust be the things that really hold us as one firm.

  • It's not a franchise opportunity, we are one partnership.

  • It's not Sequoia Capital China, it's Sequoia Capital in China,

  • to show you how carefully we even use our words.

  • And essentially we are,

  • we're held by a whole bunch of strings, compensation is a small piece of it.

  • A lot of it is culture.

  • When we send email to a partner in China, we get a response right back the same way

  • that when I send an email to my partner here in the US.

  • And we view our partners in China and India and

  • Israel the same way as the partners in the US.

  • So having that patience, that courage, that foolishness to organize that when

  • investing all the time, I think has been the secret to our success.

  • >> Interesting.

  • Well I wanna save some time for questions here.

  • We have mics in the front rows here, so please start raising your hands.

  • If you're in the top deck you can tweet questions and

  • we'll have someone read a few of those.

  • And we have time for about ten, ten -15 minutes of questions.

  • So.

  • We got one right.

  • >> Right in front.

  • We'll go right over here.

  • And please stand up and introduce yourself.

  • >> Hi, my name is-

  • >> Yep, just hold it close.

  • >> My name is Federico Anthony part of the faculty here at Stanford GSB.

  • I have a question regarding Brazil.

  • So from the, the exterior it seems that you didn't have as

  • much success in Brazil as you did in China and India.

  • I don't know if you could speak to the reasons for that and

  • what learning did you get from that experience?

  • >> So, we hired about three years ago a terrific GSB graduate.

  • We hired him in October his first year to work with us through year one,

  • through the summer, and through year two.

  • And we had a notion that we were gonna go to Brazil.

  • And we traveled to Brazil probably six, seven times.

  • We made two investments.

  • And the more we traveled down there, the, the more it became apparent

  • that there were very few engineers coming out of Brazil.

  • And we made and

  • we understood that we would have to go into other lines of business.

  • Like the the consumer industry, supermarkets, restaurants.

  • And we want Sequoia Capital to really be a IT first partnership.

  • What we didn't wanna do, is go to Brazil and

  • back a whole bunch of look-alike companies.

  • So, we hired a gentleman, he opened an office,

  • we've made two investments, and then we pulled back.

  • Now there is a second part to that story.

  • So, we did the right thing.

  • At Sequoia, we pride ourselves at doing the right thing.

  • A young person.

  • We full invested in a fund, including the what's up funds.

  • So he's very happy.

  • And he wanted to start a company, and

  • we gave him a bit of a throwaway million dollar seed.

  • Not throwaway because that's a belittling term, but in a long shot startup in

  • Brazil, and he wanted to start an online credit card company.

  • So we helped him, board meetings over the phone for the first year.

  • And then at a million dollars, he launched.

  • A credit card company in Brazil, there's a whole bunch,

  • there's a line out the door of users who want to get the credit card.

  • They changed the law in Brazil, so

  • now if you wanna launch a competitor, it takes three years.

  • And we just invested $11 million on a series A,

  • I have to just throw away a million dollars.

  • Of course, we now have three investments in Brazil, but

  • we have no intention to planning a flag in Brazil,

  • mostly because of the number of computer science engineers.

  • The last thing I'll tell you is, I met with a gentleman, a gardener,

  • lives in Brazil.

  • He he does software monitoring throughout the US, he's the one that writes all the,

  • all the graphic software, and I asked him,

  • what were the two three leading software companies in Brazil?

  • He could only name one or two.

  • It was very clear that it was too early to go to Brazil from an IT,

  • non-look-alike internet company market.

  • And so we backed off and that's the real story.

  • [BLANK_AUDIO]

  • >> All right, I think we have one more question over here.

  • >> Well, my name is Nam, Nama.

  • I'm an MBA class of 2016.

  • And I think by now my classmates are, already know what I'm about to ask.

  • We already touched a little bit about gender inequality in your firm.

  • I wonder how, how it affects how the firm addresses, women entrepreneurship.

  • Are you missing out on women entrepreneurs because you don't have a female partner?

  • >> Well I, I, you know, we have no way of knowing if we're missing out.

  • So in the last 10 years I have served in half a dozen boards

  • where the lead founder, CEO, is or was a woman.

  • So we have no fear of backing women.

  • Right now in one of my best companies, the president, founder, is a woman.

  • House, another company where I'm not aboard.

  • The CEO is a woman, so we have no issues in backing women.

  • I think we're missing out as investors mostly because as, as I said earlier,

  • we're missing a point of view that represents half of the population.

  • And if you do any studies on high performance team,

  • high performance team have heterogeneous point of view, and

  • we're missing half of the population of the U.S..

  • But we, we have been in business with numerous women and

  • we look forward to being in business with even more women.

  • So if you wanna start a company, come to Sequoia we'd love to hear your pitch.

  • >> There we go.

  • We're gonna take one from Twitter, but please keep your hands raised so

  • they can give you the mic, but we'll go to a Twitter question now.

  • The Twitter question.

  • >> I'm not sure [UNKNOWN].

  • >> Have they, great, thank you.

  • The Twitter question I wanna ask is, you contribute a lot of your success to luck.

  • Do you have any habits or ways of increasing your chance of being lucky?

  • >> [LAUGH] Yeah I think I do and

  • my partners sometimes get upset at me.

  • I lean forward, not in writing checks but in listening.

  • So I remember being on a panel with another venture person who said,

  • I won't tell you his name, he said, well, we like our business plan to

  • come from screen sources, lawyers and so on.

  • And then, and then it was my turn to answer the question,

  • this is a little before email, I said 854-3927, meaning our phone number.

  • And so I, I the thing I like to do, I like to go look in all the nooks and

  • cranny's, where it's not hip to go look.

  • Or when I hear something something's really crappy,

  • the this is really a bad time.

  • My brain works, it's about time, terrific, I wanna go look.

  • And then just it's from my sales days.

  • I, I guess now if you're in sales they hand you leads.

  • When I was in sales, nobody ever handed me a lead.

  • It was lot of cold calling.

  • And in one company, especially the company where the lady's the president,

  • I am terrifically proud that I co-called it myself.

  • Is that luck?

  • No, I think hustle, luck, and clearly lo, look.

  • There's a lot of people as talented as I, that could be sitting right here.

  • I don't have any special talents, I wanna make that crystal clear.

  • There's a lot of people that could be sitting over here and yet

  • I'm the one sitting here so luck has something to do with it.

  • But I will tell you, hustle has a great deal to do with it as well.

  • >> I think we have a question on this side.

  • >> Hi Doug.

  • >> Thanks.

  • You, you can just talk into it.

  • It, it's turned on.

  • Yep.

  • >> Hi Doug, my name is Yeme, I'm from Qualcomm.

  • And you said you are seizing in cycles.

  • Like as you mentioned the mobile applications we're approaching.

  • And can you please share with us in your mind what's the next things.

  • The cycle is about to start or maybe next several things you can see that.

  • Thank you.

  • >> So it, look.

  • People always ask me what's hot.

  • And here's my answer.

  • If I could tell you by definition, it's not hot.

  • >> [LAUGH] >> The, the day before I came

  • across Google I would not have told you,

  • a new market entrant in search, there were 20 search company, is hot.

  • Or the day before YouTube when, when video and

  • that had failed consistently, I would have never told you.

  • That's hot.

  • We have market maps, but market maps by definition look at the status quo and

  • extend the line, and once in a while we find the company that fills the hole.

  • But the best investments we make are the things we haven't even thought of.

  • Imagine Air B and B.

  • Imagine you asking me that question the day before NBNB and

  • I'm gonna tell you" You know I'll tell you what's odd.

  • some guy is gonna (There were three guys in that case.) three guys are gonna show

  • up and they're gonna tell me that that's how it is a situation where I'm gonna rent

  • rooms in my house to strangers.

  • We're gonna create a global two sided market place in that.

  • And I want to say come on, that's nuts.

  • So, that is a question that by definition you cannot answer.

  • Now I will tell you, than in the last fund.

  • [UNKNOWN] Capital, it's a three year fund.

  • We have fewer consumer internet mobile companies than we had in the fund before.

  • I can't tell you if it's because we're missing something or

  • we're reaching a saturation point.

  • I can tell you we have more.

  • Healthcare company.

  • We have three cancer addressing company.

  • We didn't have three of those in a fund before.

  • Am I gonna tell you that cancer curing is hot?

  • No, I'm not gonna tell you that.

  • But, but, but it's the impossible question to ask.

  • And the only way to learn is to have big Dumbo ears, listen to everything and

  • don't dismiss crazy ideas.

  • Now once in a while I will admit that we make investments like air B and B.

  • And 90 days afterwards we're saying to ourselves what the heck were we thinking?

  • but, you know, it takes flexibility in the brain to say would do air B and B?

  • Now the latest thing is would you share your car?

  • Would you let somebody else drive your car.

  • From point.

  • So you can drive from point A to point B and

  • they can drive from point B to point A.

  • Or drop your car at the airport,

  • when somebody lands they can take your car and use that as a rental.

  • You know, I can tell you that the use of my car feels pretty personal to me but

  • I'm open minded because I wanna know what you do.

  • Male and female, what your point of view would be.

  • >> [LAUGH]

  • >> I have, I think we have one on this side.

  • Stand up. Yeah, there you go.

  • >> Hi, I am Javier Salerno.

  • I come from Chile.

  • And you mentioned that your early years in the US.

  • At high school with some kind of needs made you who you are.

  • And you're looking people like you.

  • And I agree with that.

  • It's kind of easy to be determined when you're needy.

  • But how do you stay hungry when you get some degree of success?

  • >> It's not something I do consciously.

  • So, back [LAUGH] this, this is kind of funny to admit, so,

  • once every ten years, that we do a Myers-Briggs at Sequoia Capital, you know,

  • we, because, things are going well, so obviously let's have a look.

  • And the last time that was negative thing I got is the fact I mentioned

  • that once a week I have a nightmare that I'm being fired by support capital and

  • people told me, boy, if you feel like that imagine how we feel.

  • Now no one's threatening me,

  • support capital is a weak place, we want people to succeed.

  • It's actually a really fun place on the inside to be.

  • But to me is just raw, raw fear.

  • I remember walking in the Stanford Mall in 1988,

  • making 67 thousand dollars and not really having enough money to buy presents.

  • I remember those days, and they didn't feel very good, so I have this.

  • I still have this fear that I'm going to be poor.

  • I still have this fear that they're going to throw me out of Sequoia capital.

  • I still have this fear that I'm gonna, really mess up a founder.

  • I, I have a great fear, you know, I've been on thirty boards and

  • I have to admit, I messed up one company really good.

  • Now, thankfully, I helped a whole bunch of others, but

  • I fear that I have a huge sense of responsiblity.

  • I think fear would be, would be my number one thing.

  • And it's not something I do, it's not a little game I play with myself,

  • I actually, it kind of really gets me going.

  • And, and, it drives me.

  • I think it's a character fault actually, but you know, that's what it is.

  • [LAUGH]

  • >> So I think I'm gonna take the last question here.

  • And you've been very personal today, and we appreciate that, but I, I still want to

  • ask you the question that all GSP students have to answer when they apply here.

  • Which is something we have to put on our application.

  • And it's what matters most your want, and

  • I want to ask you that question.>> Well I clearly got the answer wrong being that I

  • was rejected twice from Stanford Business

  • >> [LAUGH] >> So, so

  • >> seems to have worked out for

  • you>> laugh on. >> [SOUND] Let me start with that.

  • So, look, you're all young.

  • You wanna achieve.

  • And you're in that first third part.

  • You know, I describe my life in these three thirds.

  • You're in the first third part.

  • But if I would give you some advice.

  • And I'm gonna, I'm gonna take some poetic license.

  • I'm not gonna say one thing.

  • Please. >> I'll say two or three things.

  • Here's my view of things now that I'm a little older dog.

  • Number one.

  • Choose to have kids or not, but if you choose to have kids, invest in your kids.

  • That to me is the most important thing.

  • Second.

  • Go for it.

  • Have success.

  • But bring others along with you.

  • If I look at my professional success,

  • it was when I was in sales, if I shipped a computer to somebody else's territory.

  • I would send an email saying I think you should get half,

  • versus the managers having to be, be involved, I remember it, it started then.

  • If we knew something well at Sequoia, it's a we win.

  • Take as many people with you for the ride as possible.

  • If you come across a jerk, let them rot in their misery, just,

  • just get away from them.

  • And number three.

  • Bring it every day.

  • Get up, you know.

  • I'm, I'll tell you there are some days I go home and I am just beat.

  • Oh my God, how much more can I do this?

  • A good night's sleep, I get up in the morning and

  • you bring it again, fearlessly.

  • Just go, go, go.

  • Those would be not the most important but that's how I view through life.

  • And you've heard it before, think of life when you've got a half hour left to live.

  • You're not gonna think about oh boy my net worth is

  • X it really should have been 1.2 X.

  • I doubt you're gonna think that.

  • Oh boy I only became COO or VP.

  • Man I wish I became.

  • EVP, you don't need to think about that.

  • Now clearly you have to achieve success because that's why you're here,

  • because you're motivated, and I don't wanna short sell that one bit, but

  • I think in that order, take care of your kids, your family

  • bring as many people as you can on a ride with you and get away from the jerks.

  • And get up in the morning with a good night's sleep and just bring it.

  • That would be what's important.

  • >> That's great advice.

  • Please join me in thanking Doug.

  • That was great.

  • Thank you. All right.

  • >> [SOUND]

[MUSIC]

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