Sequoia Capital’s top partner, Roelof Botha, is stepping aside to make room for the next leadership class to run one of Silicon Valley’s most important venture firms. Founded in 1972 by investor Don Valentine, it was the first VC to invest in tech titans like Apple, Google, Yahoo, Nvidia, and many others.
Sequoia has had its share of turmoil in recent years, as it grappled with geopolitics, as well as domestic and internal politics. In that context, if Sequoia were any other venture firm, Botha’s departure could be read as a bad sign. But Sequoia is an outlier, growing through four previous leadership changes. It has continuity in its DNA.
What has changed is the entire venture industry. Massive fund sizes have forced VCs to take bigger swings at more established companies. Writing a check to a couple of kids inventing in a garage and watching their startup become Apple or Google is the kind of thing the best Silicon Valley investors are passionate about.
Sequoia has tried to resist, retaining its early-stage investment vehicles and managing more than $56 billion in assets, but it also has a $20 billion evergreen fund that holds public market assets.
The question isn’t so much who leads Sequoia, but what the firm represents in a VC landscape that is so fundamentally different from the one when Valentine founded half a century ago.