Roelof Botha, Sequoia’s new global leader, said, “I really care today about turning my attention to helping this partnership be positioned for the future.”
Sequoia
Sequoia Capital has a new global leader with veteran investor and PayPal alum Roelof Botha.
The heavyweight venture capital firm hired Botha to serve as Senior Steward of its global brand and operations, replacing Doug Leone. The move is effective July 5, with Leone continuing as a general partner in Sequoia’s current funds.
In an interview, Botha and Leone said the move was the result of a two-year transition process pegged to 65 Leone.ika birthday on July 4, and included hiring a global CFO, head of compliance and CIO. For Botha, the move represents a gradual journey from investor to advisor to leader, he says, all with the same goal: “leave the partnership in a better place than we have seen.”
“There’s a phrase Doug has, that the Ford Foundation has been a Sequoia client for longer than my life, and they’ll be a client after I disappear,” Botha said. “We are guardians, we are here to serve.”
Botha, 48, made a name for himself with PayPal, the online payments pioneer he joined in 2000, and where he served as chief financial officer. The grandson of South African politician Pik Botha, he joined Sequoia the year after PayPal’s IPO in 2003. A thirteen -time member of the Midas List, Botha is ranked No. 9 in 2021. He has invested in companies including Instagram, MongoDB, Square, YouTube and 23andme; recently, he supported the startup of video meetings Mmhmm. When the former Midas List No. 1 that Jim Goetz resigned from the company in 2017, Botha became the sole head of Sequoia’s operations in the U.S., and now the U.S. and Europe, which he continues to lead.
What exactly power Botha will use is not very clear. As Senior Steward, Botha’s mandate is to “set the overall tone” and oversee global compliance, finance and culture, the company said.
But Sequoia’s operation is different from some venture capital firms that centralize their global investments into one group of funds. U.S. and European funds work with Sequoia China, India and Southeast Asia funds, Sequoia Heritage (a wealth manager) and Sequoia Capital Global Equities (a crossover fund with public company positions); each led by its own management partner who is responsible for raising funds from a unique group of limited partners. Sequoia’s own partners invest in each other’s funds. Sequoia China founder Neil Shen, another former Midas List No. 1, the only Steward of companies under Botha.
The U.S. business, which will expand to Europe in 2020, works differently right within Sequoia: in October, the company announced a single fund, the Sequoia Fund, that doesn’t work under the traditional decade which are fund cycles, and instead operates a large, outdated fund that allocates money to individual funds. In February, the company announced a such fund dedicated to crypto.
Doug Leone has both led or led Sequoia since the late 1990s, but is now returning to work on his game of golf and being a grandparent.
Molly DeCoudreaux 2016
Leone’s retreat came after decades of running over Sequoia’s global operations. Leone and fellow billionaire Michael Moritz took the reins from firm founder Don Valentine in 1997; Moritz stepped down from his administrative leadership roles after a medical diagnosis in 2012. An immigrant originally from Genoa, Italy, Leone brought a nonsensical, plain speaking approach to the salesman arguably Silicon Valley’s most storied venture capital firm, as detailed in a 2014 Forbes cover story. Leone has also set a culture of results in Sequoia – which Botha incorporates, he says, but applies to Leone itself, as the investor has led investments in Medallia, RingCentral, ServiceNow and Nubank for Sequoia in recent years.
Leone’s biggest challenge in running Sequoia, he says today, is “how to make acquaintances first cousins,” referring to Sequoia partners in different geographies. That means working closely with Shen to build Sequoia’s training in China and tie it back to the U.S., import lessons from its fund in India, and other largely globalization efforts. Recently, Leone had to guide those efforts through a presidency that was unfriendly to such trends (Leone supported, then turned his back on President Trump), and more recently, the effects of a global pandemic. Leone left the top role as an optimist about building the global company, he said.
“Yes, the world is changing, but I think it will still benefit from more globalization,” Botha added. “It may vary by country.” Leone added: “There’s always a forecast that global trade will slow – I haven’t seen it yet.”
Botha’s succession has been clear within the company over the past five years, Leone said. “It’s clear to everyone that this is the way to go. It’s very painless,” he added. Sequoia’s operations under Botha, meanwhile, shouldn’t look strange, he says. “There should be little visible change in the partnership,” he said. “But our culture is a living and breathing thing, as it deserves to thrive.”
Under Botha, Sequoia will look to continue to expand and evolve its offerings, all without forgetting what has been successful with the company to date. It’s a line to carefully walk that Botha and Leone said their partnership is obsessed with meetings and conversations about what could take them out of the business, including “pre-mortem training. ”thinking of a future in 2030 where Sequoia failed. “I made slides that showed me that God knows how many times better to be a pirate than to join the navy,” Leone said. “I’m not ashamed of re-flashing those slides and re-releasing them.”
How long has Botha been signed up to lead Sequoia? There is no set time, he insisted. About how Botha will make his mark – the investor grinned, but said nothing, when asked about the company’s next major changes.
For Leone, the investor said he will remain on the boards of directors for Sequoia and join the board of a department at Stanford University in the coming months. He also got into golf during the Covid-19 pandemic and has 10 guitar, piano and drum sets to fill any time not spent traveling or with his seven grandchildren, all near the Bay Area.
“I think that’s a lot,” Leone said. “And it would be a happy day when Roelof called and said,‘ can you help anything? ’” He added. “I am sure I will receive those calls. But if they go often, I’ll say, ‘Roelof, I have seven grandchildren,’ and I’ll give him the whole story.
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