Sequoia helps daring founders build legendary companies from idea to IPO and beyond. We aim to be the first true believers in tomorrow’s most consequential companies. We partner with a few outliers each year and go all-in, providing them with the hands-on help required at every stage of the company building journey. Our expertise comes from nearly 50 years of working with legendary founders like Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Larry Page, Jan Koum, Brian Chesky, Tony Xu, Lin Qiao, Eric Yuan, Christina Cacioppo, and Patrick Collison. In aggregate, Sequoia-backed companies account for more than 30% of NASDAQ's total value. The vast majority of the money we invest has been on behalf of nonprofits and schools like the Ford Foundation, Mayo Clinic and MIT, which means most of the returns we generate benefit these great causes.
Robotics is entering its "endgame" by adopting the scaling strategies that propelled large language models to success. This "Great Parallel" shifts the focus from language-heavy models to World Action Models (WAMs), which prioritize physics and motor actions as first-class citizens. By moving away from labor-intensive ...
AI development has entered a "Software 3.0" era, where neural networks function as programmable computers and prompting replaces traditional coding. This shift moves beyond mere speed improvements, enabling the creation of entirely new information-processing tasks. While current models exhibit "jagged intelligence"—pea...
Demis Hassabis, founder of DeepMind, traces his career from chess prodigy and game developer to pioneer in artificial intelligence, emphasizing a lifelong mission to build AGI. By integrating reinforcement learning with deep learning, DeepMind successfully transitioned from gaming benchmarks to solving grand scientific...
Marketing has entered an era of agent-led growth where AI models, rather than human consumers, increasingly serve as the primary interface for information discovery. This shift from traditional blue-link search to probabilistic AI responses necessitates a fundamental change in how brands approach visibility. Because ag...
Traditional corporate hierarchies are increasingly obsolete, necessitating a shift toward organizations structured as intelligent systems. By leveraging AI to process internal artifacts—such as code, documents, and communication—companies can create a "world model" that facilitates faster, context-rich decision-making....
Scaling a company through the "messy middle"—the phase between 200 and 2,000 employees—requires maintaining a non-hierarchical culture while resisting the encroachment of bureaucracy. Tom Hale, CEO of Oura, emphasizes that leaders must remain visible and accessible to staff at all levels to preserve mission-driven pass...
Hardware development is undergoing a rapid reindustrialization, shifting from fragmented, manual testing to software-defined, data-driven workflows. Nominal founders Cameron McCord and Jason argue that the industry lacks a centralized system of record, forcing engineers to rely on siloed, local data management that hin...
Founder-CEOs must embrace "constructive confrontation" to maintain high performance and ensure that critical information flows rapidly through an organization. Avoiding conflict to preserve feelings creates dangerous decision debt, paralyzing growth and fostering toxic political environments. While "founder mode" encou...
Pace, an agentic process outsourcer for the insurance industry, replaces traditional Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) with AI agents to automate complex, high-volume back-office operations. By leveraging AI to handle end-to-end workflows—such as submission intake, claims processing, and policy administration—the comp...
Vlad Tenev, CEO of Robinhood, discusses strategies for leading a company through crises, emphasizing the importance of remaining calm and decisive. He recounts navigating challenges like the GameStop trading frenzy and the 2022 market crash, highlighting the need to communicate clearly with the public and adapt to chan...
The discussion centers on the evolution and future of long-horizon agents, particularly the shift from simple scaffolding to more sophisticated agent harnesses. It highlights the importance of context engineering, compaction strategies, and the use of file systems in enhancing agent performance. Coding is identified as...
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