Doug Leone
speaker
164 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard Feb 2025
Doug Leone’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsNo recordings in the last 12 months.Older appearances are listed below; set an alert to hear about the next one.
Appearances
I would say long-term thinkers with business sense. The thing we don't want to do is get a call from an LP. I hired a new analyst. Please give us all the investments you've done in odd year, every Tuesday of the month. We're not going to give you that. The other thing I tell LPs, ask the tough questions.
Because I've learned from sales, a customer who's talking, a customer who's asking a tough question is an engaged customer. Sometimes they're a little more pissed, sometimes less, but they're talking. It's a customer that doesn't talk that you have to be terrified. You don't know what they're thinking. And sometimes LPs don't talk. They're afraid of upsetting Sequoia, getting fewer allocations.
And I remind them, you are the client. So you are the important side. And we build great LP relationships where we have no turnover. We have more and more than want to come in. Unfortunately, the funds are closed now. We have most large endowments, most foundations.
And we have schools, schools that your friends, I don't know if you have kids I want to go to, that 20% of the endowment, not of the private equity side, the whole endowment is Sequoia. You want to talk about a responsibility because these people have scholarships they have to hand out, they have operating budgets and so on. So we feel that huge burden, huge.
Our culture at Sequoia is not to spit shine things. Our culture at Sequoia is to let them have the bad news. So first of all, any Sequoia pitch has returns on slide one, not slide 28 where you bury it. Slide one, welcome, here's returns. And they're net returns, not gross returns before fees. No, it's the money you get back. Slide two is probably the lowlights. Not the highlights, the lowlights.
Let me tell you everything that's screwed up. So once you have that conversation, first of all, they're blown away. The newbies are a little scared. Oh my God, I didn't know there were all these problems. But that builds trust because then they go to all the other meetings and they've sold a pile of shit. Here's our returns before marketing expenses. Like, what does that mean?
So to me, the questions are the drill down questions. Are you doing too many things? When we went into China, oh, what do you guys do in China? Of course, they made a ton of money in China. When we vertically integrated, are you doing too many things? Well, we vertically integrated, but we have very small teams. Our family office maybe has 809 investors.
A hedge fund in the US, seven or 809 investors. A venture team, about 10. So we decentralize things to empower the local people that know something. So even though it may be bigger, it's made up of very small team that are accountable to one another. At the end of the day, we will not put up with non-performance teams. We will shut down lines of businesses.
First, appreciate that we are in a latency business. If you're in a hedge fund, you mark everything mark to market at the end of the day. We're in a business where cancers can grow and you may not see them for three years. Just think about that. So how do you drill down so you don't have to wait for two, three years?
to me, is establishing very clear norms of what performance is for someone who just joins us. Performance is for someone for two or three years. Someone just joins us. They have to figure it out with the bathrooms. It's a metaphor, but you know what I mean. Two or three years, can they source anything? Can they hold a meeting?
Partner, someone a little older, are they on the right side of an argument? Do they have the courage to have an opposing point of view when six people have another point of view? You're about to be partner. Do you have a history of being right? When you're on five boards, can you point to two that we are going to generate? Knowing we all made the investments, but you were the one that pushed it.
That's how we measured it. Are you a good human being? Do you use the we pronoun a lot? Are you likable to founders? Can you win situations? Do you have the smarts to ask for help? Because we don't care if you win and ask for help. That's a win. That's an everybody win. But you know what's terrible? When you lose by yourself because you had the ego or you didn't read the tea leaves right.
Those are the things we look at.
Here's the thesis. Here's one or two reasons why one of it, and that's 17 reasons. Here's the supporting data. Here's the opposing data. An intellectual honest memo that gives you both sides, but then argues at the end that in spite of both sides, you think side A is more important for the following three reasons, and therefore we recommend that investment.
With an appendix with the reference checks that either are the full reference or a summary two lines on top, because not everybody's going to read the whole reference. And you do that in three pages, not in 32 pages, not in these investment banking, let me show you how hard I work, 35 pages that nobody reads. Nobody reads. A two to three page memo, we all read.
Frank Slootman, who's, when you net it out, the execution is 90% of the goal. Execution is strategy for breakfast. And he executed, take no prisoner. Don't give me this bologna that you need. Cappuccino on 9-15 to be productive. No crab. Everybody buys in. Go, go, go. Because if you want a great culture, nothing builds a great country like winning. And all the other things are irrelevant.
David Velez of NewBank, probably the second best CEO I've been in business with after Frank. Frank has great execution. David Velez has vision and very strong execution and the blend of the two. And then I'll probably bring Elon, if he's serious. We're not talking about should I be CEO of Twitter. Elon on point to discuss scale of ambition. Those would be my three dinner guests.
Let me give you the investment thesis on NewBank. The best investment thesis are very simple. Let me give you the new bank investment thesis in 30 seconds. The seven largest market cap company in Brazil are all banks. I went to see four banks on every corner. Let's go try to get a credit card. You wait in a line outside. You finally get let in. Six weeks.
He says, we think we can upend us with technology. So when he came to us, we only gave him one word of advice. Don't build a fintech company. Build a technology company that does fintech. We were going to beat him on fintech. That was, to me, the clarity of the opportunity. Or Drew Houston, who told us of Dropbox, who explained there were these 16 products and why they all sucked.
And let me tell you what a great product. Just total clarity. You and I would have understood it. Look, I'm assuming you're a smart guy. I'm a smart guy. Yes, I program a few languages, but you just understood it. You came out of that meeting. Of course, we're going to be investors. It's never something you scratch your head. You have to go to your AI expert and say, what does this mean?
Showing 141–160 of 164 · page 8 of 9
← Previous
Next →