Sequoia's Roelof Botha: Why Venture Capital is Broken & How Great Companies Are Built
episodePreviously titled “Sequoia’s Roelof Botha: Why Venture Capital is Broken & How Great Companies Are Built” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 6, 2026
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Sequoia is the most sought-after name in the venture capital business.
The firm has made over a thousand investments, now worth in the trillions in public market value.
There's a list of five VCs who I think can really transform a company, and you're one of those five.
When I joined Sequoia, it was clear that if I wanted to make it as a partner, you needed to produce meaningful gains.
YouTube, Instagram, Square, this is a list of amazing, amazing startups.
Our ambition is to build a partnership that endures, and that means we need to leave it in a better place than we found it.
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Sequoia Capital's Rolof Botha.
Welcome. Rolof, there's a question. Where did Sax go? He had to pee-pee. He had to make a wee-wee.
Come on. Yeah, exactly. You guys did work together.
For 25 years ago. And he just abandons us right now. He's had enough of you. Everybody wants to know, who's your favorite Sequoia scout of all time? Let's go through it.
Jason Calacanis.
It is hilarious when you think about it. You came to me, gosh, 15 years ago and you said, I have an idea for a program. It's called Sequoia Scouts. We'd like to have you go around and invest in some companies. And... No good deed shall go unpunished. Absolutely. Created a monster.
But that program... Sorry, before you ask your question, how far are you going to insert your head up Roloff's ass?
We sat him that far away for a reason. I mean, sorry, bro. Jesus Christ. Go on with your question. That's... Let me land the question. What's your question?
That program had some, that first cohort of individuals wound up being a pretty interesting group of folks. Maybe you could tell everybody just a little bit about that program you conceived of. And then who were some of the first folks in it and the first investments?
We conceived of this program, as you mentioned, in 2010 when we launched it. And the idea was that there were a bunch of contemporary founders who had very interesting access to up-and-coming founders who were turning to them for advice. But these founders didn't yet have money. At the point that you became a scout, you didn't have the net worth you have now where you could write a check on your own. And so we thought it would be a great program for us to provide the capital for founders like yourself to be able to invest in those companies. And hopefully we would get an introduction to those companies for us to be able to make an investment too. So you were in that program. You helped us with the investment in Uber.
Sam Altman was in that group as well. He helped with an investment in a little company called Stripe.
They did okay.
So at this point, that fund is a 26x fund at this point.
Wow, that's up there in the... It's pretty good. What's the best fund in the history of Sequoia? Was it the Google fund, the WhatsApp fund? Which one has the highest multiple in history?
The highest multiple in history is... I think Venture 12, which has Airbnb, Dropbox, Natera, AdMob, and a couple of other companies. And then Venture 13, which is the fund right after that, has Stripe and Square, now called Block, MongoDB, and a bunch of other companies. So those were both north of 20X funds.
Tell us about the venture industry, actually. So we're at a point in the cycle where there's been a lot of specialization, both maybe at the stage level, at the sector level. There's been all kinds of experimentation and approaches and strategy. Can you just level set on what you've learned and what the industry has learned and where we are?
I'm glad you called it an industry, not an asset class. I listened to one of the shows you guys had recently, and I think there's a huge problem with the venture industry that there's too much money. You guys have talked about this before. Venture industry as a whole invests right now between $150 to $200 billion a year. It was the last number as I saw. If you think about reasonable assumptions for returns, let's just say 12% per annum net, which isn't great. Might as well invest in an index fund.
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