20VC: Sequoia's Roelof Botha on His Biggest Lessons Working Alongside Don Valentine, Mike Moritz and Doug Leone, Leading Sequoia's US Business and What Sequoia Do To Retain Their Edge at the Top & The Crucible Moments That Define Startup Success

**Harry Stebbings** (0:00)
This is The Twenty Minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and my word, what a show we have in store for you, Stave. For many years growing up in the industry, I've hugely respected and admired this incredible guest, and so it's a huge honor to welcome Roleof Botha, partner at Sequoia Capital, one of the world's leading venture firms with a portfolio including the likes of Airbnb, Instacart, Stripe, UiPath, Zoom. The list really does go on. As for Roleof, at Sequoia, he's led rounds in the likes of YouTube, Instagram, Eventbrite, Square, MongoDB, 23andMe, Unity Technologies, just to name a few again. And before joining the world of venture, Roleof was the CFO at PayPal, playing a key role in their hypergrowth from 2000 to 2003 I'd also want to say a huge thank you to Pat Grady, Ravi Gupta and Colleen at Pendulum, as well as Julia and Kevin Hartz at Eventbrite. Some amazing question suggestions today. I really did so appreciate that. But before we move into the show today, I'm sure you've heard about it, but my word, I love a product called Carta. Carta simplifies how startups and investors manage equity, track cap tables and get valuations, go to carta.com forward slash 20VC to get 10% off. More than 800,000 employees and shareholders use Carta to manage hundreds of billions of dollars in equity. And Carta now offers fund administration. So you can see real time data in the Carta platform and work with Carta's team of experienced fund accountants. Go to carta.com forward slash 20VC to get 10% off. And if you've been listening to our show, you've probably heard of Brex, the first corporate card for startups with no personal guarantee or credit check, up to 20 times higher credit limits than traditional cards, plus rewards like 3x on eligible Apple products and 7x points on tools like Zoom and Slack. Brex has helped thousands of companies scale faster to reach their potential. This month, they are extending their special offer to our listeners. Apply for the Brex card by November the 30th with the code 20VC, all spelled out, to receive a $500 credit after spending $1,000. Even better, you can also apply for Brex cash, a bank account alternative with unlimited free wire and ACH transfers with no minimum balance required to create an account. You can apply for an account today at brex.com. And last but by no means least, if Carter and Brex really change the game in terms of fund admin and finance, Amplitude is that for product. Amplitude helps the top product and growth teams at companies like PayPal, Instacart, Peloton, my favorite, and Atlassian build product experiences that convert and retain customers. With their product intelligence platform, you and your team will really be able to better understand user behavior, ship great experiences faster, and retain more customers. They've become the gold standard in analytics for teams asking what is happening in their digital products, why users converting, and what do we build next. See for yourself how companies like Twitter, DoorDash, and Cisco build for growth using Amplitude. And visit amplitude.com forward slash 20VC. Discounted scholarship plans are available for qualifying startups. You have to check them out. But that's quite enough from me. So now I'm very, very excited to hand over to Roelof Botha, partner at Sequoia Capital.
You have now arrived at your destination.
Roleof, this is such a joy to do. I've wanted to do it for a very long time now. So thank you so much for joining me today.

**Roelof Botha** (3:08)
Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to speak with you.

**Harry Stebbings** (3:10)
Well, that is very kind of you, but I'm going to pretend to be blissfully ignorant and pretend that I haven't read and listened to everything you've done before. But in that vein, how did you make your way into the world of venture and come to be a partner at Sequoia today? Luck.

**Roelof Botha** (3:21)
I came to the US in 1998 to go to Stanford Business School, and candidly, I'd never heard of Venture Capital until I got here. Obviously, got exposure to tech in Silicon Valley, being at Stanford in the maelstrom of the dot-com bubble, and ended up learning about Venture Capital. Joined PayPal straight out of school, and we can talk about that a little bit later. But the path to Venture Capital was quite accidental. At the time, PayPal got acquired by eBay in 2002 I wasn't quite sure what I would do next. Meg Whitman gave me an offer to remain a CFO of the company, and Mike Moritz gave me a call and asked whether I'd interview at Sequoia, which is kind of strange because they were looking for a computer science major who'd done product management at an enterprise software company, and I was an actuary running finance at a financial services company. And I left every interview thinking it was my last, but eventually they made me an offer to my surprise, and I guess they still haven't figured out that I'm not a good match.