Adapting Episode 2: Sequoia’s Black Swan Memo (with Roelof Botha)

**David Rosenthal** (0:00)
It was pretty good.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:01)
It was... Yes, it was pretty good. Don't doubt your vibe.

**David Rosenthal** (0:06)
For not being his full-time gig, it was pretty good.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:09)
Emoji records. Welcome to Episode 2 of Adapting by acquired.

**David Rosenthal** (0:27)
Hey, now you got it.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:29)
Yeah, well, I rehearsed. Or for those keeping track at home, Season 6, Episode 5 We are continuing our series to bring you the stories of great companies and great leaders who are adapting to a world that's changing in real time. Today, we are covering the story behind the Memo Read Around the World, Sequoia Capital's Black Swan Memo, amazingly published only 20 days ago as we record this.

**David Rosenthal** (0:56)
Man, it feels like 20 lifetimes ago.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:58)
I know. I know. Well, we are joined by the best person in the world to tell us about it, long-time Sequoia partner, Roelof Botha. Today's episode is different than last week's episode with Canlis. We are going much closer to acquired's bread and butter of technology and venture capital. This conversation is particularly interesting not just to hear the story behind the Black Swan Memo but also to get a real-time look at how Sequoia themselves are thinking about adapting during this time along with their portfolio companies.

**David Rosenthal** (1:28)
Before we jump in, if you haven't already, we want to strongly encourage you to join the acquired Slack community. I honestly think at this point it's probably the best community on the internet for people focused on building and investing in great companies. We really mean that and that's a testament to you all and the quality of people that listen to this show. It's been pretty awesome, especially over the last week or so, just seeing how we're all supporting each other in there and helping everybody get through this time. So you can find a link on our website to get an invite. You should definitely sign up. The other thing we want to tell you about is, as we announced on the last episode, we're adding something big to the Limited Partner Program that we're really excited about. We're going to be hosting monthly calls on Zoom for all LPs, which we're calling, appropriately enough, LP calls.

**Ben Gilbert** (2:19)
Very original, David.

**David Rosenthal** (2:21)
Yes, super original. We're big into branding here at acquired. So when you sign up for the Limited Partner Program, you get both all our LP episodes, which go deeper on nitty gritty company building topics, and access to the monthly LP calls with both of us. You can sign up by clicking the link in the show notes or going to glow.fm slash acquired.

**Ben Gilbert** (2:43)
This is a great time to tell you about one of our very favorite companies, Crusoe.

**David Rosenthal** (2:48)
So Crusoe, as listeners know by now, is a clean compute cloud provider specifically built for AI workloads. NVIDIA is one of their major partners, and literally Crusoe's data centers are nothing but racks and racks of A100s and H100s. Because Crusoe's cloud is purpose built for AI and run on wasted, stranded, or clean energy, they can provide significantly better performance per dollar than traditional cloud providers.

**Ben Gilbert** (3:14)
Yes, we talked about that on our ACQ2 episode with Crusoe's CEO, Chase Lockmiller.

**David Rosenthal** (3:19)
The other element that makes Crusoe special is the environmental angle. Crusoe, of course, locates their data centers at stranded energy sites. So think oil flares, wind farms that can't use all the energy they generate, etc. And uses that power that would otherwise be wasted to run your AI workloads instead.

**Ben Gilbert** (3:38)
Obviously, it's a huge benefit for the environment and for customers on costs, since Crusoe doesn't rely on the energy grid. Energy is the second largest cost of running AI after, of course, the price you pay NVIDIA for the chips. And these lower energy costs get passed on to customers.

**David Rosenthal** (3:54)
It's super cool that they can put their data centers out there in these remote locations where quote unquote energy happens, as opposed to the other hyperscalers such as AWS and Google and Azure, who need to build their data centers close to major traffic hubs where the Internet happens because they are doing everything in their clouds.

**Ben Gilbert** (4:10)
Yep. If you, your company, or your portfolio companies would like to use the lower cost and more performant infrastructure for your AI workloads, go to crusocloud.com/acquired. That's C-R-U-S-O-E cloud.com/acquired, or click the link in the show notes. And with that, David, we will dive in to our interview with Roelof.

**David Rosenthal** (4:32)