The European Start-Up Community: Luciana Lixandru, Sequoia Capital

Luciana Lixandru (0:04)

The thing that gets us excited every day is the light of our founders and building a founder community where they can thrive and where they can learn from each other.

Brent Hoberman (0:14)

Hello, and welcome to Now, Then, Ten with me, Brent Hoberman.

Nicola Mendelsohn (0:17)

And me, Nicola Mendelsohn.

Brent Hoberman (0:18)

In this series, we'll welcome luminaries responsible for creating and nurturing communities across the world of business, technology, culture and more. We'll explore the now, how change makers are building some of the most influential communities in the world.

Nicola Mendelsohn (0:33)

The then, how our guest leaders have been inspired by past movements and people from history in building their communities.

Brent Hoberman (0:40)

And finally, the ten, fast forwarding to ten years from now, what do we want our future communities to look like and how can we spearhead them? Welcome to Now, Then, Ten.

Venture capital is a topic that's come up frequently in our conversations with leaders on the show, whether it's Maria Raga raising 100 million dollars for Depop or hearing from the hugely successful Syria entrepreneur Marcia Kilgore on her decision to seek venture investment for the very first time last year. That's why we've decided to take an in-depth look at the venture capital community for this week's episode of Now, Then, Ten. And I was absolutely delighted when Luciana Lixandru, European partner at Sequoia Capital, agreed to be our guest for the episode. Sequoia Capital, as most of you will know, is a world class venture capital firm that's backed some of the top community driven companies globally, including, of course, Airbnb, Uber, YouTube, Reddit and Instagram. The firm was born in Silicon Valley and put down roots here in Europe in 2020 with Luciana at the helm as its first European partner.

Luciana has over a decade's worth of experience as an investor and was described by the firm as one of the brightest stars in the European VC ecosystem. She famously led the Series A investment in Romanian robotic startup UiPath and was previously a partner at Excel, where she was known for early investment in food delivery startup Deliveroo and virtual events platform Hopin, which have quickly become household names. So welcome, Luciana. Thank you for joining us. It's great to have you on the show. I know you're going to have a lot of top advice for founders, so let's dive right in.

We like to start each episode with a quick fire round. Are you ready, Luciana?

Luciana Lixandru (2:25)

I'm ready.

Brent Hoberman (2:27)

What's the best advice you've ever received?

Luciana Lixandru (2:29)

Oh, smell the roses. Let yourself smell the roses along the way. These journeys in venture are so long. You have to smell the roses.

Brent Hoberman (2:37)

Great. What does success look like to you?

Luciana Lixandru (2:39)

That's another hard question. Happiness?

Brent Hoberman (2:42)

If you weren't doing this job, what would you be doing?

Luciana Lixandru (2:45)

I'd be a high school math teacher.

Brent Hoberman (2:47)

What makes you feel like you belong?

Luciana Lixandru (2:49)

Being part of a community, having each other's back in a community. That's the best feeling of belonging.

Brent Hoberman (2:54)

Name three things that make you happy.

Luciana Lixandru (2:57)

Well, I have to mention my husband, of course.

Travel, family, the usual. We're all simple at heart.

Brent Hoberman (3:07)

And helping amazing entrepreneurs, I guess.

So to kick things off, you know the tech ecosystem superbly. Tell us about what this move means for Sequoia. What most people don't seem to realize or talk about is that Sequoia has in fact been investing in Europe for quite some time.

Luciana Lixandru (3:26)

Brent, thank you so much for inviting me and thank you so much for the kind words. I'm thrilled to be here.

As you rightly say, we have been investing in Europe for over a decade. Now, we've been long term investors in companies like Klarna out of Sweden and UiPath, which is how I got to know Sequoia and companies like Unity out of Denmark. So we have a long history of finding like minded entrepreneurs in Europe who want to build global businesses and partnering with them.

I think it was a natural move for Sequoia because we were getting pulled more and more into spending time here. And there is just so much interesting stuff happening. Great entrepreneurs. Really interesting ideas and founders who want to start in Europe but build local winners. And those are the type of companies we want to partner with.

Brent Hoberman (4:13)

I'm curious to know why you've chosen London as your European home base.

Luciana Lixandru (4:17)

Well, because we're early stage investors at heart and we want to partner with these founders early. That's when we think we can add most value. We can roll up our sleeves. We think of ourselves as company builders, not investors. So we want to find these founders at sea that's their day and then work with them for a really long time.