After almost a decade on the helm of Sequoia Capital, Roelof Botha will step apart as “steward” of the legendary Silicon Valley VC agency.
Botha—PayPal’s defining early CFO, who’s now identified for backing firms like YouTube, Instagram, and Block—mentioned Tuesday that he’ll move the baton to Pat Grady and Alfred Lin.
“They have a fearlessness and resilience that’s necessary to win in this business,” Botha wrote in a letter that the agency put up on X. “They do not shy away from difficult conversations, and they roll up their sleeves to company-build—both with founders and within Sequoia.”
Botha, who Fortune profiled final yr, has presided over a tumultuous interval within the historical past of Sequoia, which burst into the general public most not too long ago when the Monetary Occasions reported that Sequoia COO Sumaiya Balbale resigned as a consequence of posts by Sequoia associate Shaun Maguire that she thought of Islamophobic.
The agency—began in 1972 by Don Valentine, and a backer within the early days of firms like Atari and Apple—has skilled quite a lot of massive adjustments over latest years: In 2021, Sequoia restructured its United States and European funds into one evergreen fund, and two years later cut up off its China operations.
Botha, who was named Sequoia’s steward in 2017, mentioned he’ll transition into a brand new function advising the partnership, whereas persevering with to assist Sequoia on the boards of startup firms he’s invested in. In making Lin and Grady co-stewards, Sequoia is returning to the profitable components final employed when companions Michael Moritz and Doug Leone served as co-stewards.
Lin—whose early profession at Zappos and mathematical inclinations molded him into an early backer of firms like Airbnb and DoorDash—has been at Sequoia since 2010. In the meantime, Grady’s been at Sequoia since 2007 and made his title as a key investor in firms like Snowflake, Zoom, and Okta.
The pair will face the rapid problem of addressing the controversy over politics that has roiled the agency, at a time when many Silicon Valley enterprise corporations have gotten more and more outspoken on hot-button political and culture-war points.
Sequoia has a longtime coverage of “institutional neutrality,” whereas permitting companions the liberty to precise their views individually. However that coverage has been examined by Maguire’s feedback, reportedly resulting in discord inside the agency.
At TechCrunch Disrupt final week, Botha declined to remark extensively on the controversy, however mentioned of Maguire: “I think he has made it clear what he stands for, and there’s a particular set of founders for whom it is very appealing that he’s been as firm in his opinion. Does it come with tradeoffs? Yes it does.”
Sequoia is without doubt one of the strongest enterprise corporations in Silicon Valley, with $56 billion in belongings underneath administration and investments in startups together with OpenAI, SpaceX, Stripe, Ramp, and Chainguard. Final week, the agency unveiled two new funds, a $200 million seed fund and a $750 million enterprise fund.
When reached for remark Sequoia directed Fortune to its LP letter, and Grady and Lin’s feedback on X.
