Roelof Botha, the new global head of Sequoia, says, “I’m really passionate now about turning my attention to helping this partnership position itself for the future.”
Redwoodtree
Sequoia Capital has a new global leader in veteran investor and PayPal graduate Roelof Botha.
The heavyweight venture capital firm has recruited Botha as senior steward for its global brand and operations, replacing Doug Leone. The move is effective July 5, with Leone continuing to serve as a general partner in Sequoia’s existing funds.
In an interview, Botha and Leone said the move was the result of a two-year transition process coupled with Leone’s 65th birthday on July 4, which included hiring a global CFO, head of compliance and CIO. For Botha, the move represents a step-by-step journey from investor to mentor to executive, he says, all with the same goal: “Leaving the partnership in a better place than we found it.”
“There’s a line from Doug that the Ford Foundation has been a customer of Sequoia longer than I’ve been alive and will be a customer long after I’m gone,” says Botha. “We are caretakers, we are here to serve.”
Botha, 48, made his name at PayPal, the online payments pioneer, which he joined in 2000 and served as chief financial officer. The grandson of South African politician Pik Botha, he joined Sequoia a year after PayPal went public in 2003. A thirteen-time member of the Midas list, Botha ranked #9 in 2021. He has invested in companies such as Instagram, MongoDB, Square, YouTube, and 23andme; More recently, he supported video conferencing startup Mmhmm. When former Midas No. 1 Jim Goetz resigned from the company in 2017, Botha became sole head of Sequoia’s US and now US and Europe businesses, which he will continue to lead.
Exactly what power Botha will exercise is not so clear. As senior steward, Botha has a mandate to “set the overall tone” and oversee global compliance, finance and culture, according to the company.
But Sequoia works differently than some venture capital firms, which centralize their global investments with a group of funds. The US and Europe funds will operate alongside Sequoia China, India and Southeast Asia funds, Sequoia Heritage (an asset manager) and Sequoia Capital Global Equities (a crossover fund with positions in public companies); each is headed by a dedicated managing partner who is responsible for raising funds from a designated group of limited partners. Sequoia’s own partners invest in each other’s funds. Sequoia China founder Neil Shen, another former No. 1 on the Midas list, is now the company’s sole administrator under Botha.
The US business, which expanded into Europe in 2020, also works differently within Sequoia itself: In October, the company announced a single fund, the Sequoia Fund, which does not operate under the traditional decade-long fund cycles, but rather a large, untimed fund allocates money to each fund. In February, the company unveiled one such fund focused on crypto.
Doug Leone has been a co-leader or leader of Sequoia since the late 1990s, but is now stepping down to work on his golf game and be a grandparent.
Molly DeCoudreaux 2016
Leone’s retirement comes after a decade-long run at the forefront of Sequoia’s global operations. Leone and fellow billionaire Michael Moritz took over the reins from company founder Don Valentine in 1997; Moritz resigned from his administrative management responsibilities after a medical diagnosis in 2012. Leone, an immigrant originally from Genoa, Italy, brought a no-nonsense, no-nonsense sales approach to what is arguably Silicon Valley’s most famous venture capital firm, as detailed in a 2014 Forbes cover story. Leone also created a results culture at Sequoia — embodied by Botha, he says, but applicable to Leone himself, as the investor has led investments in Medallia, RingCentral, ServiceNow, and Nubank for Sequoia over the years.
Leone’s biggest challenge in running Sequoia, he now says, was “how to turn acquaintances into first cousins,” referring to Sequoia’s partners in different regions. That meant working closely with Shen to expand Sequoia’s China practice and tie it back to the US, importing lessons from his India fund, and other broadly globalizing efforts. More recently, Leone has had to guide those efforts through a presidency unfriendly to such trends (Leone supported President Trump, later resigned) and, more recently, the impact of a global pandemic. Leone is stepping out of the top spot as an optimist about global business creation, he says.
“Yes, the world is changing, but I think it will still benefit from greater globalization,” adds Botha. “It can vary by country.” Leone adds, “There’s always a forecast that world trade is going to slow down — I haven’t seen it yet.”
Botha’s status as heir apparent has been clear within the firm for the past five years, Leone says. “Everyone knew that this was the right path. It was extremely painless,” he adds. Sequoia’s operations under Botha, meanwhile, shouldn’t look that different, he says. “There should be hardly any visible changes in the partnership,” he says. “But our culture is a living and breathing thing, as it should be in order to keep evolving.”
Under Botha, Sequoia will seek to continue to expand and develop its offering without losing sight of what has made the company successful to date. Botha and Leone say their partnership is obsessed in meetings and conversations about what could put them out of business, including “pre-mortem” exercises imagining a future in 2030 where Sequoia failed. “I made slides showing God knows how many times that it’s better to be a pirate than join the Navy,” says Leone. “I’m shameless when I reflash these slides and bring them back up.”
How long has Botha been under contract to lead Sequoia? There is no fixed time limit, he emphasizes. How Botha wants to distinguish itself – the investor smiles, but doesn’t reveal anything when asked about the next big changes in the company.
As for Leone, the investor says he will remain on the board of Sequoia and will join the board of a department at Stanford University in the coming months. He’s also played golf during the Covid-19 pandemic and has 10 guitars, a piano and a drum kit to fill the time he’s not spending traveling or with his seven grandchildren, all near the Bay Area.
“I think that’s a lot,” says Leone. “And it’s going to be a happy day when Roelof calls and says, ‘Can you help?'” he adds. “I’m sure I get those calls. But if they come too often, I’ll say, ‘Roelof, I have seven grandchildren,’ and I’ll tell him the whole story again.”