Sequoia Capital (Part 1)
Acquired
Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal
4.8 • 2.9K Ratings
🗓️ 26 September 2019
⏱️ 111 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Acquired dives into the history behind storied venture firm Sequoia Capital and its legendary founder, Don Valentine. Part 1 tells Don’s story, starting from humble beginnings born to uneducated parents in Yonkers, NY, through shaping the fabric of Silicon Valley first as head of Sales & Marketing at both Fairchild and National Semiconductor, and then for generations to come via his pioneering concept of “company building” at Sequoia Capital. No matter where you sit in the ecosystem today, Don and the companies he helped build laid the foundation for nearly everything technology has become over the past 60 years.
Sponsors:
Vanta: https://bit.ly/acquiredvanta
Statsig: bit.ly/statsigacquired
Modern Treasury: https://bit.ly/acquiredmoderntreasury
Links:
- Silicon Valley’s “Traitorous Eight”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traitorous_eight
- Don Valentine’s lecture at Stanford GSB: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKN-abRJMEw&t=2555s
- Berkeley’s oral history with Don: http://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/roho/ucb/text/valentine_donald.pdf
Carve Outs:
- Ben: The Business Roundtable on The Daily: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/21/podcasts/the-daily/business-roundtable-corporate-responsibility.html
- David: Amazon Music on 25 years of “Ready to Die”: https://youtu.be/Dsna1nIZzB4
Sources:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traitorous_eight
- https://www.sfgate.com/technology/article/Silicon-Valley-Shockley-racist-semiconductor-lab-13164228.php
- https://signallake.com/innovation/Valentine101409.pdf
- http://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/roho/ucb/text/valentine_donald.pdf
- https://www.amazon.com/dp/0875849385/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_ZB8IDb7NNAFAH
- https://www.amazon.com/Troublemakers-Silicon-Valleys-Coming-Age-ebook/dp/B06ZZ1YDTX/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
- https://www.scaruffi.com/svhistory/arun3.html
- http://www.ianhathaway.org/blog/2019/7/31/vc-an-american-history
- https://www.axios.com/sequoia-capital-shakes-up-leadership-1513300220-7d255e34-f4bf-4178-af62-ec68023726e3.html
- https://www.slideshare.net/lebret/a-history-of-venture-capital-lebret-vers-11
- https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=47240
- https://www.inc.com/magazine/19850501/7289_pagen_5.html
- https://www.amazon.com/VC-American-History-Tom-Nicholas-ebook/dp/B07QV2YM3X/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKN-abRJMEw&t=2555s
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | I'd been intending to upgrade and then when I was in New York, I'm going to go to the flagship Nike store |
| 0:06.1 | and get the latest, latest model. They don't make them anymore. |
| 0:09.3 | They don't make the fly nets anymore? |
| 0:11.3 | Well, they make fly nets, but they don't make the free fly nets. |
| 0:15.0 | Oh, crap. |
| 0:16.0 | So I think this might be the last model. |
| 0:18.0 | Well, well... |
| 0:19.0 | Well... |
| 0:20.0 | Yeah, I know what I'm doing this weekend. Welcome to Season 5, Episode 4 of Acquired, the podcast about great technology companies and the stories behind them. |
| 0:39.0 | I'm Ben Gilbert and I'm the co-founder of Pioneer Square Labs, a startup studio and early stage venture fund in Seattle. |
| 0:46.0 | And I'm David Rosenthal and I am a general partner at Wave Capital, an early stage venture fund focused on marketplaces based in San Francisco. |
| 0:54.0 | And we, as you know, are your hosts. |
| 0:56.9 | Today we are talking about the absolutely legendary Sequoia capital, and because it would be inappropriate to try to cover |
| 1:04.3 | Sequoia's immaculate history in just one episode, this is only part one. |
| 1:08.5 | And typically I try and throw out some stats in this section about why the company that we're covering on this episode is important. |
| 1:16.4 | Well today I'm only going to throw out one. |
| 1:19.1 | Since its founding in 1972 the firm has helped to catalyze companies that now represent 3.3 trillion |
| 1:26.8 | of public market value and for context the entire NASDAQ is 1010 trillion. It is frankly absolutely unbelievable that a |
| 1:36.3 | single firm can be responsible for helping to create so much of our modern |
| 1:40.5 | economy. David this is bananas. Yeah for comparison sake what did we say next |
| 1:46.7 | which is one of our a-pluses we said generated a trillion dollars in market cap value the next acquisition. So here we are talking |
| 1:56.0 | about 3.3 trillion dollars. Now obviously it's a venture firm, not a company, but this is one of the reasons I've been so excited to dive into this new |
... |
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