Sequoia’s Roelof Botha on “Crucible Moments” and the state of VC | E1804
This Week in Startups
Jason Calacanis
4.2 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 7 September 2023
⏱️ 85 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This Week in Startups is brought to you by…
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Today’s show: Roelof Botha joins Jason to discuss the state of VC (3:35), Sequoia’s new series “Crucible Moments” (9:31), and much more!
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Time stamps:
(0:00) Sequoia Capital’s Roelof Botha joins Jason
(3:35) The state of the Silicon Valley ecosystem
(8:00) Supergut - Get 30% off with code TWIST at https://supergut.com
(9:31) “Crucible Moments” and their significance
(14:31) Pre-IPO vs. Post-IPO market values
(18:10) Founder ambition and mistakes made during “Crucible Moments”
(22:25) The importance of founders starting narrow and what makes a great VC in tech
(27:20) Coda - Get a $1,000 startup credit at https://coda.io/twist
(28:49) Commonalities between the AI boom and the crypto boom
(33:31) U.S. frameworks regarding crypto
(37:10) Mercury - Join 100K+ startups banking with Mercury at http://mercury.com
(38:23) The milestone-based reward system in venture capital
(43:24) Taking over as head steward at Sequoia Capital
(56:02) “Crucible Moments” at Sequoia
(1:05:57) Maintaining consistency in life and venture
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | When the idea for Yelp was just literator formation stage, Yelp was thinking by just doing |
| 0:06.5 | email back and forth. The website hadn't launched. Again, smartphones didn't exist. |
| 0:11.9 | And Michael said, I imagine in yours to come, there'll be a Yelp sticker in a restaurant window |
| 0:17.2 | right next to the Zagat sticker. He had that vision at the point that the company was being |
| 0:25.5 | and Zagat's gone. Yeah. Is that guy that's gone, but you do see Yelp stickers in the restaurant? |
| 0:30.4 | Everywhere, I mean, it's in one time. I mean, he saw the future before of this that this weekend |
| 0:35.2 | startups is brought to you by super gut is the only nutrition brand clinically proven to improve |
| 0:41.9 | digestion, balance, blood sugar, sustain, energy, and manage weight. Save 25% on their delicious |
| 0:50.8 | shakes, bars, and prebiotic mix at super gut.com with code twist. Coda is the all-in-one dock for |
| 0:59.5 | teams and they introduced an AI powered assistant to take the busy out of the work. |
| 1:06.1 | Sign up to use Coda AI today at coda.io slash twist and mercury. 90% of startups fail. |
| 1:16.8 | Just 10 out of every 100 make it. Mercury exists to close that gap. |
| 1:23.3 | Helping companies succeed with banking and credit cards engineered for the startup journey. |
| 1:28.7 | Join over 100,000 companies banking with mercury at mercury.com. |
| 1:35.4 | All right, our next guest today on this weekend startups is one of the greatest modern VCs. |
| 1:40.8 | It was last on the show in 2015, but it was also been on the show in 2010. We get |
| 1:45.8 | him every five years, apparently. Man, if you look at the company, he's invested in YouTube, |
| 1:51.2 | Instagram, Square, Unity, MongoDB, Tumblr, 23 of me, countless others. In fact, he trained me |
| 1:58.4 | on how to write deal memos. If you don't know how to write a deal memo, go search for the YouTube |
| 2:02.4 | deal memo written by Ruloth. That was back in 2005. He created the Squarespaceout program. |
| 2:09.5 | That was the first one, at least that's what I'm told. He created the Sequoia Fund, |
| 2:16.4 | which we'll talk about. Last year, he took over Sequoia Capital as the senior steward. |
... |
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