A Leadership Shakeup at the VC Firm Sequoia Capital Is Underway

On Nov 4, 2021

The partners Roelof Botha and Neil Shen are in line to run Sequoia, sources said.
The transition will occur between 2022 and 2023, after the firm turns 50, they told Insider.
The timeline follows the Don Valentine leadership transition playbook, according to one insider.

A succession plan and generational transition is underway at one of Silicon Valley’s oldest and most respected venture-capital firms.

The Sequoia partners Roelof Botha in the US and Neil Shen in China have been identified as the next leaders of the firm, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.

The formal transition to replace longtime Sequoia chief Doug Leone will likely happen sometime between 2022 and 2023 after the firm celebrates its 50th anniversary, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private.

The details of the leadership transition aren’t finalized and could still change. “We aren’t going to comment on speculation, and no decisions have been made,” a Sequoia spokesperson said.

Neil Shen, founding and managing partner of Sequoia Capital China, attends the 6th World Internet Conference on October 20, 2019 in Wuzhen, Zhejiang Province of China. — Neil Shen, a founding and managing partner of Sequoia Capital China, attends the World Internet Conference in 2019 in Wuzhen, China.

Last week, Sequoia unveiled a dramatic restructuring of its US and European investments, combining them into a single fund. The announcement was written “By Roelof Botha for Team Sequoia.”

“The announcement was not made by Doug Leone. It was Roelof,” one of the people said. “It makes sense to announce a fund restructure ahead of a major leadership change for a firm like Sequoia.”

One of the people said the timeline follows the Don Valentine leadership transition playbook. The founder of Sequoia Capital and “grandfather of Silicon Valley,” had tapped Leone and Michael Moritz “early on,” but when Moritz stepped back from day-to-day operations in 2012, Sequoia transitioned power to Leone over many months, the person said.

“They’re looking for similar-minded people as to what Don Valentine was all about, which was decisive and transactional,” said the person, who has knowledge of Sequoia’s history in dealing with leadership changes. “They kind of leg into a leader and then make sure it works,” before making things official, the person added.

In many ways, a transfer of power has already been taking place for several years within the walls of the storied venture-capital firm, which is known for early investments in Apple, Google, Airbnb, DoorDash, and Stripe.

In 2017, the longtime partner Jim Goetz announced he was dialing back some of his management responsibilities, leaving Sequoia’s US operations in the hands of Botha, a rising star at the firm known for backing household names including Instagram, Square, and YouTube. Botha, a South Africa-born investor who was PayPal’s chief financial officer before joining Sequoia in 2003, has long been what insiders call a “Sequoia steward,” or someone who is positioned to lead the firm’s next generation.

The other Sequoia steward, Neil Shen, is the managing partner of Sequoia Capital China. Shen, who came to Sequoia in 2005 after founding the Chinese online travel company Ctrip.com, has been mostly operating his investments separately from the Silicon Valley office. His Beijing-based operation has become one of the firm’s most valuable assets, backing Chinese tech giants such as the food-delivery service Meituan Dianping, the e-commerce platform JD.com, the ride-hailing company Didi Chuxing, and ByteDance, the owner of TikTok.

Botha will oversee the Sequoia Fund, which will hold all the firm’s US and European investments, with Alfred Lin and Pat Grady, according to the Financial Times. Lin is a Sequoia partner behind some of the firm’s latest and greatest hits, including Airbnb and DoorDash. Sequoia’s early stakes in those two investments alone earned the firm more than $23 billion last year. Grady, another partner, has backed successful enterprise and cloud companies including Snowflake, Okta, and ServiceNow.

There’s also the lingering question as to how much control current leadership is willing to surrender. Valentine, who died in 2019, famously attended partner meetings for another 10 years after handing over the reins to Moritz and Leone in the mid-1990s.

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