The Sequoia of Tomorrow

Published November 4, 2026, the day after the US midterms and the same day a16z published Is Private Equity Cooked?. Read together, the two pieces were taken as dueling visions of what a venture firm should be. See Two Ways to Build a Firm for the best-known comparison.

Summary

The memo is short, structured as a list of changes with a line on what each means for founders. Its framing is that founders reinvent themselves constantly, so the firm must too: Sequoia is “no longer evolving the Sequoia of yesterday” but building a new one.

• Focus. Sequoia says it is best at high-conviction, highly selective venture investing, and that is now the focus. It has removed “much of the complexity” around the Sequoia Capital Fund, sunset its batch accelerator Arc and its Scouts program, and streamlined both its operating and investing teams. The logic: more energy behind fewer people and things means better support for each founder.
• One team. There is no more “Early & Growth.” The early-stage and growth teams are merged into a single Sequoia, so founders move from stage to stage without changing teams.
• London. The London office is closing and several people are leaving. The memo says this is not about the team’s quality; Sequoia simply sees no need for a local presence and says it can support European founders from the Bay Area.
• Partners. Sequoia describes itself as coming out of “a ~20 year expansionary phase” of multiple businesses in multiple geographies. An unintended side effect was hierarchy: running the operating side took real management, and that crept into the investing team. Internal changes now flatten the partnership, so every founder gets the whole firm regardless of who their lead partner is.
• Firepower. New partners (two “rising stars,” Liam and Sonali, and a founder-operator, Dev), returning and re-energised veterans (Carl, and “the GOAT,” Doug, i.e. Doug Leone), promoted operators, and ~$10 billion in new funds. Talent and capital, it says, are stronger than ever.
• 24/7. The Monday partner meeting cycle is gone. Founders work around the clock and should not have to fit Sequoia’s process.
• What stays the same. The mission (“help the daring build legendary companies, from idea to IPO and beyond”) and an objective function of quality rather than scale: the best returns for LPs and being the best partner to founders.

It closes by naming the bets it sees ahead, “a golden age of multiple tectonic shifts in parallel” (AI, space, biology, reindustrialization) and says the firm is “on offense.”

Notable quotes

“We are best at high-conviction, highly selective venture capital investing. This is our focus.”

“There is no more ‘Early & Growth’. There is only Sequoia.”

“Our objective function is not scale, but quality.”

“It is scary to break something that’s already working just fine, and it is painful to say goodbye to great people.”

Full text

Connections

• Is Private Equity Cooked?: a16z’s piece the same day, read as the opposite bet (breadth and asset-management scale).
• Two Ways to Build a Firm: Ishaan Prasad casts this memo as Sequoia making Goldman Sachs’s bet on selection and scarcity.
• Don’t Call It a Comeback: another firm’s post-midterm statement of strategy that same week, from Lowercarbon Capital.
• Ho Nam read the contrast as Sequoia returning to a flat, old-school partnership, and sided with simplicity.
• Mike Vernal, a former Sequoia partner, framed the merger of early and growth through Clayton Christensen’s modularity theory and Innovator’s Dilemma: re-integrate when the regime changes.
• Roelof Botha — Sequoia’s Crucible Moment (Invest Like the Best): the leadership era that preceded the transition the memo refers to.
• The Segmentation of the Venture Industry: the specialization into seed, venture and growth that this memo partly reverses.
• Stephen Covey: the “keep the main thing the main thing” line many readers reached for.
• Pat Grady · Doug Leone · Sequoia · VC Platform · Megafunds · Focus