Focus

What I try to look for, and I'll tell you how I look for these things, but I try to look for companies that are early and inevitable. This is the combination of words that I think about. Stripe did an amazing job of this.Their mission is to increase the GDP of the Internet. Cool. Most people probably believe it's inevitable, that the GDP of the Int... See more

Adam Grant actually said this one time, which is most ... He was talking about parenting. He said, "Most people think of parents as you're either ... It's a spectrum between being highly demanding and being highly supportive of your kids. Pick where you are in the spectrum." He was like, "That's all wrong. The best parents are both." Huge unlock fo... See more

And then the soft things that I look for, I like this metric, I try to figure out, how will I feel if this person called me at 10:30 at night? I like really try to think about the way it will feel. The phone rings, it's this founder. Am I excited to talk to them?

I think that the aspiration for Sequoia is not to be like a golf team. Everyone hit their ball, add up their scores, see what we get. It's the aspirations to be a basketball team. Either we win or we lose as a team. I think that the manifestation though, demanding and supportive, it's oftentimes on one side of the spectrum or the other. I don't thi... See more