Roelof Botha resigns leadership of storied VC firm Sequoia after ructions

Key topics:Sequoia’s Roelof Botha steps back; Alfred Lin and Pat Grady take leadBotha oversaw major transitions, $50bn returns, and global firm splitsFirm faces controversies including FTX loss and internal public disputes.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..By Kate Clark.Sequoia Capital managing partner Roelof Botha said he’s stepping back from his leadership role, and has named partners Alfred Lin and Pat Grady as the new stewards of one of Silicon Valley’s top venture capital firms.Lin and Grady “are the right pair to entrust with the stewardship of Sequoia,” Botha wrote in a letter to limited partners Tuesday, which the firm shared on the social platform X. “They have a fearlessness and resilience that is necessary to win in this business.” During his tenure, Botha steered the firm through a series of major transitions. Those included a global reorganization, multiple controversies such as a messy bet on crypto firm FTX, the coronavirus pandemic, and the rise of generative artificial intelligence. Sequoia, which has long been one of the most prestigious VC firms, also saw major windfalls in recent years, and distributed more than $50 billion to its investors during Botha’s time at the helm, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified discussing private information..Read more:.Westbrooke and RMB close new UK hybrid capital fund with £155 million available for investment.Going forward, Botha will continue to play an active role at the firm. “I will transition into a new role advising the partnership while continuing to represent Sequoia on boards,” he wrote.Lin, who leads Sequoia’s early-stage practice alongside Luciana Lixandru, joined the firm in 2010 and has invested in Airbnb Inc., Instacart, Uber Technologies Inc. and DoorDash Inc. Grady, who heads the growth-stage business alongside Andrew Reed, joined in 2007 and has backed Snowflake Inc., Zoom Communications Inc., Qualtrics International Inc. and Okta Inc. Both men are prominent VCs and were “obvious choices” to take on the leadership roles, the person familiar with the matter said.Since its founding in 1972, Sequoia has gone through only a handful of leadership changes. Initially, Don Valentine handed the reins to Doug Leone and Michael Moritz. When Moritz stepped back for health reasons, Jim Goetz took the helm alongside Leone. Botha became steward in 2017 and senior steward in 2022. Sequoia jas stood out in the VC world for its smooth transition planning, said Raffi Amit, a management professor at the Wharton School of business. “There isn’t a single more important thing for the leadership of a VC firm than grooming a successor,” Amit said. “If there isn’t a succession plan, all hell will break loose.”Recent years have marked major shifts not just at Sequoia, but also in the venture capital landscape writ large. More established, larger firms have recently found it easier to fundraise from cash-conscious limited partners, while smaller firms have struggled. And Sequoia, like many other firms, has transitioned away from a purely venture capital-focused model, embracing a wider array of investing strategies. Botha pioneered Sequoia’s early-stage Scouts program and launched the Sequoia Capital Fund in 2021, an evergreen vehicle designed to hold public and private investments indefinitely. Since its inception, that fund has generated nearly $7 billion in liquid portfolio gains, both realized and unrealized, said the person familiar with the matter.Among Botha’s most monumental changes was the firm’s breakup with its China and India arms in 2023. The China investing division, led by Neil Shen, was renamed HongShan, while the Indian arm became Peak XV Partners. The move coincided with rising geopolitical tensions between the US and China, and growing wariness of US investors backing Chinese artificial intelligence startups. “It has become increasingly complex to run a decentralized global investment business,” regional heads Botha, Shen and Shailendra Singh said in a statement at the time of the split. “This has made using centralised back-office functions more of a hindrance than an advantage.”Recently, the firm has encountered unusual public blowback centered around public statements by partner Shaun Maguire. Chief Operating Officer Sumaiya Balbale, a practicing Muslim, stepped down over comments by Maguire that she considered Islamophobic, the Financial Times reported last month, citing people familiar with the matter. Earlier in the year, several hundred startup founders circulated a letter urging Sequoia to take action against Maguire over a social media post that referred to New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani as an “Islamist.” At the same time, Maguire has built an avid fan-base of free speech enthusiasts drawn to his willingness to espouse controversial opinions. Maguire also has close ties to Musk, and has spearheaded successful investments in his private firms, including SpaceX. On stage at a recent conference, Botha said of Maguire, “Internally, we celebrate diversity of opinions, and we need ‘spiky’ people inside Sequoia.”.Read more:.Peregrine Capital delivers strong fund performance in 2023 amidst local and global challenges.The firm has also contended with scandal over its major investment in the cryptocurrency company FTX, the implosion of which helped fuel a post-pandemic startup slump. Lin had championed Sequoia’s $214 million failed investment in FTX, and personally apologized to Sequoia’s investors over the blowup, along with Botha and Maguire, when the startup proved insolvent and filed for bankruptcy in 2022.In a rare public dustup last year, Moritz and a Sequoia partner found themselves at odds during a dispute between founders at the Swedish fintech Klarna Bank AB. Still, when Klarna went public in the fall, Sequoia reaped a $2.7 billion windfall on its original investment, representing six-fold gains..© 2025 Bloomberg L.P.

Roelof Botha resigns leadership of storied VC firm Sequoia after ructions

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