Sequoia Capitala storied venture capital firm, Announce today announced that it has launched a dedicated seed fund of $195 million, its fifth. The vehicle will be used to support founders across the US and Europe; The capital will also be used to invest in future groups or their combinations Arch program, which is an internal Sequoia initiative investing between $500,000 and $1 million in up-and-coming founders around the world and this is currently Acceptance of requests.
The capital comes as the pre-seed and seed world, already a growing part of the startup ecosystem, becomes more attractive to investors who want to steer clear of market turmoil at a later stage. AngelList data, released today, He tells part of the story, noting that pre-seed intermediate valuations held flat over the year-ago quarter while later-stage deals, such as Series B, are down about a third.
said Jess Lee, Sequoia Partner and Co-Founder of All Raise on Twitter that the company would look across all sectors for potential outside founders, but specifically cited artificial intelligence and consumer social networking as two areas it would invest in.
in a blog post In announcing the seed fund, other partners similarly hinted at areas of interest. Alfred Lin has pointed to augmented reality and virtual reality as making the “next consumer platform to drive innovation at scale”. Sean Maguire said that “Hardware will always be in my heart”. Roelof Botha, L.; He was recently named Global President of Sequoia CorporationHe kept it simple, writing in the post that he’s looking for founders who would benefit from a more disciplined market, the lower cost of automation, artificial intelligence, and even genetic sequencing.
In an email exchange this morning, Stephanie Zahn, partner at Sequoia, said it is “never too early to partner with Sequoia. We want to meet founders right at the beginning of their thought process” and play an active role early on: crystallizing ideas, asking questions as food for thought, offering them to potential clients, and together dreaming of their vision.”
Zahn noted that Sequoia has written seed checks for a number of pre-fledged startups that have evolved into major brands, including Airbnb (Sequoia initially invested about $600,000 in the company); Dropbox (delivered around $950,000 early) and Nubank ($1 million).
Zahn notes that Sequoia also partnered with still-private payments giant Stripe “when they didn’t have a single line of code”; He was the first investor in WhatsApp. and Palo Alto Networks and YouTube cuddled up in her offices.
Sequoia, like many companies, saw its portfolio dent during the downturn, which could affect how partners handle due diligence and sourcing in the coming year. Just last week, a company backed by Sequoia GoMechanic has cut 70% of its jobswith its founder admitting in a LinkedIn post that the outfit made “serious errors of judgment as we pursued growth at all costs.”
Other deep discount Sequoia portfolio companies include Bounce, Ola, well and FTX. In fact, Sequoia’s $200 million investment in FTX has brought fair criticism of the company’s decision-making track record.
Lin, who was interviewed by TechCrunch’s Connie Loizos last week at a StrictlyVC event, said the experience hasn’t dampened Sequoia’s interest in cryptocurrency. Although he said that only 10% of Sequoia’s crypto fund has been published one year after its launch, he added that Sequoia remains a “long-term bullish” on cryptocurrencies.
Lin also told Loizos that “the not so fun years are the best times to invest, because all the tourists are gone,” a sentiment Zhan echoed today in her exchange with TC.
Zahn writes: “The end of the foam market in recent years is positive. Limitations breed creativity and discipline. Many of today’s most transformative companies were founded during periods of uncertainty, and we believe the same is true now.”