Calling its leader a "Steward" reveals Sequoia's evolution. The role is less about disruptive deal-making and more about managing a massive financial institution, akin to an endowment. This reframes a leader's short tenure not as a failure, but as a potentially undesirable management job for a classic VC.
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Top board member Alfred Lin provides counter-cyclical mentorship. He champions the company during tough times to boost morale and plays devil's advocate during success to prevent complacency. This keeps founders grounded and forces nuanced thinking about trade-offs.
Effective leadership transitions must be planned years in advance. The successor should gradually assume managerial duties, making the final handover a natural, expected event for employees and LPs. Rushed plans fail, especially if the departing leader isn't truly ready to retire.
The leadership change at Sequoia, arguably the world's top venture firm, is a strong indicator of the intense pressure the entire VC industry faces. It reflects a fear of falling behind in the AI race and the brutal reality that even the best are struggling to adapt to the new competitive landscape.
VCs at the highest level don't just write checks; they fundamentally reset a founder's aspirations. By placing a startup in the lineage of giants like Google and Oracle, they shift the goal from building a big business to creating a generational company.
Venture capital returns materialize over a decade, making short-term outputs like markups unreliable 'mirages.' Sequoia instead measures partners on tangible inputs. They are reviewed semi-annually on the quality of their decision-making process (e.g., investment memos) and their adherence to core team values, not on premature financial metrics.
When a private equity firm sells a passive stake of itself (the GP) to a large investor, it's often a negative signal. This ownership change frequently triggers a shift towards asset gathering and strategy proliferation, diluting the focus that generated the initial "great funds."
Unlike startups, institutions like CPPIB that must endure for 75+ years need to be the "exact opposite of a founder culture." The focus is on institutionalizing processes so the organization operates independently of any single individual, ensuring stability and succession over many generations of leadership.
Unlike operating companies that seek consistency, VC firms hunt for outliers. This requires a 'stewardship' model that empowers outlier talent with autonomy. A traditional, top-down CEO model that enforces uniformity would stifle the very contrarian thinking necessary for venture success. The job is to enable, not manage.
The transition from a C-suite operator managing thousands to an investor is jarring. New VCs must adapt from leading large teams to being individual contributors who write their own memos and do their own sourcing. This "scaling down" ability, not just prior success, predicts their success as an investor.
The institutionalization of venture capital as a career path changes investor incentives. At large funds, individuals may be motivated to join hyped deals with well-known founders to advance their careers, rather than taking on the personal risk of backing a contrarian idea with higher return potential.
