David Rosenthal: commitment

Transcript context

…Absolutely. While I tell clients those times won't be chapter one in the sequoia book, they'll be a chapter. There should be a big chapter. It is maybe our proudest moment at Sequoia Capital. We've had funds close to 20X. It is not those 20X funds. The most proud time is when we decide it no one 's going to lose money at Sequoia Capital and we're going to go to work. We went to work for 10 years to make sure those funds [...]. Because the other aspects, unless listeners think this is just about reallocating fees or whatnot, it’s that you do you have a lot of work to do with those companies. Because you still have those investments, it would have been easy to say, “Yeah, these are zeroes, we're just going to do whatever,” but you roll up your sleeves and say, “No we're going to turn these into returning capital at a minimum. ” Mike Moritz is a Brit, strategic, man of few words, thinks 14 steps ahead, I'm a gregarious Italian and I'll tell you it hasn't always been easy. Mike would say the same thing. We made it work for 20 years, and I'll tell you during those times, we thought exactly alike. You can burn a cigarette in our arm and we are not going to flinch. We're going to bring these funds home. It was amazing how two different cats, with two different backgrounds, with two different styles who get along a lot, and really argue some as you would imagine, which is terrific, because that means we pour two different views on issues. That is a strength. During those times, there was no question what we're going to do. I don't think we have to have the conversation. I don't think we even said, “Should we do this?” I just think we had to.…

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