David Rosenthal: belief

Transcript context

…If it’s creation time, the founders create. Now, that could be execution time where they don't execute as well in which case, you help them. The thing I tell founders, “You should do product/market fit, we can't help you there. If you get product/market fit, we can help you with everything else.” When founders are meandering their way early on and focusing on something that's going to work later on, you just let them create. They are the creators. I think this is actually a perfect transition. I want to make sure we dive deep into what you and (presumably you) and Michael created here at Sequoia in your time and stewardship here. Sequoia was, I think the phrase that Don at least used to use was “you invested in companies that were a bicycle ride away from headquarters here. ” The decision to expand, not just geographically but also product-wise in terms of investment products you offer, how did that initiative happen? The first thing, I don't like the notion of “you and Michael.” We're all standing on each other's shoulders. Michael stood on Don’s shoulders, I'm standing on Mike’s shoulders, and Jim gets a shoulder. We all have shoulders, so it is really we. It is really a we effort. The other thing, when confused, there's only one curve I look at for the decisions I have to make, it’s the exponential curve of accelerated change. It's not linear. It increases through time, which means if you believe in that, doing nothing is the worst thing you can do. It’s the riskiest thing you can do. We also know that in the early days of the curve, you over forecast because you're a linear thinker. In the later days of the curve when the curve is steep, you underforecast. I'm not that smart of a person, but I know these simple principles. Do stuff, take the shot and we'll talk more about what that means, but turn the clock back to 2003-2004, Mike and I are both immigrants, there's other immigrants here, founders we look at are immigrants, more and more founders. I started wondering, what happens if the world becomes globalized? They’re going to go home and I thought of any ace offices, with posters from Indian companies in India, and the US-India founder coming here, and we don't have those posters. I thought, “Oh my God, defense.” But defense alone should make you do things. Then you think of the world that's more globalized, the world is flat, blah, blah, blah, and I thought maybe we should go there. I learned that other firms were doing flyovers. Going there and flying, and flying, and making [...].…

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