David Rosenthal: belief

Transcript context

…Very different, yes, but equal partnership. There's a great interview with Andy Rachleff and Patrick O'Shaughnessy on them, Invest Like the Best, where Andy talks about how. at the peak of their power, the original partners handed us the keys. I think it's well done very differently. There are definitely common elements between both of these great firms. Yeah, and if you look at the firms that have managed to survive generation after generation, wave after wave of the technology industry and venture capital evolution inside it, it’s the firms that do this well. The firms that don’t, don’t make the transition and Don has a great quote about this. When Sequoia was started, the positioning to LPs was, “We’re going to deliver vastly superior returns to anything else you can get out there.” Well, we’ll about it in greeting, but I think that proved, too. The positioning of Sequoia is now two things. He says, “It's the stability that comes with generational transfer. The stability is part of why we've had the same limited partners for almost 40 years.” When Don was saying this, now almost 50 years. “Stability and returns is how Sequoia is positioned.” For the type of LPs that they're trying to attract which are patient, very, very long-term capital, you actually need both of these things. Returns isn’t enough. You need the stability that accompanies those returns so that people will have confidence that you can get great returns but if the firm blows up, then you’re useless to me. Do you want to go to what would have happened otherwise?…

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