Be incredibly, ruthlessly selfish with your equity.
From Douglas Leone
We want people who come from humble backgrounds and have a need to win.
The venture industry is both quite vibrant and quite competitive.
You meet with a CEO or founder. You talk about sales, engineering, product management and give some ideas or suggestions. And the founder quickly understands that you really can help them both operationally and from a strategic standpoint.
We've tried to build Sequoia Capital with an eye for the long term that we really look for in the companies we like to partner with.
Our business is all about helping someone - a founder, a CEO - building a great business. It's not about seeing our names in the press.
There's a number of companies clearly that we wish we had invested in either at the early or at the moderate stage.
A tremendous chief executive in a small market will never be great. All great companies start with great markets.
The trick is, a market has to be nonexistent when you start. If the market is large early on, you will have too many competitors. You have to make it large.
If you choose a market that already exists, say, networking equipment, you have to compete with an established company like Cisco. Even if your product is marginally better, Cisco can fudge it and outsell you.
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