What Sequoia Partners Remind Themselves Every Day

23 Sept 2026 · 1 min

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1:04

In this monologue, a Sequoia partner draws a parallel between the high extinction rate of species and the turnover of companies in the S&P 500, arguing that firms must actively combat obsolescence to survive. The speaker attributes survival to the culture a firm cultivates, the people it recruits, and daily behaviors. As a concrete illustration, the office’s kitchen wall is covered with each team member’s handwritten phrase, “we’re only as good as our next investment,” serving as a constant reminder of the need for continual performance and winning. The speaker challenges listeners to decide whether they want to belong to such a demanding, victory‑focused culture.

Chapters

99% of all species that have ever lived are now extinct. If you look at the S&P 500 from 50 years ago, most of those companies are no longer in the S&P 500. And so you have to actively fight it if you want to survive. And so that comes down to the culture you maintain, the sort of people you recruit, and just how you behave on a day-to-day basis. So just give you one manifestation of that. If you come to our office upstairs where the investors sit, In our kitchen area, the entire wall has something written across it in the hand individual handwriting of every person on the team. And what is written is we're only as good as our next investment. And so when you you go for a cup of coffee or a little snack, you walk up to this wall and you see your own handwriting, and you wrote this. And so it's an escalation of commitment process where you're reminding yourself every single day we're only as good as our next investment. And then you just have to decide if that's the kind of culture you want to belong to. Um, I don't think our culture is the easiest. Um, I think winning is fun.