20VC Exclusive: Sequoia's Luciana Lixandru Unveils Sequoia's New 8 Week Accelerator, Arc | Biggest Takeaways from Working with Doug Leone and Roelof Botha | The Journey From a Small Town In Romania to Partner @ Sequoia

Welcome back to 20VC with me, Harry Stebbings. And I'm so, so excited for the episode today as we have some special news from our guest which is incredibly exciting, but I'm not going to spoil it and so I'm going to leave it to them. But I'm thrilled to welcome one of the greatest investors of the last decade, Miro Hoppin Uipath Deliveroo, to name a few. An unparalleled track record and one of the most authentic and wonderful people as well. And so with that, I'm thrilled to welcome Lucian Alexandru, partner at Sequoia, one of the world's most renowned and successful venture firms with check this out. Sequoia backed companies accounting for more than 20 of NASDAQ's total value. Incredible stat there. As for Luciana at Sequoria, she's led investments in the likes of Penny Lane, Central, VEED and Legi, to name a few.

And prior to Joining Sekora in 2020.

Luciano was a partner at Excel in London. Also, I have to say Luciano's is one of the most inspiring and wonderful stories. I was so pleased to really dive into it today and I also cannot thank Doug Leone, George Robson, Pat Grady, Ravi Gupta, Sean Maguire and Robert Visionaries enough. Such immense help with the questions and I really do so appreciate that.

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That is quite enough from me. So now I'm very, very excited to hand over to the one and only Luciana, partner at Sequoia.

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You have now arrived at your destination.

Luciana, I'm so excited to do this. I can't believe it's taken me so long and you so long for this to happen, but I'm so excited. So thank you so much for joining me today.

I am delighted to be here and I am thrilled it's finally happening. Thank you for inviting me.

Not at all. I mean to be fair, this was such a team effort. On the schedule. I got calls from D, I got calls from Pad, I got calls from Ravi. It was fantastic. I almost had to do no work before this one. But I want to start with the intro and it was from Mr. Grady who said you've started small town in Romania and now you're a partner co leading Sequoia's early stage and leading Europe. How did you make the transition into venture and how did you come to Sequoia?

That's a long story and I will try to keep it relatively short. I was born and raised in a small town in Romania. 100,000 people. I joke. I think it's the 18th largest city in Romania. And when I was 16 I had this idea which at the time seemed crazy and the idea was that I wanted to go to the US and it seemed crazy because this was 20 years ago in Romania. People did not study abroad very often and I just went for it. And I got very fortunate. I applied to a few universities.

Can I be so rude and ask, why did you want to go to the US where did you get the idea? Where did that inspiration come from?

I wish I had a really good story, Harry. I think it was my way of being rebellious as a teenager. My information on the US was based on tv. Everything I saw on TV told me this was a land full of opportunity and if you worked really hard, good stuff will happen. And to be candid, at that point in time, at least, I did not feel that I had those opportunities in Romania. So I wish I had a better answer. I had never been to the US before. I had not traveled much. I had not been on a plane by that point in my life. So crazy idea. Let's call it crazy idea and luck. Because I needed a scholarship and I applied to a few universities and Georgetown changed my life forever. They gave me a full scholarship and my family supported me. And I went and I joke that it was the best four years of my life.

Can I dive in again? I'm sorry. I'm so rude. I'm just too interested. Was that tough? Like, I would be so nervous moving halfway around the world on my own, having never traveled. I mean, I barely go to East London. Lucy, was that nerve wracking? And how did you manage as a very young person, finding your way?

It was terrifying. I still remember when I boarded that flight in Bucharest with two suitcases and my entire life in two suitcases by myself, with a connection through Amsterdam. And I Remember landing in D.C. i get there and there were all these signs saying welcome home. And, you know, everyone seemed to be waiting for some passenger on the plane, and there was no one waiting for me. And I asked myself, now what? How do I even get to Georgetown? What do I do from here? It was terrifying, and it was definitely a culture shock. At the beginning, my English was okay, but not perfect. I had to take the SATs. I could read and write, but I wasn't as fluent in speaking. But then it quickly became so much fun. You know, at Sequoia, we talk often about crucible moments, these decisions in a company's life or in a person's life that really change the future. And for me, this was the one decision that changed the course of my life. For the better, I think. I'm pretty sure for the better. And that was great. I was there for four years and I was not one of these people who knew what they wanted to do. I didn't think I was going to be a lawyer or a doctor. I liked numbers. I that so I went into investment banking like a lot of people did back in 2007, and I would say the rest is history. And that's how I got into technology. Serendipity, the bank I was with, Morgan Stanley, moved me to London. This was back in 2008, and I was in their technology team and I moved into investing quite early on. And then I've been in ventures since the end of 2011. So over a decade. I joined Excel end of 2011. I was there for, for over eight years. I was very fortunate to work with some incredible founders who really shaped the venture industry in Europe. And then I got to know Sequoia. I got to know Sequoia through a couple of boards. I got to know Matt Miller through the board of Tessian and Carl Eschenbach through the board of UiPath. And then I got to know Doug and the rest of the team. And you know, Sequoia is so thoughtful. When they enter a new geography, that combined with the fact that I thought it was really a once in a lifetime opportunity to help them enter this new geography was pretty cool, convincing proposition. So here we are. I started a year and a half ago.

Now, one thing before we dive into the actual show and investing, and it's that you mentioned the crucible moment of going to the U.S. and studying in the U.S. are there any other crucible moments in your journey today which really stand out as inflection points for you personally?

Definitely. Joining venture. People ask me all the time if I would do something else, if I would start a company. And I just feel very fortunate because I really feel that I found my calling really early on. I really can't imagine doing something else. You know, you were saying before how much you love doing your show and how much you love investing as well. I feel the same way about working with founders. So that was definitely another crucible moment. And joining Sequoia, of course, joining Sequoia a year and a half ago and partnering with some of the people that in my opinion really shaped venture capital and thinking through Europe and how we partner between the US and Europe and European founders and the strategy here, that was also a crucible moment.

I always think I'm so lucky because everyone wonders what they want to do. And I've known since I was like 13 that there's only one thing that I can do. I think I'm also totally unemployable, which is another matter. I mean, it really is. I mean, I did try gainful employment and it didn't last very long, but I do want to start with reinvesting as we said, you know, you started at Summit. It's been incredible over a decade now since then and we change a lot as investors over time. I just want to start with actually in reflective mode. How's your investing style changed over the years and are there specific companies or moments which maybe have catalyzed those, those changes?

Yeah, I think we all evolve and mature. Looking back, I definitely think that I was more of a business model and market investor. I mentioned I like numbers, so I really was attracted to companies that already had a product, maybe even some go to market in place already. And I would say over time I reached the same conclusion that many people in venture do, that it is really all about a founder and the right founder will find the right, right market and the right business model. So I started by being attracted by companies slightly later stage and I went earlier and earlier over time. Today I get so excited when I meet a founder at idea stage and brainstorm with a founder about what this might become. The second part to your question, what changed this? I think personal experiences shape us so much. Right at the end of 2019 when I met Johnny from Hopin, it was a two people company at the time and it was such an authentic founding story because he had an autoimmune disease and he didn't leave his home for a while. That's how he started the company. And then just the ambition and the boldness. He was sitting across the table from me and he looked at me and he said, luciana, next year Hopin is going to be the fastest growing company in the world. And I just love that level of ambition. And this was pre Covid and I believe Hopin was probably the fastest growing company that year. So I definitely think it's personal experiences that shape us.

Do you think the early success that you've had over the first decade of your career has allowed you the confidence to trust your own convictions?

Absolutely, we trust our instinct more and more. The more we see, the more wonderful stories, wonderful founders, wonderful startups that we see. The more we trust our instincts, the more we understand the spaces that we like, the products that we like and that allows us to go earlier and earlier stage. So yes, absolutely, you said about the.

Spaces you like there and I'm sorry if you're being slightly off schedule. One thing I'm again terrible and I'd love your advice is like if I don't do well in a space, say healthcare, I automatically have a disregard for it for future investments and my Question to you is how do you retain mental plasticity with every opportunity and not let your mind be tarnished by past experiences and how that impacts your future decision making?

I think that's such a great question. Intellectual humility is really important in this business and it's not only about spaces, it's even about businesses. Sometimes we see a business and we just don't get the right answer the first time around and we have to be intellectually humble in order to fix our mistake the next time around if we have an opportunity. And by the way, I have a long list of examples when it comes to that. One that comes to mind honestly is Deliveroo. I remember many years ago I got a call from a friend and he said, hey, my friend Will is moving back to London for from business school and he wants to start a company in food delivery. And he explained the model and I thought to myself, oh, they're going to be like three people in South Kensington, they're going to pay the two pound delivery fee and that are going to pay for a specific restaurant. And I mean, I was so wrong. It's such a mass market proposition. I was fortunate enough to be able to revisit that decision. But I think that, yes, being intellectually humble is really, really important.

You saw delivery when many. Again, I'm so bad at sticking to schedule. You saw delivery where many, many others didn't. And actually the business model at the time, given how early it was, it was not proven. You had to have a lot of mental plasticity to see into the future and see how it would look at scale. What was it that gave you the confidence and excitement in the business when few others did?

To be 100% honest, the early traction once Deliveroo launched was really impressive. I have rarely seen the such growth, such retention and so much virality in a product. And this was pretty much no marketing, all word of mouth. And you could really tell they had hit the nail on the head in terms of customer demand. And then the question was still market size. Was this going to be a London proposition and a Paris proposition, or was this going to be a global proposition that applies to every small city out there? And that was the thesis at the time and the bat at the time. But yeah, there was one learning around, hey, you really have to dream about what the market might become.

I do want to also we mentioned delivery, we've mentioned Hoppin, there's UiPath, there's Miro. I mean, the list goes on. But Douglioni had three of his first checks be IPOs. Doug told me that you and him think exactly the same in investment decisions. When you think back to the early successes that you've had, like Doug's, how did those early successes impact your investment decision making?

Firstly, I take it as a huge compliment that Doug would say that we think the same way. So thank you to Doug for saying that. And thank you. The first part of the question. You know, I mentioned when I started Inventure in 2011, there were not as many successful companies coming out of Europe. So I think that getting to see some of these founders in the early days in Europe, they were really building something special and that were building the winners in their category worries globally. But starting in Europe, I just think it opened my mind to what impact and what scale these companies could achieve. And I'm not sure I would have been able to dream it up myself if I hadn't seen it quite early on. So I really think this opened my mind a lot. And the second part of your question was around confidence. I actually find this job to be really humbling because if you look at every great investor, the best investors in history and venture, they will also have many companies that did not work out as well as they would have hoped. That is the reality of our job. So actually I find this job incredibly humbling on a daily basis.

I've had times before where companies haven't worked out and it's actually really not my confidence. Been then in a bit of a trough, I think Doug calls it actually the investor trough, where suddenly you question everything overly. What advice would you give to younger investors maybe who are in a trough and had some. Something that hasn't gone to plan like it does in this business, but in that trough, what advice would you give? Maybe it was a young person on your team, what would you sit them down and tell them?

I think this is a real issue in venture because of what I just said, because some stuff, you know, even the most successful companies, by the way, have ups and downs. I bet you with every success there was some moment when, you know, the founder and people might not have been sure this was going to be the success that it eventually became. I just think you need resilience. Unfortunately. I wish I had a secret answer or a secret formula. I just think you need to pick yourself up and keep on going. And if anything, I see this in founders all the time. They just go through walls and they don't find the door, they find some crack in the wall and go through that. And I think that you need to have that just pick yourself up and try again and do your homework and stick to the basics. What really matters is to find great companies, do your homework, work with a founder, don't focus on the hype when things are going too well and don't be too negative on yourself when things are not going well because these journeys are so long and feedback loops are.

So long as she spoke to Brandon, also at UiPath and they both said that the relationships that you're able to build with the founders, it sounds classic VC marketing, but really is second to none and coming from, you know, another VC and Rob, you know, that means a lot. I do want to ask, when you reflect on like you, your own, especially at the board, when your own board style, how would you describe your own style of board membership there you said kind of about not getting too high or too low, how would you describe it?

I like to think of myself as someone who had when things are going well and keeps on pushing when things are going well and is really supportive when things might not go so well. And that's a bit counterintuitive. And it's easy to surround yourself by cheerleaders when things are going well, but what's really important is to surround yourself by people who still push you when everything is up and to the right and who are really supportive and helpful when things are not up and to the right because there will be those moments. And by the way, this is something that I learned myself. I'm Eastern European, so I'm very direct and I had to learn how to be direct and do it with empathy because people are giving it their own all blood, sweat and tears, trying to build what they're building. So asking the tough questions, but doing it with empathy I think is really key. And by the way, I'm sure I also get it wrong at some point. I'm sure there's some founder out there listening to this who will say, well, Luciana was too tough on that particular occasion or not enough empathy. But I think trying to strike the right balance is really important.

It's interesting because Doug actually said, he used the words user interface. He said, you have an incredibly big, polished and brilliant user interface with founders and you do exactly that, which is ask tough questions with empathy. I want to know, how do you do that, Luciano, what's been your learnings around how to do that the right way and constructively?

Again, something I learned over the years is to focus on the questions that really matter and really focus on first order principles. If you look at any company There are a thousand questions you can ask that might have a negative answer and there are, there are a thousand different ways for any company to not be successful. But there are only a few questions that really matter. So I would say focus on those.

I wanted to ask you, speaking of kind of being direct but with empathy, I'm doing something now and it's about price and talk about pricing in particular. How do you reflect on your own price sensitivity? And I guess have there been any big learnings for you over the last decade which have really shaped your thinking around price?

I would say a lot of learnings actually and, and I would decouple the answer for early stage investing and for growth stage investing. We thought about this a lot as a team when we have discussions on early stage opportunities. So seed and series A, we leave price dynamics aside. We focus on the company, we focus on the founder and we really think that at this stage selecting the right opportunity and selecting the right company trumps the pricing dynamics because long term there's is still so much upside potential. I should not say this by the way, I'm ruining my negotiation stance in early stage investments going forward. But it's the truth.

You're going to get a lot of founders say to you, luciano, can you pay 30 now? You just told us on 20 VC 15 doesn't matter.

That is right. So I'm just being transparent with growth. I do think it's different with growth. I really think you need to stay sober by definition, given that our upside in venture versus growth, I think you have less room to play with pricing. On the growth side, would you say.

The same on early stage and not lack of discipline but you know, being a little bit more flexible on price if you didn't also have larger funds that you could double down on A, B and C. So if you're a seed specific firm, would you have a different answer to that question?

I would not have a different answer. I would have exactly the same answer. I think selecting the right company in the early stages is all that matters. I mean I remember with hopping at the seat, I think it was one of the most quote unquote expensive seeds in Europe at the time. I think in the early stages you just have to focus on team, founder, be able to dream with a founder. I think that matters a lot more.

You know, my biggest mistakes have been on reinvestment, decision making and the price kind of aligned to that where I'm already in the company and it's doing very well. But the price to me is just EGREGIOUSLY high and I don't double down and concentrate capital. And that's almost the biggest misses that I have actually. How do you think about that decision making on price when it comes to reinvestments?

I have had many of those misses as well. You are not alone, Harry. I think, you know, it's human psychology. You're already part of the journey. You're just so thrilled to be part of the journey and you think to yourself, well, the next next one just feels too expensive. Again, I honestly think it's learning through experience and seeing some of these journeys of companies where I wish we had invested more in full on rounds. And I will say that now I think that my mindset has changed. I mean a good example is recently we led two rounds in a French company called Penny Lane. We just announced a growth round and we had led the previous round nine months before. We're thrilled about the company. They're building a financial operating system for SMEs which are so underserved in Europe. So I'm hoping that I learning from these mistakes and earlier in my career. But Harry, we're all with you. We all have our own portfolio as anti portfolio.

I'm thrilled that I'm not alone. One that's kind of so often cited and you know, I think very few people actually answer it well, which is signaling there. When you have the ability to double down as you have done with Penny Lane and as Sekora have done with many other incredible companies. How do you think about the explanations, Andy? The explanation to market when you can double down and sometimes you won't and don't.

The honest answer is that a lot of our companies get preempted. It's completely up to the founder then to decide if they want more people and more firms around the table. But again, I say this. I just joined Sequoia. It's such a wonderful brand and a wonderful platform and I'm so lucky to work on it. But you know, I was not part of it until recently. So I hope I can say this without sounding arrogant, but I think already Sequoia investing early on is a positive signal oftentimes. So a lot of our companies get preempted actually.

Is that a challenge because people will just throw money at your companies?

It is a challenge and then again it's up to the founder and what the founder thinks makes sense. Some founders just want to stay heads down and continue working on the business and not focus on raising money until they feel that they need to raise money. Again, other founders see it as an opportunity to put more dollars on the balance sheet in case things change. And I think it's really up to them, but absolutely, we're seeing a lot of this happen.

I do want to move into Sekoro's firm and as a team, I loved it. I'm sure you saw Pat's videos the other day where he did the lessons from different people. I thought that was fantastic. I thought it'd slightly kind of borrow from that ideal, which was you look at, say, Doug, Alfred Roloff and Pat, I would love to just unpack, having worked with them. Now for the time that you have, what's one significant learning that stuck with you from each of them that you really think has kind of impacted your mindset?

With Doug, I have to say two things because it's always two things that come to mind when I think about him, and one is actually what I was talking about before, focusing on first order issues and focusing on the few questions, questions that really matter. I think he's so good at that. And the other one, I have never met someone with his level of. I don't know what the right word is. Empathy, maybe just understanding what makes people tick. You know him well. I don't know if you've noticed him, but he has a real ability of understanding the other person's psyche very, very well. I definitely would say with Doug, those are two things that come to mind.

Why do you think that is? I think with Doug, that is the way he digs into your sibling relationships very specifically. I'm sure you had this in your like with when you got to know him, but he spent like tons of time on my relationship with my brother and my mother's ms, and that very quickly gave him an understanding of my psyche. And I've seen him do it with other people. And you see the Doug playbook work, which is brilliant, but I think that's how he does it.

Fascinating. My partner, George, you know, George Robson, he told me once, you know, I felt that when I was meeting the Sequoia team, I was pretty much mainly just talking about my childhood. People focus a lot on who you are as a person and not as much on what you've done, but who you are and what drives you. And again, I think Doug is the best at this. I don't know how he does it. I wish I did. I think it's a gift. But I definitely, from my first conversations with him, I felt heard and I felt understood. And I think that's a real Skill, you know, it's a people business at the end of the day.

Okay, so that's Doug. What about Alfred Roloff and Pat?

With Alfred, what I'm learning from him every day is he's so focused on on the team, he's so focused on the next generations. He's so focused on recruiting, on mentorship. That's one area where I'm really learning every day from him. Ruloff rule of is a tough one because he operates at peak performance in every area of the job. I am more of an 80, 20 person. He is 100% in everything he does and I think he just inspires people around him to try to be better and do their best. And again, I don't know what his secret is. Pat, right? You asked about Pat. I think Pat is a wonderful storyteller. I just love listening to Pat talk about a company, even talk about an investment thesis, whatever it might be. He has such a gift when it comes to storytelling and I think it's so powerful. People really listen when he speaks.

Listen. I adore Pat, so I'm completely biased in this respect. I do want to ask, you know, I've seen you in terms of the way you work with younger partners and I've seen you bring up incredible talent through the ranks. You know, obviously both with Sequoia, but then at Excel also. But my question to you is like, what do you do in that training process to train the next great generation and how do you do it?

I think at the end of the day this is an apprenticeship business. Whenever someone joins our team in London, I try to spend the first six months 100% working with that person and include them in every founder meeting, include them in every due diligence, diligence call, include them in every board meeting. Because I really think in Venture you learn by seeing and also by doing. That's the best way. Just having this one on one partnership for some time. For me, that's the best way. I think that's how I learned when I was quote unquote growing up in Venture. I don't think there is any other secret to it other than just involving people as much as possible.

Do you find that hard in a zoom world? When I think about training team members today, I agree with you totally. And actually when you're leaving the founder's office, you talk about it. You have that post meeting engagement now and cool and it's done and you go to your next meeting. I'm finding it really challenging to train in a Covid Zoom world.

Actually, I find it a little bit easier, interestingly enough, because it's so easy to include people no matter where they are in the world. The one tip I have is after every meeting have a little date debrief and share thoughts. How you think about the meeting, how you think about the key questions for that particular company, how you think about the space. I think I find that having these quick debriefs makes a really big difference long term.

Now I think being very deliberate about the debriefs is also important in terms of like the debriefs and sharing thoughts. Post company meetings. Quite a few people actually on Twitter did ask about decision making, specifically with Sequoia and Sequoia Europe. How does decision make making for Sequoia Europe work and what does the process look like?

We do not think about it as Sequoia and Sequoia Europe, we just think about it as Sequoia. We changed our name, actually it's US east, so US Europe as one team, one pool of capital, same founders. More and more category leaders are starting in Europe. We don't only invest in a category, we don't invest in competitive companies. When we choose a company in a particular category category, it's because we think this one company will dominate long term. And when we choose a company, we just try to do all the work possible and put the entire weight of Sequoia behind that one particular company. For us, it was very important since day one to look at both markets, both the US and Europe, in order to be able to make this choice. So UiPath is a good example. When Sequoia invested, they looked at robotic process automation globally, they looked at US based companies, companies, they looked at European companies. And I say they because I wasn't there yet. And at the time they decided that UiPath was going to be the leader in this category and UiPath happens to be a European company and this is happening more and more. So we work as one team between the two geographies. On Mondays we get together on zooms, we make decisions together. We look at both geographies and try to pick the one company that we think has the best chance of becoming the long term lead leader.

Sorry, I mean just on the actual decision making there, what does Sequoia do to create an environment of safety and also what do you do as one of the leaders to create an environment of safety where anyone on the team, no matter seniority, experience, can say anything and not feel judged, afraid, like they have a voice. Because that's really hard to do too. Especially when you have people who are very opinionated and strong in their views.

That's a great question. By definition, we want to invest in outliers, and outliers in the early days are not obvious. So I can say that many of our best decisions and many of our best investments long term were the non obvious ones in the early days. And we have very honest, open, intellectual conversations. The quote unquote secret is if you look at people like Doug or Ruloff, they listen and they pay attention when someone who just joined Sequoia the previous week speaks as much as they do when Alfred speaks. Let's say, having that sort of respect across the entire team is really important. And then it's just trust between partners. We're a partnership. At the end of the day, we work as a team.

I do want to ask that you. Obviously we don't look at it separately, but now Sequoia in Europe, a question that I've been thinking is like, what's been the biggest challenge in terms of the first 12 months and doing all that you've done with Sequoia in Europe?

A couple of things come to mind. One is it's just so specific to Europe. If you think about the us, many successful companies started in Silicon Valley in Europe, however, it's incredibly fragmented companies starting in Eastern Europe, Paris, Berlin, Stockholm. It's not one big ecosystem, it's many smaller local ecosystems. So for us, the challenge is finding these wonderful founders early on across. Across all these different cities. That's something we've been thinking about a lot. The other thing that comes to mind is there is this misconception often from founders that they are not ready for Sequoia. They will come and speak with us and we're very grateful that they do. But they come speak with us after they rehearsed a few times, let's say so later in the process. And that becomes challenging for us because, you know, we're super grateful to be part of the conversation and meet the founders, but it allows, it gives us less time to get to the right decision. So I would say that's the other thing that's been a misconception and a bit challenging.

Do you struggle with the compression and fundraising timelines for companies? Because I am really struggling with it. I remember Luciana. It sounds terribly old, but back in the day we used to have like a month or a month and a half to do diligence. We used to do. I mean, it was fantastic. I don't know what we did with the time but now we have a week. Maybe best.

Well, firstly, please do not say that you feel old because you make me feel very old world. But I completely agree, Harry. Those were the days. Right. And I don't know that I appreciated it enough. I thought that was normal. The pace is very different today. I think in some ways it's a positive because it means there's more capital and more access to capital. But yeah, it's, of course it makes our job harder. We have to get to the right answer faster, we have to do our homework faster and it makes our job more challenging. Absolutely. We try to focus on certain areas and understand them already before we meet founders. And I find that that helps a lot when you have a view on a particular space. In some situations, you meet a team and you have a great instinct. Your heart says there's something there and then you have to get your mind there within a week and you just have to do your homework quickly and try to reach the best decision. And I think when that intersection happens of great instinct and then the evidence points in the same direction, those decisions have been the good ones for me.

What do you do when you have a truly world class founder and you know they're world class, you know, their special. Lucian, they are great.

Yeah.

But their idea is terrible. I mean, oh God, it's terrible. What do you do in those situations?

What stage are we talking about?

Super early Pre Seed.

Seed Invest. Invest in great founders. You know why? One of the biggest, biggest mistakes I made in my early days was focus too much on market size, let's say. And I used to go and do my little spreadsheet and do the math and try to calculate, no, throw out the window that spreadsheet at seed. Because these founders are creating new categories. These founders, if they're world class, they will expand an existing category. They will, you know, zig and zag until they find the right business model. My advice is world class founder ideal. That for you. Doesn't make sense. Invest at seed stage.

No, I'm thrilled I did. I still hate the idea, but it continues to be great. So fingers crossed. I do want to talk about a very exciting new project though, within Sequoia, which is, you know, ark. So talk to me about ark. What is ark? Why is Sequoia launching it now? Can you just provide some color and context?

Harry, I am so happy to be able to talk about this publicly, first of all, because we've been thinking about this and, and we've been working on this behind the scenes for quite some Time thrilled to be able to share with the world and with founders and with you. You know my team pretty well. You've known Sequoia for years, right? That if you ask any person at Sequoia any time of the day about our mission, everyone will say our mission is help the daring build legendary companies. And we always ask ourselves, how can we do things differently? How can we help our founders more? I and this is how we came up with the idea for ark. So ARK is an eight week seed catalyst program for us founders and European founders. It's going to be two separate cohorts and we actually launch in Europe first. So I'm extra excited about this and it focuses on three things. Firstly, it's company building foundations. We feel that we're in a very privileged position having seen wonderful companies over the past five decades grow from ideas stage to ipo. And we try to distill those learnings into company building foundations for a decade, not for the following quarter, not for the next fundraise, but really for the long term. And this is everything from product go to market tech recruiting culture taught by wonderful Sequoia partners who are world class operators themselves like Alfred Lynn or Carl Eschenbach. And the list goes on and local operators and we think that's really important because there are specific things to starting a company in Europe and to starting a company in the us. So it's going to be a combination of Sequoia partners with wonderful operating backgrounds and local instructors in each geography.

Can I dive in? Sorry. And just say what does that look like for founders? Is that like a weekly call with the Sequoia partner and a weekly call with some local incredible instructors and leaders. What does that actual hands on communication look like?

We start with a week together. The first cohort will be in London. We're going to rotate and go to other European hubs as well. So we start with a week in London, we have six weeks remotely and that's over zoom with Sequoia partners with instructors, with office hours, hopefully some community building. And then for every cohort we have one trip to one company that we think is legendary in order for this cohort, cohort of founders, to also see one of our companies in action. And we end with another week in person in our California office for this particular cohort. And that's the format for the eight weeks going back to my early point on arc. There are three core parts. There is the foundations part around company building, a second part around outlier mindset. And we really think this is something that we don't talk enough about. What does it take? Does it take ambition, grit, resilience? How do you nurture ambition, grit, resilience? How do you get the right support around you? We think these are topics that we just oftentimes don't dig in enough. So that's the second core foundation of the program, and the third one is the Sequoia Network. And I mentioned we'll take a trip to one of our companies that we think, you know, is legendary or on its way to becoming legendary. It's our Sequoia Network for recruiting and customer. Customer introductions. And honestly, it's the community of this particular cohort as well, and hopefully not feeling so lonely doing the job, especially in the early days.

How many are in the cohort? Because I think cohort size is really important to ensure high quality provision of instructors, partners and service. How big are the cohorts?

You are spot on. And we thought about this a lot. We are going to have 15 companies in our European cohort, which we will launch soon. We want these companies to have the right level of attention from Sequoia, from our wonderful instructors who will be part of the program. It's open application. It's the first time Sequoia does something like this. So every founder from Europe will be able to apply to the program. It's a $1 million investment in the form of equity. I really want to emphasize, you know, building a company, there are some things that are in common to the US And Europe. So regardless of where you start in the world, there are things that are the same, but there are also things that are unique. For example, in Europe, going international, you have to think that about that since day one, right? Because each individual market is just not big enough to build a generational company. Technology recruiting across hubs in Europe, this is very specific to Europe as well. Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, where do you look for, what kind of engineer? Where do you look for what kind of product person? So we will try to combine learnings that are the same for companies and that start in the US and companies that start in Europe, and also local learnings from local operators and how they've done it.

Final one for a quick fire. When you project yourself out five years with the Ark and with Sequoia, what does success look like for you and how do you think about those core milestones that you want to hit in the next five years?

We want our clients to give founders a jumpstart in the early days. So if you ask me, it's really simple as I think about all the wonderful companies that will be around in five years from now. I really hope that the vast majority of those founders will have gotten that jumpstart from ARK in the early days. It's as simple as that, I guess. On a human level, I think I hope it's going to feel less lonely for them having been part of this community. Those are the main to things that come to mind.

I can't wait. It's so exciting as a program, so I'm very, very excited for you and for it. So exciting times. Now I do want to move into my favorite though, which is a quick fire round. So you've heard it before. But I say a short statement and you give me your immediate thoughts. So let's start with the favorite book and why.

Luciana Harry, I have a really hard time picking favorites with anything, but I'll tell you a book I recently read and could not put it down. It's called the Spy and the Traitor and it's a real espionage story from the Cold War days. Highly recommended. Could not put it down.

I love that. Well, I look forward to asking you about your favorite company if you can't choose favourites. But tell me, what have you recently changed your mind on?

Okay. Something fun. I did not want to watch squid games. I refused because I thought the concept was so tough and so violent. And then I watched it and I have to say, it was really well done. So that would be one funny thing.

I watched it. I was just too engrossed that I thought I was never going to work for like seven more hours. I was like, this is dangerous. But what do you know now that you wish you'd known when you started inventure, you know, over a decade ago at Summit?

Just the scale and the impact that many of these companies can reach, that was really eye opening for me.

What do you think is your biggest strength and your biggest weakness?

My biggest weakness is that I work too hard. I'm joking.

I would say my biggest weakness is.

I care too much about founders.

I'm a perfectionist. No, I do. I love what I do and I'm very driven. I think that's my biggest strength. And that means that I really tried really hard every single day. And I think it compounds over time. I hope at least that's the dream. And my weakness, probably that I don't have a technical background. And I would say that our business, it does help and I don't have it. So there are ways to go around it. But I would say that's the one I'm riddled with.

Insecurities. Would you say that's your insecurity or would you say there's another insecurity that you find most recurring?

My honest insecurities. You know, I was very fortunate to work with wonderful companies early on. Can I do it again? That's my insecurity.

Probably the most exciting, which obviously the companies we work with. What's the most recent publicly announced investment and why did you get so excited to invest?

I love this one. It's called VEED. At Sequoia, we have a a strong thesis that video is a new platform and that it will continue growing exponentially. And VEED is the best online video editor out there. If you're a consumer and you want to build something for social media, if you're an SME, if you're part of a team in a company and want to build anything from a sales demo to a product demo, whatever it might be, Vid is the easiest online editor out there. And it's such a nice founding story and it took so much grit from the two founders, Saba and Tim. They didn't raise for a long time. They were bootstrapped until we invested and they got to quite a meaningful scale without fundraising. Yeah. I really love their story.

It's an incredible company. We actually use them here at 20 VC as well, so that is wonderful to hear.

I'm so happy to hear that.

I know we are very down with the kids on TikTok these days, but it's been so much fun to do. Thank you so much for doing this. I'm so excited for the times I had both with Sequoia and with ark. So thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you so much. I was so happy to do this with you. Thank you, Harry.

As I said, just one of the most authentic and wonderful people in venture. I'm so excited for ark. I think he'll be such a transformational program for so many companies. So all founders listening. Could not recommend more highly and just think it will be incredible. That said, I want to say huge thank you again to Luciana for giving up her time today as well. If you'd like to see more from us, behind the scenes means you can do so on 20vc.com, we always love.

To see you there.

But before we leave you today, a.

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That's sprig.coms P-R-G.com as always, I so appreciate all your support and I can't wait to bring you an incredible set of episodes this Wednesday and Friday.