

YC Gets 11% of Sequoia's Frontpage - frisco
http://sequoiacap.com/?03192009

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nikblack
some people may have noticed that only Elon Musk features on the frontpage for
Paypal while Peter Thiel and Max Levchin are not.

Apparently there is a lot of politics behind this, with Thiel and Sequoia
having been at odds over funding, the IPO and then selling to eBay.

Also, supposedly one of the big motivations for Thiel and Founders Fund was to
compete and out-do Sequoia.

Sean Parker from Plaxo also isn't on the front page. Moritz had him locked out
of his Plaxo office by changing the locks, and then fired him. Funnily enough
Parker now works with Thiel at Founders Fund.

Funny what you can learn from that webpage.

~~~
Hexstream
There's no way to learn any of this from that page without external
knowledge...

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ryanwaggoner
Strikes me as a visual way of saying "we've carved out these spots for YC
startups in the future."

Clever.

~~~
ksvs
Or it could be a reference to the 3 YC startups Sequoia has already funded.

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Radix
With Y Combinator as their cornerstone.

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deltapoint
The traffic that visits Sequoia's frontpage can benefit from YC if they are
early stage entrepreneurs. So it makes sense.

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mynameishere
I get the "Y" but the peach squares around it just seem like a waste of screen
real estate.

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Hexstream
Might be just noise but the alt texts for the 3 YC blank squares are:
Mellanox, VanceInfo, Paypal. Paypal in there hints to me it's probably just
noise...

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bravura
This is more than 11%. It's the FIRST link

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frisco
Ok, so a little more: 11.\={1}\%

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johnrob
Plaxo? Am I the only one who thinks that doesn't fit in with the rest of the
companies in that grid?

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ALee
well they had a good exit and a decent amount of usage.

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aneesh
and a much-criticized, fairly annoying "viral" growth strategy.

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anamax
What criteria do you think that Sequoia uses for highlighting companies?
(They've funded far more companies than the ones listed.)

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frisco
Name recognition.

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aditya
Makes YC look like a Sequoia portfolio company, which it isn't... Hmm.

Or is it?

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smanek
Of course it is. Sequoia gave YC money in return for a part ownership of YC.

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pg
That's not true. The investors get a percentage of the returns from the
startups funded with that money. When the money runs out, the deal ends.

This is how all funds work. A university that invests in a fund managed by VCs
doesn't get part ownership of the VC firm. They get part of the returns from
the startups funded with the specific pool of money they contributed to.

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jasonlbaptiste
Sequoia is acting like an LP (usually universities, pension funds, high net
worth individuals,etc.) in a typical venture fund is the way I'm looking at
it.

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rms
Congrats, they seem excited.

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tolmasky
And Apple gets 8.3%

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listic
I'm a bit confused by it: Apple has 3 squares. Yes, Apple it's kinda cool, but
why really? It doesn't make sense if you think about it.

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ivankirigin
Perhaps because investing in Apple early was amazingly lucrative?

