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From the original WSJ article: "Since its founding through last year, Andreessen Horowitz had returned a total of $1.2 billion in cash to investors, net of fees

From the original WSJ article: "Since its founding through last year, Andreessen Horowitz had returned a total of $1.2 billion in cash to investors, net of fees. Sequoia returned more money on WhatsApp alone." Unlike the blog states, it seems that WSJ is, in fact, using "actual, realized returns" as evidence. http://www.wsj.com/articles/andreessen-horowitzs-returns-trail-venture-capital-elite-1472722381 http://www.wsj.com/articles/andreessen-horowitzs-returns-tra...

ScottBurson 10y ago
WhatsApp was a hell of an outlier. I think you have to put the size of that gain down to luck.
- kooshball 10y ago
  VC as a fund class is literally about finding outliers. How much of that is luck is arguable* but it doesn't make any sense to ignore outliers when comparing returns. * How did Sequoia end up as the only VC that made money from Whatsapp? It certainly wasn't an accident.
  - rokhayakebe 10y ago
    Could you elaborate on your last line?
    - tlb 10y ago
      Jim Goetz and Jan Koum talked about this at Startup School 2014: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-pJa11YvCs&list=PLQ-uHSnFig5OyY5JWSQrl_gESiEUJxe1m&index=6 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-pJa11YvCs&list=PLQ-uHSnFig... starting around 8:10. TL;DR: Sequoia didn't get that deal just by random chance.
      - AndrewKemendo 10y ago
        Great link thanks. I had no idea they were that effusive about venture money. Really hammers home the idea that if you have a killer tool, money will find you.
      - jtheory 10y ago
        TL;DR... so how did they get it?
        zigzigzag 10y ago
        Sounds like a few factors. Jan and Brian were uninterested in VC or business relationships to the extent that they were impossible to contact. There was no address on their website. There were no contact details. They ignored inbound emails. There was no signage on the building. They ignored press emails. But Sequoia knew they were in Mountain View and literally had partners walking the streets doing a physical search for them in order to initiate that contact. That's a pretty amazing effort. Additionally, Sequoia have an internal tool called Earlybird they wrote themselves that monitored mobile app stores, which is how they noticed that WhatsApp was doing so well despite the fact that it had not taken off in the USA specifically. They relied on hard data collected systematically, rather than waiting for hot Bay Area startups that the VC's friends were using to turn up on their door. And finally Sequoia had a great name that Koum associated with success. There's a lot of great info in this video. I love WhatsApp partly because it violates so much received valley wisdom and yet has been so successful.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- bsdpython 10y ago
  Sequoia has 40 years worth of outliers. For almost any other fund I would agree but it's fairly typical for them.

ScottBurson 10y ago

WhatsApp was a hell of an outlier. I think you have to put the size of that gain down to luck.

kooshball 10y ago
VC as a fund class is literally about finding outliers. How much of that is luck is arguable* but it doesn't make any sense to ignore outliers when comparing returns. * How did Sequoia end up as the only VC that made money from Whatsapp? It certainly wasn't an accident.
- rokhayakebe 10y ago
  Could you elaborate on your last line?
  - tlb 10y ago
    Jim Goetz and Jan Koum talked about this at Startup School 2014: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-pJa11YvCs&list=PLQ-uHSnFig5OyY5JWSQrl_gESiEUJxe1m&index=6 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-pJa11YvCs&list=PLQ-uHSnFig... starting around 8:10. TL;DR: Sequoia didn't get that deal just by random chance.
    - AndrewKemendo 10y ago
      Great link thanks. I had no idea they were that effusive about venture money. Really hammers home the idea that if you have a killer tool, money will find you.
    - jtheory 10y ago
      TL;DR... so how did they get it?
      - zigzigzag 10y ago
        Sounds like a few factors. Jan and Brian were uninterested in VC or business relationships to the extent that they were impossible to contact. There was no address on their website. There were no contact details. They ignored inbound emails. There was no signage on the building. They ignored press emails. But Sequoia knew they were in Mountain View and literally had partners walking the streets doing a physical search for them in order to initiate that contact. That's a pretty amazing effort. Additionally, Sequoia have an internal tool called Earlybird they wrote themselves that monitored mobile app stores, which is how they noticed that WhatsApp was doing so well despite the fact that it had not taken off in the USA specifically. They relied on hard data collected systematically, rather than waiting for hot Bay Area startups that the VC's friends were using to turn up on their door. And finally Sequoia had a great name that Koum associated with success. There's a lot of great info in this video. I love WhatsApp partly because it violates so much received valley wisdom and yet has been so successful.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
bsdpython 10y ago
Sequoia has 40 years worth of outliers. For almost any other fund I would agree but it's fairly typical for them.