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> Roelof Botha, a 23andMe board member and partner at Sequoia Capital, said the company’s big-spending strategy made sense when money was cheap. Now that it isn
by htrp 3y ago
> Roelof Botha, a 23andMe board member and partner at Sequoia Capital, said the company’s big-spending strategy made sense when money was cheap. Now that it isn’t, “we’ve had to trim and focus on a smaller number of projects.”
> Sequoia, which invested $145 million in 23andMe, still holds all its shares, he said. Today they are worth $18 million.
Interesting that they weren't forced to liquidate/distribute the shares to their LPs
- crotchfire 3y agoThat would impede their plan to sell 23andMe, including its DNA database, to China (or Russia, or Antarctica, or the next Martians that happen along).
- tokai 3y agoWhy would russia or aliens ever pay for it, when they can just steal it?
- jeffreygoesto 3y agoRight. And they have enough of DNA themselves!
- crotchfire 3y agoDude the Martians need human DNA.
- nso 3y agoThe aliens collection method is not as appealing to the end user, tho.
- atonse 3y agoMaybe they are compelled to pay for it by an intergalactic ethics code created by the Apache foundation. I smell a conspiracy theory.
- rchaud 3y agoWhen there are perfectly good intelligence agencies to sell to at home? /s
- crotchfire 3y agoOh they've already sold it to those folks.
- astrange 3y agoThe problem with all these conspiracy theories about selling your DNA results is 1. your DNA results are not interesting to anyone even if they're evil. 2. if someone wanted your DNA in particular, they just need a bit of your hair, so there is already absolutely nothing you could do to stop them.
- H8crilA 3y agoI don't know what specific deals they have with LPs, but why would it make a priori sense to force the fund to liquidate some specific shares and distribute the proceeds? I would imagine that any fund is allowed to make losses on specific investments, least of all a hyper-aggressive VC fund which will create losses on many (most) positions, by design. And then once losses happen they should be treated for what they are - just another position where decisions should be made based on the outlook, and not based on the history.
- prakhar897 3y agoIt could've been liquidated and reinvested into a continuation fund.
- romanzubenko 3y agoin 2021 Sequoia switched their strategy to hold on to stock of their portfolio companies for few more years after IPO. "Sequoia is abandoning the 10-year venture fund, in which limited partners, the outside investors that contribute to the fund, expect to get paid back over a decade. The firm said it’s establishing a single fund, the Sequoia Fund, that will raise money from LPs and then funnel that capital down to a series of smaller funds that invest by stage. Proceeds from those funds will feed back into the Sequoia Fund. With no time horizon, Sequoia can hold public stock for longer stretches, rather than distributing those shares to LPs. Investors who want liquidity can pull money out instead of waiting for distributions." https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/26/sequoia-changes-fund-structure-to-hold-public-companies-and-back-crypto.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/26/sequoia-changes-fund-structu...
- htrp 3y agoAh permanent capital vehicles... forgot Sequoia did this too