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YC Gets 11% of Sequoia's Frontpage
- nikblack 18y agosome 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 18y agoThere's no way to learn any of this from that page without external knowledge...
- deltapoint 18y agoThe traffic that visits Sequoia's frontpage can benefit from YC if they are early stage entrepreneurs. So it makes sense.
- aditya 18y agoMakes YC look like a Sequoia portfolio company, which it isn't... Hmm. Or is it?
- smanek 18y agoOf course it is. Sequoia gave YC money in return for a part ownership of YC.
- pg 18y agoThat'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.
- smanek 18y agoI stand corrected
- jasonlbaptiste 18y agoSequoia 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.
- ryanwaggoner 18y agoStrikes me as a visual way of saying "we've carved out these spots for YC startups in the future." Clever.
- ksvs 18y agoOr it could be a reference to the 3 YC startups Sequoia has already funded.
- ryanwaggoner 18y agoit could be, though it seems like they'd want to make the startup names explicit.
- Radix 18y agoWith Y Combinator as their cornerstone.
- bravura 18y agoThis is more than 11%. It's the FIRST link
- frisco 18y agoOk, so a little more: 11.\={1}\%
- rms 18y agoCongrats, they seem excited.
- johnrob 18y agoPlaxo? Am I the only one who thinks that doesn't fit in with the rest of the companies in that grid?
- ALee 18y agowell they had a good exit and a decent amount of usage.
- tolmasky 18y agoAnd Apple gets 8.3%
- listic 18y agoI'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.
- ivankirigin 18y agoPerhaps because investing in Apple early was amazingly lucrative?
- mynameishere 18y agoI get the "Y" but the peach squares around it just seem like a waste of screen real estate.
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- Hexstream 18y agoMight 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...