VC Innovation: 6 Ways Sequoia Capital Differentiated Itself

As Sebastian Mallaby correctly pondered in The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Art of Disruption, it would be easy to reflect upon Sequoia Capital’s enduring success atop the venture capital league tables as owing to its reputation and standing in the Valley, forged over half a century.

But like many of the startups it has backed — WhatsApp, Airbnb, FTX, Stripe, Unity, Google, 23andMe, and Apple, to name a few — Sequoia too has innovation at its core.

This was especially true during the 2010s when PayPal alum Roelof Botha and Vital Signs co-founder Jim Goetz took on more active leadership roles at the firm.

While it can be easy to fall victim to the narrative fallacy when attributing success looking backwards, and downplay the role of luck, the following innovations have helped Sequoia Capital create the conditions for serendipity and luck to favor it more often.

1. Landscape Mapping

Jim Goetz introduced landscape mapping to Sequoia — mapping out tech trends and anticipating what kinds of startups would prosper in this landscape. As Mallaby wrote, one such landscape was the ‘rise of the developer’, which noted that just 1% of the global population was writing the code that was transforming life, and “anything that boosted the…