00:05You've clearly had a very impressive
career but before becoming one of the-
00:09>> That's not what my mother says-
00:12>> Before becoming one of the top venture
00:14capitalists in the world, being knighted
by the queen, you were a boy from Wales.
00:19What did you want to be when you grew up?
00:23>> Actually, not that this game or
sport is played in America, and so
00:27it won't translate, I wanted to
be a cricket player, a cricketer.
00:32But I was a coward, and
the ball was very, very hard.
00:36And so I spent most of my time in a sport,
whether it was cricket or rugby, trying to
00:41avoid being anywhere near the ball, so-
>> [LAUGH]
00:46>> I have a friend actually who became
00:50a spectacular rugby player,
he played for Wales which, and
00:55I told him that the only
thing that separated him and
00:58me on the rugby field was
when he took to the field.
01:03He wanted the ball to
come in his direction.
01:06>> [LAUGH]
>> And I of course wanted the reverse,
01:11I never wanted to see it
come in my direction.
01:13As I got a bit older I became
01:18interested in journalism and
when I was at Oxford,
01:24and I knew that I wanted to be
a journalist when I was at Oxford.
01:29>> So I'm interested in the story
of how your family came to Wales.
01:34It was quite inspiring that your
parents actually escaped Germany
01:40during the second World War, arrived in
Wales as refugees, in the UK as refugees.
01:47How did their struggles and
their experience
01:50shape you early on in sort of what
you wanted to do with your life?
01:53>> Well they were very lucky.
01:54They didn't escape during
the second World War.
01:56They escaped beforehand.
01:57Not many people escaped Germany
during the second World War.
02:03And my father left Germany,
he was born in Munich and
02:08went to Britain when he was a 14 year old.
02:12My mother went on something called
the Kinder transport which was
02:1710,000 kids from Germany
basically that were rescued and
02:22put in foster homes and
02:28they then met subsequently in Britain and
02:32after the war they got married.
02:36And those searing experiences, difficult.
02:44I'm sure there are people
here either who have
02:48first hand familial experience
of something as disquieting,
02:53unsettling and wrenching as
those sorts of experiences, but
02:58those are the experiences that
come down through generations.
03:04My father's father served in
the German army during World War I.
03:12And my father's mother was
a nurse in the German army.
03:17During World War I and then both of them
03:22were killed,
they were murdered by the Nazis.
03:26And my father died about 15, 16 years ago.
03:31My mother [LAUGH] I saw her last week,
is 95 and
03:37is still vibrant but those experiences,
they color everything.
03:44They hang over everything
like a dark cloud.
03:49It is always the anxiety and
03:52the fear of the whole world being
ripped out from underneath you and
03:58it colors the way that you live,
understandably.
04:02>> And that drives you today, still?
04:05>> Well I don't know about that.
04:06>> [LAUGH]
>> But it certainly had a profound effect
04:11on my parents and
they came to Wales as outsiders and
04:16obviously Britain I owe everything,
04:20my parents owe everything
to the fact that Britain
04:25opened its borders and
allowed them to settle there.
04:31But it was not easy.
04:32They were in a minority.
04:36They weren't exactly, I mean,
04:37I was one of I think three Jewish kids
at the high school that I went to.
04:43So I've always, one always felt,
04:48an outsider in the delineation
between religions in Britain which
04:54as 40, 50 years ago was very, very sharp.
04:59And so if you didn't belong to the
majority it was very obvious that you were
05:03on the outside, so
that's obviously had a huge effect.
05:08>> Well, you did them very proud.
05:09You worked really hard to get into Oxford.
05:12And I'm sure you had many opportunities
professionally in Europe, but
05:16you decided to come to the United States.
05:19Why the United States?
05:20>> Well, I didn't have many professional
opportunities in Europe because I grew up
05:24in the Britain that
predated Margaret Thatcher.
05:29And those were extremely
difficult times in Britain,
05:37I mean obviously Britain is going through
its own issues today with Brexit.
05:40But the times in the 1970s
people who weren't around.
05:45There's no reason that anyone
here should know about it.
05:48But it was a strike-ridden country,
where you never knew whether
05:55the electricity was going to work, whether
there was going to be a gas strike,
05:59whether the railways wouldn't run, or
whether the newspapers would be delivered,
06:03because there'd be a wildcat strike,
and I wanted to be a journalist.
06:08And I wanted to work on Fleet Street.
06:10And I wanted to work at the Times or
the Daily Telegraph or the Guardian or
06:14one of the big broad sheet newspapers that
06:17at that point dominated
journalism in Britain.
06:20But, because of union restrictions
the Fleet Street newspapers,
06:26the big newspapers, were not permitted to
hire anybody straight out of under grad.
06:32serve a multiyear apprenticeship
on small provincial newspapers.
06:38And I had no appetite in doing that.
06:42I wanted to work on Fleet Street.
06:44I want it to sort of work in
the premiere league, so to speak.
06:50I went to see a gentleman who was
the editor of the Daily Telegraph,
06:55a fellow who,
he was a Fleet Street legend and
06:59a character on whom Evelyn Waugh
had based the novel Scoop.
07:05Which is hilarious if
you've never read it.
07:08And he said if I was your age,
get out of Britain.
07:13>> [LAUGH]
>> And that was what sent me to America.
07:19It was that sort of weird
peculiar encounter.
07:24And I often think about that.
07:25That's what made me up sticks and leave.
07:28I mean, well, and I was lucky.
07:31I wouldn't have been able to come to
America had I not got a scholarship
07:35because I didn't have the money and
all the rest of it.
07:38But I got lucky in that,
and I came to America,
07:43this is 1976, not knowing where anything
07:48would lead but have obviously stayed.
07:52>> Yeah, 40 years you said.
07:54So you started out when you
got here as a journalist for
07:57Time Magazine-
>> Right.
07:58>> In San Francisco Actually,
not in San Francisco.
08:02In Detroit, of all places.
08:04>> Covering the first collapse of
the Chrysler Automobile Company.
08:08>> And then you made your way to
San Francisco to cover technology.
08:12And during this time you
got to know Steve Jobs.
08:16What do you believe made Jobs
such a unique innovator and
08:19leader in the time that
you spent with him?
08:24>> So this is, again,
this a long time ago.
08:29And Microsoft was a company that I
remember going to an event at Apple,
08:36one of these sort of management events,
small management events.
08:42Probably this was probably 1982 or '83.
08:45And Steve had a sort of
fireside chat like this.
08:51And he asked the guest,
08:53a fellow who at that point was a Morgan
Stanley analyst called Ben Roselyn,
08:57who later went on to found a very
successful venture capital firm.
09:01He said, so Ben,
pick the year when Microsoft,
09:06you think Microsoft will break the $10
million revenue barrier, right?
09:11$10 million, and
Ben was scratching his head.
09:15So it's a very, very long time ago.
09:19that was the only point I
was lamely trying to make.
09:29I realized I hadn't met anyone like Steve.
09:33I'd spend time with fellow called
Lee Iaccoca who was a living legend
09:37in American industry at that point,
and been the president
09:41to the Ford Motor company and
then became the CEO of Chrysler.
09:45And Steve was the first person who's
salesmanship was on a par with Iaccoca's.
09:53Iaccoca was just mesmerizing character,
but
09:57he didn't have the product and
engineering attributes that Steve had.
10:02And obviously, there was a difference
in age of probably 35 years or so.
10:09But Steve was a spellbinder.
10:16And obviously,
as everybody knows these days,
10:23a very difficult and
complicated character.
10:28But he was an extraordinary, and
10:31even though I had all sorts of issues
in dealing with him, have nothing but
10:37massive admiration for
10:42what it is that he eventually went on and
did.
10:47And but as I said, it's a long time ago.
10:51And I think at that time I
probably held a minority
10:56opinion of how spectacular
an individual he was.
11:02Because later, he was,
again, ancient history,
11:05he was fired from
the company that he founded.
11:08Which to me always seemed
like a real travesty.
11:12>> So following your time with
Time Magazine, you would make the switch
11:16to the venture capital industry by
joining Sequoia, which is very uncommon.
11:22How did that happen?
11:24>> Well I'd left time because,
while I've enjoyed four years or so
11:28as a journalist, I also got frustrated.
11:31It was a big company,
I was working on the periphery of it.
11:34And sort of for some reason it always
felt I didn't want to be a journalist
11:39when I was 30 years old.
11:41And I had that as some
sort of mental benchmark.
11:43Goodness knows where that came from.
11:45I think it was largely because, again,
back then, I saw what happened to people.
11:49It was eye opening to me,
11:50I saw what happened to people who stayed
in journalism and were 60 years old.
11:55And certainly, if they worked for Time,
which was a sort of cushy job, but
11:59you got sent all over the world and
you wound up as an alcoholic.
12:04>> [LAUGH]
>> Which appeared to me
12:09to be a really beckoning
career trajectory.
12:12>> [LAUGH]
>> And so I left.
12:17And together with somebody else,
I started a little company that published
12:21newsletters, stage conferences
about the technology industry.
12:28And that fellow stuck with it,
and eventually many years later,
12:34no thanks to me,
Dow Jones bought that company.
12:39But I always felt that it was
going to be a small company.
12:42And I heard through my work at Time,
through my work at this little company,
12:48I'd met a lot of people around
the technology industry.
12:51And had met a lot of people in
the venture capital business.
12:56Time had run a cover story that I
had reported on about the venture
13:02industry that had Arthur Rock
who was the original founder,
13:07investor in Intel, and
then of Apple on the cover.
13:12And during the process of that, had met
a lot of people in the venture business.
13:16And when I came to California,
I didn't know about Silicon Valley,
13:21didn't know anything about the venture
industry, and had got interested in it.
13:26And made a list of five firms where I
13:30knew somebody, wrote to them.
13:35You wrote to them in those days,
you didn't e-mail them.
13:39And got interviewed at all,
13:44got rejected at four of them.
13:48Journalist, history major,
no experience working in
13:52a Silicon Valley company,
therefore totally useless.
13:58Probably correct on most of those counts.
14:01And then Don Valentine, who was
the founder of Sequoia, decided that
14:06he needed to do something to change
Sequoia's image with minority hiring.
14:18>> And so, decide to hire a history major.
14:23>> And but it was head scratcher for
14:25most of Don's peers in the venture
business wondering why on Earth he
14:30was wasting his time
with somebody like me.
14:35And so that's how it happened.
14:38>> [LAUGH]
>> It was great good fortune.
14:39If Don had said, voted like the others,
14:43I don't know what I'd be doing.
14:48>> So in the era of the prized
engineering degree in Silicon Valley,
14:52what value does that broad based
humanities education bring?
14:56Given that about 50% of
last year's incoming class
15:00came in with a Humanities undergraduate
degree, what value does that bring to
15:03the technology ecosystem
here in Silicon Valley?
15:09>> Well,
I obviously have a prejudice and bias.
15:13And knowing full well
that I wish I understood
15:21more about the details of technology and
engineering and all the rest of it.
15:24But if you're in the investing business
in Silicon Valley, you cover such a wide
15:29waterfront of investing,
that it's very difficult.
15:34You can't be, no matter how numerate and
technical you are,
15:39you cannot be an expert in everything.
15:42So the ability to be able to, and
15:47this is much like being a journalist,
to start on
15:52an endeavor where you know nothing,
where you gather a lot of materials and
15:57facts, where you have to
distill all of those facts.
16:02And then form a cogent opinion and
make a decision.
16:08It's not unlike writing a story,
writing a history essay,
16:13or making an investment, or
helping to determine an investment.
16:19What comes after that,
after making the investment,
16:23all the sorts of things that these days
go towards helping a little company
16:28that might be composed of three people
becoming something significant,
16:33that's very different set of skills which,
I think, just experience brings along.
16:39It doesn't matter whether or not you
have a technical degree or anything.
16:43And then, the ability to be
a story-teller and a clear communicator.
16:48I think those are really,
very, very helpful pursuits.
16:53as I said, I have a bias and prejudice,
and I was looking at the numbers.
16:56At Stanford, for example you had,
16:59if I've got the numbers right,
which they're roughly right,
17:05you had 647 undergrads in
1965 who were history majors.
17:10In 2014, which was the last set
of data that I saw, you had 84.
17:16So they're a threatened
species around here.
17:18[LAUGH]
>> [LAUGH] Well,
17:19I think you put those skills
to good use at Sequoia,
17:23given that it's consistently listed as
one of the top venture capital firms.
17:28And I have to get this statistic right,
17:30because it kind of blew my
mind when I first saw it.
17:32Since 1972,
Sequoia has backed companies that now have
17:38an aggregate public market
value of over $3.3 trillion.
17:43To put that in relative size, that's
larger than the current GDP of the UK.
17:48What are the most-
>> [LAUGH]
17:58>> [LAUGH] So what do you think
are the most important leadership
18:03traits needed to build enduring
organizations such as Sequoia?
18:09>> Well, that's nice of you to say.
18:14Obviously, that's a question that's at
the heart of our pursuit at Sequoia,
18:21and also the heart of the pursuit
of the very distinctive
18:26companies that we would like
to be an investor with.
18:30And being able to think and
18:33work in 20 year increments
is such an advantage.
18:39And I know that sounds a little weird and
18:42a little peculiar, and
obviously you can talk a grand
18:47fashion about a 20 year plan and
it all sounds very good.
18:52But then, you also have to work
on what this afternoon brings.
18:58But having a sense of eventually
where your compass is heading and
19:02where it's set, and
the trajectory you want to go on,
19:06and then breaking it down
into all sorts of steps.
19:09Knowing that every step along the journey
is going to require different people,
19:15different skills, different relationships,
19:19different virtues that you constantly
going to have to change along the course.
19:25And reacting to changing circumstances,
changing market conditions, and
19:30all the rest of it, but never losing
sight of eventually where you want to go.
19:35I think that's the biggest thing
that has helped with us and helped
19:41with some of these companies that we've
had the good fortune to be involved with.
19:46Now, obviously not everything
works out like that.
19:49A lot of companies start,
and maybe they flourish for
19:53a certain period of time,
and then they're sold.
19:56But the ones that we're looking for,
I mean, now where are we, 2019?
20:02It's 20 years since we invested in Google,
20:07right, I still own the majority
of my Google shares.
20:13And when somebody asks me today,
20:17why is a client interested
investing in a our company?
20:22I'll always say to them, if I think it
happens to be true in that particular
20:27regard, because some companies
don't fit in to that.
20:31It's because if we're all fortunate,
if the sun shines on us,
20:37we can be shareholders in your
company 20 years from now.
20:42Today, Airbnb,
I think we invested in Airbnb $600,000 in
20:472008 I think, maybe 2009.
20:50It's ten years, happens like that,
and the company is still private.
20:57Stripe, which is a payment services
company we invested in when it was
21:02three or four people, that was 2010.
21:05Again, nine years later, these are very,
very long journeys that we're on.
21:11And it takes time and patience,
and spectacular people,
21:17and a massive market opportunity,
21:20to build the real
companies that matter and
21:24have an influence and
great impact on society.
21:29>> And you and Sir Alex talk about
the importance of identifying high
21:33potential talent in building
these types of organizations.
21:36So the example he uses is a footballer
some of you may know by the name
21:40of David Beckham, who is pretty good.
21:43>> [LAUGH]
>> What characteristics are you looking
21:47for when trying to identify
this high potential talent,
21:50whether it be a founder or
somebody you hire at Sequoia?
21:57>> The reason that I approached
Alex to write the book about
22:00Manchester United was, for
whatever perverse reason people have been
22:05asking me to write a book about
Silicon Valley or Sequoia.
22:09And I had no interest in doing that, but
22:11I was interested in writing
about enduring organizations.
22:18And I picked United because it was
a long way away from Silicon Valley, but
22:23because I knew that he shared
the approach that we cherished as well.
22:28One of which, Patrick, was the one
that you just fingered, which was,
22:33identifying people when they are young and
then helping them develop.
22:40Part of it is because you're
not taking a lot of risk.
22:48they knew about Beckham when Beckham was
eight years old at Manchester United.
22:54Now, we're not going around Stanford
looking for eight year olds, but-
23:00>> We do like hiring at Sequoia people who
23:04Because it's a business that,
even though it looks simple, and
23:08today I understand everybody is
an investor, from someone who writes
23:13$5,000 checks to somebody who
writes a much bigger kind of check.
23:17But to do it well in the fashion
that we like to do it, takes time,
23:22and patience, and persistence,
and a willingness to learn.
23:28And assuming people like that flourish,
23:32you have incredible loyalty, and
they'll stay with you forever.
23:38And so that was true for a lot of
the players who played for Sir Alex.
23:44And I think being able to
grow organically like that,
23:47it's such an enormous competitive
advantage, where you have a stable team of
23:52people which you're always amending,
you're always changing.
23:56Someone is perhaps no longer playing
as well as they used to play, so
24:01you figure out a way to Deal with that.
24:04But then you're always
replenishing the bench.
24:07But you're doing it in an imperceptible
fashion to people on the outside.
24:12So that all they see is, in the soccer
metaphor, the winning team on the field,
24:17without realizing that actually there
24:20are two players on there today who
weren't on that team 24 months ago.
24:25But that's worked spectacularly for us.
24:28We've got these great who's
24:33a graduate at GSB and
he became, he want to PayPal.
24:38And after PayPal he joined Sequoia.
24:40And that was probably now 17,
18 years ago?
24:45And he's just spectacular,
he's just one example.
24:49We got a whole bunch of other
people like that, so it's great.
24:52>> One of the characteristics
you mentioned that I was
24:55really intrigued by is
this idea of obsession.
24:58So the best founders, the best athletes,
25:02tend to be obsessed with whatever it is,
the thing that they're working on.
25:06I was curious, what do you think obsession
means to you, and how does it feel?
25:12How do you know it when you see it?
25:16>> There's a gentleman called
Apoorva Mehta, who's the founder and
25:20CEO of Instacart,
the online grocery company.
25:23And we've been with Apoorva on his journey
for a considerable period of time now.
25:30And before we invested,
I asked him how he had
25:35happened on grocery delivery as
a business that he wanted to be in.
25:39And he said he'd played around with and
25:42toyed with a variety of other
businesses that he wanted to start, and
25:46he'd got down the road on, I forget,
two, three, four of those.
25:51But he said the only one, or
he realized Instacart was the one for
25:56him when it was the last,
the idea of the business was the last
26:00thing that he thought about
when he went to sleep and
26:04the first thing that he thought about
when he woke up in the morning.
26:10And to me, that was as good a definition
of obsession as any I've heard.
26:16But it's that sort of
full-on experience that
26:21you can never stop thinking about and
you don't switch off.
26:26I'll give you another
example from yesteryear,
26:31which was, again,
this is back to the early 1980s.
26:35And I had been up in Seattle working
on a story about Microsoft for Time.
26:42And again, this was when
Microsoft was still private and
26:45it was still quite small.
26:46And Bill Gates gave me a ride
to the airport in his car.
26:50And not many people can say that
they were chauffeured by Bill Gates.
26:57>> [LAUGH]
>> In fact,
26:59I may put that on my LinkedIn profile.
27:02>> [LAUGH]
>> Above all other forms of education.
27:08And the radio was missing in the car.
27:13Big, gaping hole in the dashboard.
27:14And I said, Bill, so what happened to you?
27:16Did you get ripped off?
27:19And he said no, I had it taken out.
27:22Why'd you have it taken out?
27:24Well, I drive from my home to the office,
which is 7 minutes and 32 seconds.
27:31And then, I'll drive from the office
to the airport, which is however long.
27:36And he said if I've got the radio,
27:39I'm afraid that I'll switch it on and
I won't be thinking about Microsoft.
27:46>> [LAUGH]
>> I believe you.
27:52[LAUGH] So the funding environment
right now, as you alluded to,
27:57is becoming extremely competitive.
28:00There are a record number of firms-
>> I didn't allude to it.
28:05There are a record number of new venture
firms and capital in the market.
28:10Just raised a $1 billion vision fund,
Sequoia just raised an $8 billion fund.
28:15Are there too many investment
dollars chasing too few investable
28:19opportunities right now?
28:21>> So that's the line I've
28:30With one or two exceptions,
maybe 1991, 1992.
28:36And then, right after the dot-com blow up,
when capital was,
28:40everybody understood
that capital was scarce.
28:43It's always been a competitive
funding environment.
28:46There have always been, look,
how many companies get financed?
28:52And then how many become worth it,
become tremendously important companies?
28:57So if you just do that winnowing,
and look at the funnel,
29:01there are very, very few great companies.
29:05So everybody is madly in
pursuit of those companies,
29:11and obviously there are these tangible
examples of the enormous value that's
29:16being created in the world of
technology in the last 30 or 40 years.
29:20And so, money has poured into the sector.
29:23But for us, it's always been this sort of,
almost always been this sort of
29:28environment where a really
spectacular idea can raise capital,
29:34where somebody who's starting a company
usually has choices of capital.
29:38I mean, that's the world that I grew
up in, that's the world that we've
29:42always operated in, and I suspect will
be the world that we always operate in.
29:46It's just part of life in our business.
29:52>> Well, there are always
things that we will have done,
29:56others will have done that five,
ten years from now we'll say to
30:01ourselves how did we ever do
something as silly as that?
30:05Or wasn't it inane or crazy?
30:08Or we didn't anticipate this, that, or
30:11I'm sure we'll have egg on
our face from time to time.
30:14Again, it's just an occupational hazard.
30:19>> So I want to talk a little bit
about how Silicon Valley has changed.
30:22There continues to be many discussions
happening about how to make both
30:26technology companies and
venture capital more diverse,
30:30potentially beyond history majors.
30:33What responsibility does the venture
industry have to fostering diversity in
30:38the technology ecosystem?
30:44>> The responsibility
of the valley of firms
30:49like ours is to identify
burgeoning talent.
30:53And the more the merrier,
irrespective of gender,
30:59irrespective of background,
irrespective of color.
31:05Now, that's easy to say,
and it's a bland statement.
31:11And you will then rightly say well,
what are you doing about it, and
31:16what are you doing about it actively?
31:19So we're doing what we can, but
there's only so much that we can do.
31:26Firms like ours are representative
of social trends.
31:30And I sort of sensed that this
question might come up, so
31:33I turned the question around because I
dug up the data on diversity at Stanford.
31:38>> [LAUGH]
>> In majors.
31:44So let me give you some statistics.
31:49Because I think this whole issue is one
31:54that all of us have something to do about.
31:58So and I'll give you one little
example say from the math
32:03department in
the undergraduate program here.
32:06And this is germane, I have a friend
of mine whose daughter is in the math
32:11department at the moment, and is thinking
about leaving the math department and
32:16switching to another major
because she is surrounded by men.
32:21And so in 1983,
if you were an undergraduate at Stanford,
32:28there was only 22% of the students who had
elected math as their major were women.
32:34Guess what that number was in 2014, which
is the last year when data was available.
32:50If you're a computer science
graduate at Stanford,
32:55the percentage of women in
the class in 1983 was 21%.
33:02In 2014, 20%, and
the only point I'm making is,
33:08we'll hire as quickly and
as merrily as we possibly can.
33:14We have seven female
investment partners today,
33:18we've got I think close to half a dozen
female CEO's that we've backed.
33:25But we're a reflection of society and
33:28we can only change as the fast as
the rest of society will change.
33:32But we're more than happy to do our part.
33:34We funded all these different
initiatives to help women in particular.
33:42In technology we have one of our partners,
33:47is working with something
called female founders.
33:50But it's imperative for
the high schools and for the universities
33:54of America to change before we'll see
the real acceleration in technology,
33:59which I gotta say is a lot better
today than it was 10 or 15 years ago.
34:05And I think if you look at
the computer science numbers,
34:08those are the best numbers
that I could find at Stanford.
34:13But you even saw they're not overwhelming.
34:15In 1983, the computer science
proportion of the computer
34:20science class here undergrad was 18%.
34:23It progressed but
in 2014 it was still only 28%.
34:28So there's tons of work for
all of us to do.
34:31That's my only point.
34:33>> So I want to take our
discussion beyond the Valley
34:36because investing outside of Silicon
Valley is become a very popular topic for
34:41a lot of people including Sequoia.
34:44Do you think this is still the best
place in the world to start a company?
34:49>> It's here and it's in China.
34:54And their trials and
tribulations involved with both places.
35:01And obviously everybody knows
about how expensive it is and
35:04the cost of living and
gross receipts taxing San Francisco and
35:08all these other impediments
that we wish weren't here.
35:12But my goodness, gracious me.
35:14Much as people here will complain and
35:17moan about different aspects
of Silicone Valley, you go
35:19to places elsewhere around the world,
they all wish they were Silicone Valley.
35:24So it's a spectacular, fantastic place
in which to start a company and then
35:33I was saying to your illustrious Dean,
before I came,
35:37while we were chatting backstage,
that I've spent the last three weeks
35:42travelling in China and Southeast Asia,
those are vibrant places.
35:47One of the very big changes, China
obviously, everybody's read about but
35:52Southeast Asia, is really pulsing
with entrepreneurial activity,
35:59and that's a big change in the last five,
six years.
36:03Everybody knows about India,
and talked about India, but
36:06Southeast Asia is surprisingly vibrant.
36:12So there are lots of the big change from
when I started in the venture business,
36:17a long time ago now,
largely Silicon Valley, and
36:21to some extent, Boston,
we had 100% market share give or
36:24take on the most important
technology companies of tomorrow.
36:29That's completely changed.
36:30So that so much of the investment now
occurs outside of the United States for
36:36a whole variety of reasons.
36:39>> So I want to get a little bit of advice
before we turn it over to the audience.
36:43So I think we're all trying to determine
how to focus our time, energy, and
36:47resources upon graduation.
36:50If you were to put yourself in
our shoes today, what problems or
36:54industries would you be focusing on maybe
another way to ask that question is,
36:59where is Sequoia going to be investing so
we can the bugs going to be.
37:06that's assuming that we
know what we're doing.
37:12I've always found,
you go to any website and
37:14every investors website despite the
Windows dressings, they all look the same,
37:19and everybody's going to invest in your,
whatever the buzz phrases of the year are,
37:25you will read them on all the sites.
37:28And today may be data science and
machine learning and
37:33artificial intelligence and
whatever the attributes are.
37:37To me, the best investments
are always the ones that
37:40don't fit in a convenient bucket.
37:45And so you think about,
I mentioned Airbnb a few minutes ago.
37:50You think about Airbnb, what bucket would
you have put three couch surfers in,
38:00And in retrospect it all looks so obvious,
they're upsetting the hotel industry and
38:05But at the time that we met the company,
it was three young
38:10founders who were sort of
sleeping on airbeds, and
38:15it was sort of pigeonholed
this very niche service,
38:19it's the young people who
would have ever imagine.
38:23And I can point to any number of
other investments that seems similar.
38:30To me it's, with year, years ago,
a Stanford, this was a yet
38:34another offshoot of the incredible fertile
Stanford campus when we invested in Young.
38:40The idea of investing in a company
that gave its service away for
38:44free this is 1995, was totally foreign.
38:49Came out of left field.
38:52So it's those investments,
38:54the ones that aren't the obvious ones
that are the really interesting ones.
38:59We invested some years ago when in TJI
in which is a drone company, in China.
39:06Nobody imagined that the time that
we invested to do I think it did,
39:11I maybe a bit off with the numbers.
39:13But $2 billion in sales, last year,
from what seem like a little, nice
39:20little consumer toy at the beginning of
the investment, but which is now becoming
39:25a company of substance particularly as
it expands into industrial applications.
39:30So it's the, or unfortunately we
weren't an early investor in Uber.
39:39luxury black car executive ride sharing.
39:45Is that ever going to become a business?
39:47If you switch the clock back ten
years whenever Uber got started.
39:50It's another one of
those sorts of examples.
39:53So that's the thing to look out for.
39:55It's the unexpected.
39:58>> I'm going to move to
the lightning round.
40:01Last chance, anyone?
40:02Okay, so I'll explain the format as we go.
40:06These are supposed to be fun.
40:07One-word answers, generally,
but a couple of lists.
40:12So prioritize the following
in order of importance.
40:15Product, team, market.
40:22>> [LAUGH]
>> Unbelievable.
40:36The greatest entrepreneur of all time is?
40:45>> Whoever invented the wheel.
40:47>> [LAUGH]
>> Wow, talk about yesteryear.
40:56The greatest individual investor
outside of the Sequoia partnership is?
41:01>> It's obvious,
you know where he is in Omaha.
41:03>> [LAUGH]
>> What is
41:07one company you passed on that
you wish you had invested in?
41:10>> I wish it was only one.
41:15We'd became late stage
investors in the company but
41:18always with, invested very good.
41:22>> What percentage of
success in VC is luck?
41:27>> [LAUGH]
>> The most
41:32underrated skill in a leader is?
41:38>> I thought you would
have said disappointing.
41:41>> What?
>> I thought you were going to say
41:42disappointing for sure.
41:43>> Listening, listening,
listening, listening.
41:47Would you rather beat Liverpool or
Benchmark?
41:55just concentrate on beating them both.
41:58>> [LAUGH]
>> Please join me in thanking
42:01Sir Michael Morris for coming today.
42:02>> [APPLAUSE]
>> Good job.
42:05>> [APPLAUSE]
>> Thanks so much.
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