$38 billion under management
Sequoia Capital HQ in Menlo Park, CA.
American venture capital firm, Sequoia Capital, was founded in 1972 by Don Valentine. At first, it was located in Menlo Park, California, where now the headquarter of the company is. Besides, Sequoia Capital has offices in 9 cities around the world. They are Singapore, Mumbai, New Delhi, Hong Kong, London, Beijing, Tel Aviv, Bengaluru. Along with it, the company manages investment funds specific to a particular region, for example, India and Southeast Asia, Israel, China.
Continue with the Sequoia Capital expansion, in 1999 it broadened its geography to Israel, and in 2005 establishes an affiliate Sequoia Capital China. In 2006 after the acquisition of the Westbridge Capital Partners, Sequoia Capital India was founded. As of now, the company’s public market value is estimated at over $3.3 billion.
The first successful investment of Sequoia Capital was Atari, the video games producer. The game Pong, designed by Atari, became the first commercially successful game. After getting acquainted with Steve Jobs, who worked in Atari, in 1977, Sequoia Capital invested in Apple as the first institutional investor. However, in a year ad a half they sold their financial actives. Electronic Arts also got from Sequoia Capital finance for founding and further development in the 1980s.
Moving to the period of the Internet, Sequoia Capital invested in companies that later transform into giants and leaders of their industries. Among them are Yahoo!, Google, Amazon, YouTube. Good at future start-ups’ success forecasting, Sequoia Capital missed the first wave of social media development, and the company refused the deal with Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook. However, in 2010, Sequoia Capital bought 10% of WhatsApp shares, then, in 3 years it was sold to Facebook and Sequoia got profit 50 times, $3bln.
For a long time, Sequoia invested in start-ups located in Silicon Valley, but the situation changed in 2016. The number of foreign deals exceeded the number of deals inside the country. The biggest success was reached in China. The Chinese office founder, Neil Shen – the founder of Ctrip, the leading Chinese touristic platform. Ctrip is valued at more than $30bln, and moreover, it is the owner of Skyscanner, in which Sequoia Capital previously invested.
Sequoia Capital is considered to be one of the most successful capital and venture fond in the world. It makes its investment in the different stages – seed funding, Series A, Series B, etc. The company was at the origins of modern venture fundings. Being rationally risky, the company is managed to keep the success and be in the top-10 venture management companies.
