ByIain Martin,
Forbes Staff.
Midas List investors Alfred Lin and Pat Grady will take over the reins at Sequoia Capital, one of Silicon Valley’s oldest and most famous venture capital funds, after the current “senior steward” Roelof Botha announced he was stepping back.
Botha said in a statement that he would move into a new role “advising the partnership” and would continue to represent the fund on the board of companies. Botha will be succeeded by Lin, who has co-led Sequoia's early-stage investments since 2017, and Grady, who has co-led its growth investments since 2015.
The leadership shakeup caps a turbulent period for Silicon Valley’s leading venture fund, which manages more than $56 billion in assets. In 2021, the launch of Sequoia’s "permanent" capital structure meant to hold stakes in portfolio companies after they’d gone public coincided with a jarring correction in the value of private and public tech companies from their pandemic highs. Botha then had to weather the blowup of a then prized Sequoia investment crypto firm FTX, which was once valued at $32 billion, but imploded in November 2022. And in 2023, Sequoia’s U.S. division formally split from its stand-alone operations in China and India.
