Sequoia Capital

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Channel • 3 Shows

Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship

Updated Biweekly
Business

Business

Updated Biweekly
Technology

Technology

Updated Weekly

DEC 4

Palo Alto Networks ft Nir Zuk & Nikesh Arora - The Grudge That Transformed Cybersecurity

In the early 2000s, the cybersecurity industry was dominated by incumbents focused on high margins, not innovation. Nir Zuk tells the story of how, frustrated by this stagnant culture, he set out on his own with a radical idea: the Next-Generation Firewall. His vision was to unify dozens of security functions into a single, intelligent platform delivered via cloud—an approach everyone thought was crazy. Palo Alto Networks started as a disruptive startup with Nir sporting a "Check Point Killer" vanity license plate, and grew to dominate cybersecurity. We explore the crucible moments that defined its path: the controversial decision to insist on being a new kind of "firewall" vs. a “firewall helper,” the challenge of scaling a hyper-growth company, and the critical pivot from building everything in-house to current CEO Nikesh Arora’s aggressive acquisition strategy that remade the company for the cloud era. Nir, Nikesh, and the core leadership team offer a masterclass in product conviction, strategic transformation, and the courage to disrupt yourself before the market does it for you. Featuring: Nir Zuk, Nikesh Arora, Lee Klarich, Rajiv Batra, Mark McLaughlin, Jim Goetz, Asheem Chandra Hosted by: Roelof Botha, Sequoia Capital

Dec 4

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47 min
DEC 16

Why the Next AI Revolution Will Happen Off-Screen: Samsara CEO Sanjit Biswas

Sanjit Biswas is one of the rare founders who has scaled AI in the physical world – first with Meraki, and now with Samsara, a $20B+ public company with sensors deployed across millions of vehicles and job sites. Capturing 90 billion miles of driving data each year, Samsara operates at a scale matched only by a small handful of companies. Sanjit discusses why physical AI is fundamentally different from cloud-based AI, from running inference on two- to ten-watt edge devices to managing the messy diversity of real-world data—weather, road conditions, and the long tail of human behavior. He also shares how advances in foundation models unlock new capabilities like video reasoning, why distributed compute at the edge still beats centralized data centers for many autonomy workloads, and how AI is beginning to coach frontline workers—not just detect risk, but recognize good driving and improve fuel efficiency. Sanjit also explains why connectivity, sensors, and compute were the original “why now” for Samsara, and how those compounding curves will reshape logistics, field service, construction, and every asset-heavy industry. Hosted by Sonya Huang and Pat Grady, Sequoia Capital

Dec 16

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38 min
DEC 18

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon: What Startup Founders Get Wrong About the CEO Job

David Solomon, CEO of Goldman Sachs, says that no easy decisions reach the CEO’s desk - only “51/49” decisions. When I was leading HubSpot, I described the job as “choosing between two shitty options.” David discusses some of the tough calls he’s had to make in the CEO seat, including the difficult decision to wind down Goldman's consumer banking ambitions. His perspective coming from a 156-year old banking giant is a little different than the common Silicon Valley wisdom. Hear why he thinks experience is vastly underrated in Silicon Valley, why "smart enough" matters more than being the smartest person in the room, and why serendipity and timing play bigger roles in being a great CEO than people realize. David reflects on mentorship from Lloyd Blankfein and Hank Paulson and how he thinks apprenticeship culture will evolve with AI. There are some great, unexpected lessons here for founders who are scaling, confronting the messy reality of building enduring companies.

Dec 18

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57 min
OCT 23

Zipline ft Keller Cliffton - Reinventing Delivery with Instant Drone Transport

In 2014, Keller Cliffton made an audacious pivot: shut down his robotic toy company and rebuild it as an autonomous drone delivery system for life-saving medical supplies. Investors were skeptical: The team knew nothing about drones, healthcare, or logistics. But they pushed forward anyway. This is the story of Zipline's journey from near-death to delivering blood to remote hospitals in Rwanda, battling volatile weather and regulatory hurdles, and eventually becoming a global leader in autonomous delivery: This year Zipline began delivering household items directly to front doors with its new Platform 2 in the US for the likes of Walmart and Chipotle. From fixing broken launchers at 3 AM before the Rwandan president's visit to winning unprecedented FAA approval, Zipline's founders bet everything—multiple times—on their vision. Their story proves that if you just keep going, even when everyone's written you off, you can build something truly transformational. Host: Roelof Botha, Sequoia Capital Featuring: Keller Cliffton, Keenan Wyrobek, Ryan Oxenhorn, Maggie Jim, Alfred Lin

Oct 23

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46 min
NOV 20

Bolt ft. Markus Villig - From Bootstrapping in Estonia to a Global Leader in Mobility

At 19, Markus Villig borrowed €5,000 from his parents to fix Estonia's broken taxi system. What happened next defied every conventional startup playbook. Markus started by making fleet dispatch software for local taxi companies. But when it became clear they weren’t embracing the on-demand revolution, he pivoted the business to ride-hailing for drivers, competing directly against what had been his core customer. The product took off in Estonia. But when Bolt's first expansion into Western Europe nearly bankrupted the company, Markus and team made another counterintuitive pivot: they built a data model that pointed to African cities no one else was targeting. They launched in Johannesburg remotely with a university student and a credit card. While investors warned against emerging markets, Bolt's data proved them wrong. This episode chronicles Bolt's inflection points to become the number-one ridehailing and delivery app across much of Europe, Africa and the Middle East by treating expansion as "a portfolio of bets" and staying ruthlessly pragmatic about what works. Featuring: Markus Villig, Jevgeni Kabanov, Pavel Karagjaur, Andrew Reed Hosted by: Roelof Botha, Sequoia Capital

Nov 20

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43 min
NOV 6

Supercell ft Ilkka Paananen - How an Early Pivot Led to ‘Clash of Clans’ and ‘Brawl Stars’

Founder and CEO Ilkka Paananen set out to create a different kind of game company—one where the game development teams would have decision-making power, not upper management. Ilkka recalls the early decision to scrap their first game and the entire cross-platform strategy that had landed them a Series A financing in order to make a counterintuitive pivot and focus exclusively on mobile. The decision launched one of gaming's most remarkable success stories: By obsessing over quality and treating failures as learning opportunities, Supercell created enduring hits like “Clash of Clans,” “Hay Day,” and “Brawl Stars,” and defined a new standard for mobile gaming. But success brought new challenges. By 2023, Supercell had slipped from the top 10 mobile publishers for the first time in a decade. Ilkka reveals how the company reinvented itself yet again to set a record-breaking year in 2024, and discusses Supercell’s future in the AI era. Featuring: Ilkka Paananen, Maya Hoffree, Joost van Dreunen Hosted by: Roelof Botha, Sequoia Capital

Nov 6

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43 min
DEC 10

The Rise of Generative Media: fal's Bet on Video, Infrastructure, and Speed

fal is building the infrastructure layer for the generative media boom. In this episode, founders Gorkem Yurtseven, Burkay Gur, and Head of Engineering Batuhan Taskaya explain why video models present a completely different optimization problem than LLMs, one that is compute-bound, architecturally volatile, and changing every 30 days. They discuss how fal's tracing compiler, custom kernels, and globally distributed GPU fleet enable them to run more than 600 image and video models simultaneously, often faster than the labs that trained them. The team also shares what they’re seeing from the demand side: AI-native studios, personalized education, programmatic advertising, and early engagement from Hollywood. They argue that generative video is following a trajectory similar to early CGI—initial skepticism giving way to a new medium with its own workflows, aesthetics, and economic models.Hosted by Sonya Huang, Sequoia Capital

Dec 10

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1h 2m
NOV 13

Parker Conrad’s Revenge Fantasy

I didn’t think Parker Conrad would get up off the mat when he got ousted from his previous startup, Zenefits. No one in Silicon Valley did. Instead, Parker let his rage propel him into an all-consuming mission to prove the haters wrong and build Rippling, a $17 billion juggernaut that blows his prior success out of the water. Parker has advice for founders: from productively harnessing the chip on your shoulder, to maintaining fast operational velocity to why you need founder-minded people on your team instead of manager-minded people—even among your managers. And yes, he spills the dirt on Deel. Parker is one of the new greats who is tearing up the old CEO rulebook and writing his own. - Brian Halligan, Sequoia Capital

Nov 13

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1h 17m
NOV 11

How Google’s Nano Banana Achieved Breakthrough Character Consistency

When Google launched Nano Banana, it instantly became a global phenomenon, introducing an image model that finally made it possible for people to see themselves in AI-generated worlds. In this episode, Nicole Brichtova and Hansa Srinivasan, the product and engineering leads behind Nano Banana, share the story behind the model’s creation and what it means for the future of visual AI. Nicole and Hansa discuss how they achieved breakthrough character consistency, why human evaluation remains critical for models that aim to feel right, and how “fun” became a gateway to utility. They explain the craft behind Gemini’s multimodal design, the obsession with data quality that powered Nano Banana’s realism, and how user creativity continues to push the technology in unexpected directions—from personal storytelling to education and professional design. The conversation explores what comes next in visual AI, why accessibility and imagination must evolve together, and how the tools we build can help people capture not just reality but possibility. Hosted by: Stephanie Zhan and Pat Grady, Sequoia Capital

Nov 11

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44 min
DEC 2

Why IDEs Won't Die in the Age of AI Coding: Zed Founder Nathan Sobo

Nathan Sobo has spent nearly two decades pursuing one goal: building an IDE that combines the power of full-featured tools like JetBrains with the responsiveness of lightweight editors like Vim. After hitting the performance ceiling with web-based Atom, he founded Zed and rebuilt from scratch in Rust with GPU-accelerated rendering. Now with 170,000 active developers, Zed is positioned at the intersection of human and AI collaboration. Nathan discusses the Agent Client Protocol that makes Zed "Switzerland" for different AI coding agents, and his vision for fine-grained edit tracking that enables permanent, contextual conversations anchored directly to code—a collaborative layer that asynchronous git-based workflows can't provide. Nathan argues that despite terminal-based AI coding tools visual interfaces for code aren't going anywhere, and that source code is a language designed for humans to read, not just machines to execute. Hosted by Sonya Huang and Pat Grady, Sequoia Capital

Dec 2

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40 min

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