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I would laugh at that because, while I love math and numbers, I also had a passion for business. When I was in a PhD program in statistics, Tony would say that must be like watching paint dry, in the dark, as part of his way to recruit me into LinkExchange.
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When I was contemplating going to business school after LinkExchange was sold to Microsoft, Michael Moritz (who graduated from Wharton, but never includes it in his bio) told me, “You learn more in three months at a startup than at business school.” I've been working at or with startups ever since. (This is not saying you should be lazy, get Cs, intentionally do bad things, break the law, and challenge conventional wisdom for just the sake of it.)Ī tall tale about one of my college jobs was buying whole pizzas and selling them by the slice to my roommates at Harvard. If your goal is to get straight As and never speed, you're probably not cut out to disrupt an industry, which requires original thinking, an ability to see the world differently from others, and courage to challenge conventional wisdom when it doesn't make sense. As the seed investor, Sequoia partnered with Airbnb before it was clear to all that they could design trust among strangers, making a better way to travel and creating a way for people everywhere to belong anywhere. I find a variety of products and technologies interesting, but what they have in common is that they have disruptive business models.Īirbnb started with an air mattress and a radical vision of what hospitality could mean. I joined Sequoia because I had worked with Sequoia partners for a long time as an operator, and almost all Sequoia partners have worked at, started, and been part of the management team at companies that have done extraordinary things. I’ve been fortunate enough to help scale three companies from the founding stages to profitable businesses and through successful acquisitions.