Sequoia Capital – one of the largest venture capital firms – announced earlier this week that it would be splitting its global partnership into 3 separate geographic units. For example, Sequoia China will be divided from Europe and the U.S. partnership due to increasingly complex dynamics. Sequoia China and the firm’s Southeast Asian arms are going to become independent businesses by next year.
Sequoia partners Roelof Botha, Neil Shen, and Shailendra Singh issued the update through a joint message. Botha is a managing partner for Sequoia’s operations in the U.S. and Europe. And Shen oversees Sequoia China and Singh works for Sequoia’s Southeast Asia businesses.
“Our founder-focused, local-first approach has been key to our success in each region. The decision to establish teams with intimate understandings of their local networks and industries has enabled each entity to build a portfolio of category-leading companies. Sequoia China has made substantial investments in healthcare and traditional consumer sectors alongside technology investments, started buyout investments, and launched a tech/consumer public market fund, a healthcare public market fund, and an infrastructure fund. Sequoia India has been instrumental in cultivating the startup ecosystem in India and SEA, building transformative founder programs such as Surge, Spark, Pathfinders, and Guild, while also recently raising SEA-specific funds. Sequoia Capital (US/Europe launched the industry’s first Scouts program, built technology capabilities for our investors and founders, opened a European office, pioneered the Sequoia Capital Fund, and created Arc for seed-stage founders in Europe and the US,” said the firm in a statement. “It has become increasingly complex to run a decentralized global investment business. For example, each business has evolved to meet the opportunities in their markets across a wide range of sectors, as noted above. This has made using centralized back-office functions more of a hindrance than an advantage. Additionally, as each entity’s portfolio has expanded to include companies that are becoming global leaders, we’ve seen growing market confusion due to the shared Sequoia brand as well as portfolio conflicts across entities.”
This move will be completed by March 31, 2024.
