Sequoia names Alfred Lin and Pat Grady as new stewards — WSJ takes shots at Roloff Bota's write-offs
Nov 5, 2025
Key Points
- Sequoia Capital names Alfred Lin and Pat Grady as new stewards, doubling the leadership role after Roloff Bota's departure as head of Sequoia US since 2017.
- Wall Street Journal critic Roloff Winkler attacked Bota's Bird and 23andMe investments as write-offs, but Andreessen Horowitz's Scott Kupor countered that venture math requires large losses alongside outsized wins.
- Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire argues funds with write-off rates below 40% aren't taking enough risk, underscoring that venture's returns come from concentrated winners, not downside minimization.
Summary
Sequoia Capital appointed Alfred Lin and Pat Grady as new stewards alongside outgoing steward Roloff Bota, expanding the role from one person to two. Bota stepped down after leading Sequoia US since 2017. On a podcast with Jack Altman, he said there is more talent available than interesting companies to build and called venture a "return-free risk," signaling concerns about capital deployment in the current environment.
Wall Street Journal reporter Rolf Winkler criticized Bota's track record, citing his $300 million investment in Bird and $250 million in 23andMe as "zeros." Scott Kupor at Andreessen Horowitz countered that finance reporters covering venture should understand the asset class better. Venture is not about downside minimization, Kupor argued, and Sequoia and Bota have generated strong returns for LPs overall. He added that Bird and 23andMe both went public, so the actual outcomes may not have been total wipeouts depending on when Sequoia sold or took secondary proceeds.
Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire noted that Sequoia distributed over $50 billion while Bota was running the firm. He also emphasized that Bota coached him to look at write-off rates, arguing that any fund with a write-off rate below 40% wasn't taking enough risk. This counterintuitive standard reflects how venture math works at scale.
Pat Grady's portfolio includes ServiceNow, Zoom, HubSpot, Okta, and Snowflake from the traditional SaaS era, plus Harvey, OpenEI, and OpenAI from the AI wave. Sarah Guo, founder of Conviction, praised the appointments and noted that Sequoia's historical motto of "we are only as good as our next investment" suggests the firm remains in strong hands.
Winkler's critique amounts to either trash-talk or a fundamental misunderstanding of how venture returns work. The underlying tension is that legacy media often misses the nuances of venture math, where large write-offs coexist with outsized returns on winners.