From the original WSJ article: "Since its founding through last year, Andreessen Horowitz had returned a total of $1.2 billion in cash to investors, net of fees. Sequoia returned more money on WhatsApp alone."
Unlike the blog states, it seems that WSJ is, in fact, using "actual, realized returns" as evidence.
VC as a fund class is literally about finding outliers. How much of that is luck is arguable* but it doesn't make any sense to ignore outliers when comparing returns.
* How did Sequoia end up as the only VC that made money from Whatsapp? It certainly wasn't an accident.
Great link thanks. I had no idea they were that effusive about venture money. Really hammers home the idea that if you have a killer tool, money will find you.
Jan and Brian were uninterested in VC or business relationships to the extent that they were impossible to contact. There was no address on their website. There were no contact details. They ignored inbound emails. There was no signage on the building. They ignored press emails. But Sequoia knew they were in Mountain View and literally had partners walking the streets doing a physical search for them in order to initiate that contact. That's a pretty amazing effort.
Additionally, Sequoia have an internal tool called Earlybird they wrote themselves that monitored mobile app stores, which is how they noticed that WhatsApp was doing so well despite the fact that it had not taken off in the USA specifically. They relied on hard data collected systematically, rather than waiting for hot Bay Area startups that the VC's friends were using to turn up on their door.
And finally Sequoia had a great name that Koum associated with success.
There's a lot of great info in this video. I love WhatsApp partly because it violates so much received valley wisdom and yet has been so successful.
Comments
From the original WSJ article: "Since its founding through last year, Andreessen Horowitz had returned a total of $1.2 billion in cash to investors, net of fees. Sequoia returned more money on WhatsApp alone."
Unlike the blog states, it seems that WSJ is, in fact, using "actual, realized returns" as evidence.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/andreessen-horowitzs-returns-tra...
WhatsApp was a hell of an outlier. I think you have to put the size of that gain down to luck.
VC as a fund class is literally about finding outliers. How much of that is luck is arguable* but it doesn't make any sense to ignore outliers when comparing returns.
* How did Sequoia end up as the only VC that made money from Whatsapp? It certainly wasn't an accident.
Could you elaborate on your last line?
Jim Goetz and Jan Koum talked about this at Startup School 2014: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-pJa11YvCs&list=PLQ-uHSnFig... starting around 8:10.
TL;DR: Sequoia didn't get that deal just by random chance.
Great link thanks. I had no idea they were that effusive about venture money. Really hammers home the idea that if you have a killer tool, money will find you.
TL;DR... so how did they get it?
Sounds like a few factors.
Jan and Brian were uninterested in VC or business relationships to the extent that they were impossible to contact. There was no address on their website. There were no contact details. They ignored inbound emails. There was no signage on the building. They ignored press emails. But Sequoia knew they were in Mountain View and literally had partners walking the streets doing a physical search for them in order to initiate that contact. That's a pretty amazing effort.
Additionally, Sequoia have an internal tool called Earlybird they wrote themselves that monitored mobile app stores, which is how they noticed that WhatsApp was doing so well despite the fact that it had not taken off in the USA specifically. They relied on hard data collected systematically, rather than waiting for hot Bay Area startups that the VC's friends were using to turn up on their door.
And finally Sequoia had a great name that Koum associated with success.
There's a lot of great info in this video. I love WhatsApp partly because it violates so much received valley wisdom and yet has been so successful.
Sequoia has 40 years worth of outliers. For almost any other fund I would agree but it's fairly typical for them.