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" During dark times, real entrepreneurs come out. They are not competing with 10 look-alike companies for engineering talent, so it's a great time to invest and help build companies. "
Douglas Leone
Time
Great
Dark
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" We want people who come from humble backgrounds and have a need to win. "
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Want
" A tremendous chief executive in a small market will never be great. All great companies start with great markets. "
Douglas Leone
Start
Great
Will
" If you choose a market that already exists, say, networking equipment, you have to compete with an established company like Cisco. Even if your product is marginally better, Cisco can fudge it and outsell you. "
Douglas Leone
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Networking
" We like companies that can get big and powerful on $50 million or less and not two, three, four or five billion. "
Douglas Leone
Two
Powerful
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" Our business is all about helping someone - a founder, a CEO - building a great business. It's not about seeing our names in the press. "
Douglas Leone
Building
Names
Seeing
" Give me an entrepreneur with a lot of courage, gusto and who iterates rapidly, and I will back that person day in and day out. "
Douglas Leone
Me
Back
Courage
" I routinely make trips to China and India where we have offices to continue to maintain the linkages that are necessary to run a successful business. "
Douglas Leone
China
India
Successful
" We see China as a large market opportunity with similar cyclical economic cycles that occur throughout every economy. "
Douglas Leone
See
Economy
Market
" Raise as little as you can to get you to something that you can show - plus maybe a quarter or two so you have a little bit of cushion - and then raise some more money. Raise as little - not as much - as you can because that's the most expensive equity you're going to sell. "
Douglas Leone
Money
You
Two
" Crystal-clear thinking is one of the things we look for - not a fancy slide pitch, but crystal-clear thinking. "
Douglas Leone
Things
Fancy
Look
" We have co-opted seed funds. You know, Y Combinator, that was completely our money. We have secret handshakes with a whole bunch of people. Very dangerous, because word gets out that so-and-so's money is Sequoia's money, that would not be a good thing. "
Douglas Leone
You
Money
Know
" If you start a successful company in China at 11 A.M., by 2 P.M. there's three more companies like it. "
Douglas Leone
Company
Successful
Three
" If I could press a button and have all of Sequoia Capital on the Midas List, I would choose to do that over a honoring a single individual. "
Douglas Leone
Choose
Single
Press
" In a globalized world, one application can spread like wildfire and there's only one winning company, which means you have to invest more than you've ever had. "
Douglas Leone
Winning
Like
Company
" Be incredibly, ruthlessly selfish with your equity. "
Douglas Leone
Equity
Your
Selfish
" We work as a team. I think having the individual being shown as a star actually creates problems internally. We encourage all our investors to work as a team for the benefit of the founders. "
Douglas Leone
Star
Problems
Team
" We look at the number of engineers coming out of India; we look at the growth of the economy, and it's clear that India is a place we want to be. "
Douglas Leone
Place
Look
India
" I was working on boats as a teenager, sweating like a pig during a summer job. "
Douglas Leone
Pig
Job
Boats
" There's a number of companies clearly that we wish we had invested in either at the early or at the moderate stage. "
Douglas Leone
Either
Early
Wish
" The venture industry is both quite vibrant and quite competitive. "
Douglas Leone
Venture
Industry
Competitive
" You have to be willing to risk things; otherwise, somebody else will put you out of business. "
Douglas Leone
Business
Out
Risk
" We've tried to build Sequoia Capital with an eye for the long term that we really look for in the companies we like to partner with. "
Douglas Leone
Look
Build
Eye
" I'll say this: I can't think of one instance in my 20 years in venture capital in which I have wanted to sell a company before the entrepreneur. "
Douglas Leone
Think
Years
Company
" You meet with a CEO or founder. You talk about sales, engineering, product management and give some ideas or suggestions. And the founder quickly understands that you really can help them both operationally and from a strategic standpoint. "
Douglas Leone
Meet
Help
Ideas
" Guys like me on the investor side are a dime a dozen. "
Douglas Leone
Me
Guys
Investor