Crucible Moments - Sequoia Capital

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ServiceNow ft. Frank Slootman and Fred Luddy - From Starting Over at 50 to Dodging a $150B Mistake

Season 2 · Episode 1

Thursday, August 29, 2024 • Duration 42:42

In 2004, bankrupt after the company where he’d previously worked had imploded, Fred Luddy decided to start over as a first-time founder at age 50. His vision was to reinvent the nascent IT software field for the cloud era. What started as simple help desk replacement software would eventually become a ~$150B market cap company powering digital workflows across the enterprise—but success didn’t come easy. Initially bootstrapped and ultra-lean, the company’s infrastructure began buckling under its own success as customer demand spiked. When the legendary Frank Slootman joined as CEO to help scale the company, he describes being terrified to check his email every morning. Hear how Frank, Fred and the team stabilized the business, expanded their product offerings, and nearly made a $150B+ mistake by selling too early. Host: Roelof Botha, Sequoia Capital Featuring: Fred Luddy, Frank Slootman, Doug Leone, Pat Grady, Carl Eschenbach Transcript: https://www.sequoiacap.com/podcast/crucible-moments-servicenow/ 00:00 - Cold open 00:22 - Introduction 02:09 - Fred Luddy’s journey to coding 03:33 - Founding ServiceNow after financial ruin 07:11 - Finding product-market fit 15:16 - Finding a new CEO in Frank Slootman 22:19 - Overcoming scaling challenges 29:54 - Contemplating an acquisition offer 32:07 - Blocking the sale 38:17 - Lessons learned

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Crucible Moments Season 2: Coming August 29

Thursday, August 22, 2024 • Duration 02:30

In Season 1 of Crucible Moments, we heard from founders like PayPal’s Max Levchin, Block’s Jack Dorsey, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and more about the turning points and key decisions that shaped their journeys. Now Crucible Moments is back for another exciting season. We’ll get the unvarnished history and inside story from Tony Xu of DoorDash, Drew Houston of Dropbox, Frank Slootman of ServiceNow, Vlad Tenev of Robinhood and more. Hosted by Roelof Botha of Sequoia Capital.

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PayPal ft. Max Levchin - A merger of enemies that reshaped Silicon Valley

Season 1 · Episode 1

Thursday, September 7, 2023 • Duration 47:19

PayPal was the defining tech company of its generation, with alumni going on to start YouTube, Tesla, Yelp, LinkedIn, among many others. But the company nearly didn’t make it. The PayPal of today only exists because of how its team navigated early, unprecedented inflection points. Find out why Max Levchin now says he does “not recommend” a merger of equals to anyone, how the team pioneered CAPTCHA to fight $10M in monthly fraud that nearly sank the fledgling business, and how they maneuvered through ongoing battles with eBay on their way to an IPO. Host: Roelof Botha, Managing Partner of Sequoia Capital Featuring: Max Levchin, Michael Moritz, Jimmy Soni Transcript: https://www.sequoiacap.com/podcast/crucible-moments-paypal/

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Introducing "Crucible Moments"

Wednesday, August 30, 2023 • Duration 04:09

A podcast about the inflection points that shaped some of the most important companies of our time. Crucible moments are pivotal decisions that determine your trajectory. Hear from founders like Jack Dorsey of Block, Jensen Huang of Nvidia, and Anne Wojcicki of 23andMe about how they navigated the challenges and opportunities that defined their stories. Hosted by Roelof Botha, Managing Partner of Sequoia Capital, who has spent over 20 years building companies such as Youtube, Square, and Instagram. The content of this podcast does not constitute investment advice, an offer to provide investment advisory services, or an offer to sell or solicitation of an offer to buy an interest in any investment fund.

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Introducing "Training Data," a new podcast from Sequoia about the future of A.I.

Thursday, July 11, 2024 • Duration 51:19

Crucible Moments will be back shortly with season 2. You’ll hear from the founders of YouTube, DoorDash, Reddit, and more. In the meantime, we’d love to introduce you to a new original podcast, Training Data, where Sequoia partners learn from builders, researchers and founders who are defining the technology wave of the future: AI. The following conversation with Harrison Chase of LangChain is all about the future of AI agents—why they’re suddenly seeing a step change in performance, and why they’re key to the promise of AI. Follow Training Data wherever you listen to podcasts, and keep an eye out for Season 2 of Crucible Moments, coming soon. LangChain’s Harrison Chase on Building the Orchestration Layer for AI Agents Hosted by: Sonya Huang and Pat Grady, Sequoia Capital Mentioned: ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Models, the first cognitive architecture for agents SWE-agent: Agent-Computer Interfaces Enable Automated Software Engineering, small-model open-source software engineering agent from researchers at Princeton Devin, autonomous software engineering from Cognition V0: Generative UI agent from Vercel GPT Researcher, a research agent Language Model Cascades: 2022 paper by Google Brain and now OpenAI researcher David Dohan that was influential for Harrison in developing LangChain Transcript: https://www.sequoiacap.com/podcast/training-data-harrison-chase/

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Nvidia ft. Jensen Huang - An overnight success story 30 years in the making

Season 1 · Episode 8

Thursday, November 30, 2023 • Duration 39:23

CEO Jensen Huang tells the legendary story of Nvidia, from the company’s early days pioneering 3D graphics cards for a niche PC gaming market to powering the AI revolution as the sixth most valuable company in the world. Nvidia faced multiple near-death experiences along the way, and their so-called “diving catches,” as Jensen calls them, were some of the most dramatic business stories of the modern era. Host: Roelof Botha, Sequoia Capital Featuring: Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, Andrew Ng, Mark A. Stevens, Alfred Lin, Transcript: https://www.sequoiacap.com/podcast/crucible-moments-nvidia/

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23andMe ft. Anne Wojcicki - How a DNA startup took on the FDA and redefined health tech

Season 1 · Episode 7

Thursday, November 16, 2023 • Duration 38:45

Millions of customers have explored their genome with 23andMe. But when the company started in 2006, the idea of consumer DNA testing was heresy to the medical establishment. The FDA once even ordered 23andMe to stop selling its health testing product. The company persevered to make allies out of adversaries, and became the only FDA-approved product on the market. Learn how 23andMe defined the DNA testing category, and used its success to enter the massive new field of drug discovery. Host: Roelof Botha, Sequoia Capital Featuring: Anne Wojcicki, Richard Scheller Transcript: https://www.sequoiacap.com/podcast/crucible-moments-23andMe/

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Jawbone ft. Hosain Rahman - The rise and fall of the first wearable technology company

Season 1 · Episode 6

Thursday, November 2, 2023 • Duration 36:56

Co-founders Hosain Rahman and Alex Asseily, and Chief Creative Officer Yves Behar, recount the meteoric rise and fall of Jawbone. One of the most innovative companies of the mid 2000s, Jawbone pioneered wearable technology with UP, the first wrist-worn fitness tracker, and revolutionized sound with Jambox, the first smart wireless speaker. In one of the most dramatic turns in Silicon Valley history, the company went from a nearly $4 billion valuation to liquidation. This cautionary tale provides valuable lessons that are more relevant now than ever. Host: Roelof Botha, Sequoia Capital Featuring: Hosain Rahman, Alex Asseily, Yves Behar Transcript: https://www.sequoiacap.com/podcast/crucible-moments-jawbone/

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HubSpot ft. Brian Halligan & Dharmesh Shah - How an underdog helped invent modern marketing, and then took on Goliath

Season 1 · Episode 5

Thursday, October 19, 2023 • Duration 33:08

Founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah reveal how they took a blog started as a hobby and turned the ideas behind it into a $20+ billion success. In 2006, HubSpot upended traditional approaches to marketing by taking advantage of the the nascent internet in a new way: By capitalizing on seach engines and social media, they offered a way to pull customers in rather than pushing ads and mailers out. They coined the new category “inbound marketing.” They continued to defy conventional wisdom, deciding to serve small businesses over big enterprises, and taking on a Goliath in a new category. As the founders explain, zigging where others zag is the key to their success. Host: Roelof Botha, Sequoia Capital Featuring: Brian Halligan, Dharmesh Shah, Pat Grady, Dannie Herzberg Transcript: https://www.sequoiacap.com/podcast/crucible-moments-hubspot/

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Eventbrite ft. Julia Hartz - A thriving events company took 14 years to build and nearly disappeared in 14 days

Season 1 · Episode 4

Thursday, October 5, 2023 • Duration 45:19

What happens to an events company when every event is canceled? “Even if you have spent 14 years building something, it could truly be gone in 14 days.” After working tirelessly to revolutionize how live events are organized, this was the reality Eventbrite CEO Julia Hartz faced in March of 2020 as pandemic lockdowns went into effect, extinguishing the lifeblood of her business. She brought the same strategic thinking and grit that had led the company through its previous inflection points to rally her team and reinvent Eventbrite in the middle of a global shutdown. Host: Roelof Botha, Sequoia Capital Featuring: Julia Hartz, Kevin Hartz Transcript: https://www.sequoiacap.com/podcast/crucible-moments-eventbrite/

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Crucible Moments – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

Recent rankings

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Shared links between episodes and podcasts

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Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Apple Podcasts

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Crucible Moments – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

Recent rankings

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Shared links between episodes and podcasts

Other10

RSS feed quality and score

Publication history

Latest published episodes

Similar podcasts and content

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Other10

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Apple Podcasts

Spotify