At 69, a Silicon Valley Legend Came Back as a Beginner
In late August, 90 days into his return to Sequoia, Doug Leone said AI felt further away than when he started, and he was scared.
David Senra · Doug Leone on Sequoia, Fear, Great Founders & Starting Over at 69Thirty days after Pat Grady and Alfred Lin, the two partners who took over as Sequoia's leaders after Roelof Botha stepped down, showed up at Doug Leone's house without warning.
Leone, the longtime investor who had led Sequoia Capital, the venture firm that backs startups, before retiring at 65, said he didn't "know why they wanted to see" him. They asked if he would come back. He said yes on the spot.
At 69, Leone was returning to a firm he once ran, starting over as a beginner in an industry being remade by artificial intelligence. He calls the change the most radical he has seen, an industrial revolution kind of shift.
That afternoon, they worked out a return “on a single sheet of paper,” Leone said. He agreed to attend partners meetings, rejoin the inner circle, help navigate difficult moments, and make a couple of investments.
He asked for 90 days to do nothing but get calibrated. At that check-in, he said he was panicked.
Sequoia gave him the title of chairman. In front of the firm's investors, the pensions and charities whose money Sequoia invests, he brushed it aside. He said the title was a bunch of nonsense, and that what he really is is a low-level analyst who has to prove himself.
When his partners asked how he felt, he said he felt good for nothing. AI, he said, had gotten further away from him than when he started 90 days earlier.
Over a weekend back from vacation, he saw a memo for a startup with nothing built that wanted to raise money at a $10 billion valuation. He wondered if it was a joke, or if the partners were teasing him. It was not a joke.
He said he has never seen revenue grow this fast, or prices like this. He joked, “all you have to do is add three zeros,” adding that it was more complicated than that.
He said he was scared, because he had not done anything yet.
He told a partner that if he still felt irrelevant at the one-year mark, he would step aside on his own. Leone said he will “never give up out of fear,” only “out of good taste and kindness” to his partners.
In this return, he said, it is all about performance and the results at the end. He still has to show it.
Questions people ask
What does Sequoia Capital do?
Sequoia Capital is a venture capital firm founded in 1972. It raises money from institutions like pensions, endowments, and charities, then invests that money in young companies in exchange for ownership. It backed Apple, Google, Cisco, Nvidia, and many others, and profits when those startups grow or go public.
Why did Leone retire in the first place?
Leone stepped down as Sequoia's leader at 65 because he saw himself as a hired manager, not the founder, and did not want an old leader lingering around a new one. He cut back from ten company boards to six after several companies were sold. Retirement left him restless, which is why a surprise invitation to return appealed to him.
Why does AI feel like an industrial revolution to investors?
AI systems can now write, code, analyze, and serve customers, which changes both new startups and older businesses at once. That creates unusually fast revenue growth and unusually high startup prices, with companies raising billions before they have finished products. For older investors, it also means the winning founders, ideas, and skills look different than before.