Sequoia's two-faced fundraising
Remember Sequoia Capital, the once-boisterous Google backer which has turned gloomy of late? It turns out that Sequoia's prepare-for-the-worst message wasn't meant for everyone. In September, Sequoia raised $1.7 billion in two new funds from its limited partners, including the $929.5 million U.S. Growth Fund. It alone accounted for 11 percent of the $8.1 billion venture capitalists raised in the third quarter. But that money is going into new startups.Venture capital firms raise separate funds over time. Typically, investments in the same startup come from the same fund; VCs don't invest all of a fund at once, reserving some money in the original fund for these follow-up financings. So the new fund is a separate pool of money from the one Sequoia will use to fund its current portfolio — the companies whose CEOs were recently summoned by Sequoia to a summit meeting to hear all about the need to cut costs and become self-sustaining. This advice was the complete opposite of what Sequoia was telling CEOs earlier this year, which was to grow at all costs and emulate Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis, who freely admits his company isn't worrying about revenues. What Sequoia really should have been telling its startups: We told you to spend what you have, as aggressively as possible. Now we have money, and you don't. That's your problem.