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The Thesis
Valentine, the founder of Sequoia Capital, backed Cisco Systems when it was building networking equipment in a Stanford couple's living room, betting that computer networking would become essential infrastructure.
The Story
Don Valentine, the legendary founder of Sequoia Capital, invested in Cisco Systems in 1987 when the company was little more than a networking project being run by a Stanford husband-and-wife team (Leonard Bosack and Sandy Lerner) out of their home. Valentine saw that as computers proliferated, the need to connect them into networks would become essential — and whoever built the best networking hardware would control critical infrastructure.
Cisco went public in 1990 and grew to become one of the most valuable companies in the world, powering the internet backbone. Valentine's investment generated returns exceeding $2 billion for Sequoia and was one of the defining investments of Silicon Valley's networking era. Valentine's broader legacy at Sequoia — which also backed Apple, Oracle, Yahoo, Google, YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp, and many others — established the firm as arguably the most successful venture capital firm in history.
Key Insight
Invest in the infrastructure that enables a revolution, not just the applications that run on top of it — picks and shovels during a gold rush.
“I'm interested in people who have a really big idea. I'm not interested in features or incremental improvement.”
Don Valentine
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