Clarity Over Perfection in Business Evaluation

This chapter emphasizes the significance of clarity when evaluating businesses, focusing on the necessity of thorough understanding during reference checks. Using examples like Zoom and Snowflake, it illustrates how consistent storytelling and persistent inquiry can lead to informed investment decisions and proper risk assessment.

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My guest today is Pat Grady, a longtime growth investor at Sequoia and one of the firms senior leaders. Pat has been a part of a long list of legendary investments, ranging from Snowflake, Zoom, ServiceNow, Qualtrics, Okta, Hubspot, Notion, and OpenAI, among many others. There aren't many investors who reference as well at Pat, both inside and outside of his firm. We talk about investing, building an investing firm, and building enduring companies. Please enjoy this great conversation with Pat Grady.

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For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here.

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Invest Like the Best is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Invest Like the Best, visit joincolossus.com/episodes.

Past guests include Tobi Lutke, Kevin Systrom, Mike Krieger, John Collison, Kat Cole, Marc Andreessen, Matthew Ball, Bill Gurley, Anu Hariharan, Ben Thompson, and many more.

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Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com).

Show Notes:

(00:00:00) Welcome to Invest Like the Best

(00:05:48) Doug Leone's Leadership and Changes

(00:06:54) Creating Internal Pressure and Structure

(00:10:46) Sequoia's Team Values and Family Influence

(00:13:40) Assessing Founders and Investments

(00:20:28) Winning Competitive Investments

(00:24:45) Pat’s Early Career at Sequoia

(00:29:38) Memo Writing and Investment Criteria

(00:35:20) Evaluating Companies Through Three Business Criteria

(00:40:15) Building Sustainable Competitive Advantage