AI Hype, Competition, and Founder Pressure

Sequoia Partner Alfred Lin joins Sourcery to share how one of the world’s most iconic venture funds, which has distributed over $43B to investors since 2020, continues to back outlier founders at the earliest stages. Sequoia just launched its latest early stage funds: Seed Fund VI: $200M and Venture Fund XIX: $750M, to continue partnering with the next generation of outlier founders at the start of their journey.

Sitting at Number 1 on the Midas list two years in a row, Alfred goes deep to share Sequoia’s company-building philosophy with stories from OpenAI, DoorDash, Kalshi, Commure, Zipline, and more.

Alfred explains how Sequoia thinks about partnering with founders four standard deviations above the mean, why efficiency matters more than capital, the role of pivots in scaling, and how to distinguish quality revenue from experimental revenue in today’s AI-driven market.

Topics include:

• Sequoia’s founder-first investing philosophy

• How Alfred helped Kalshi navigate regulatory battles

• DoorDash’s efficiency playbook vs. Uber Eats

• Zipline’s “Big P” pivot to medical drone delivery

• Revenue quality, AI hype cycles, and Sequoia’s outlook

Alfred Lin: https://x.com/Alfred_Lin

Molly O’Shea: ⁠https://x.com/MollySOShea⁠

Sourcery: ⁠https://x.com/sourceryvc

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• Turing—Turing delivers top-tier talent, data, and tools to help AI labs improve model performance—and enables enterprises to turn those models into powerful, production-ready systems. https://turing.com/sourcery

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• Kalshi—The largest prediction market and the only legal platform in the US where people can trade directly on the outcomes of future events: https://kalshi.com/sourcery

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(00:00) Alfred Lin, Sequoia

(02:37) What makes an “outlier founder”

(04:15) Bespoke founder support: lessons from Airbnb & DoorDash

(07:10) Stories from Kalshi: regulation, elections & more markets

(14:00) Little “p” pivots vs. Big “P” pivots

(14:17) Zipline’s dramatic pivot to medical drones

(18:00) DoorDash vs. Uber: efficiency as a weapon

(19:49) When to pour capital into growth

(20:07) Growth vs. true product-market fit

(22:19) The race to $100M revenue – healthy or not?

(25:55) Pilot/experimental revenue vs. real ARR

(27:26) Breaking down revenue quality: SaaS vs. hardware vs. services

(29:00) AI cycle, hype, and founder pressure

(31:36) Why Sequoia expects more from this generation of founders

(34:21) Closing thoughts: measuring company velocity, not just revenue