39: Andrew Reed - Don't Flinch
Full transcript and links: https://dialectic.fm/andrew-reed. Andrew Reed (X, Website, Sequoia) is a growth investor at Sequoia Capital, where he has invested in companies including Robinhood, Figma, Klarna, Phantom, Vanta, and ElevenLabs. He is quietly one of the best growth investors of his generation. We begin with how Andrew's competitiveness and humanity coexist—the twin brother rivalry, the football player who also did musicals, the Goldman analyst who came to value people over spreadsheets. He also shares how an early lack of confidence helped him become a great observer of people and situations. We talk through his approach to investing: why spreadsheets are “always wrong” in one direction, how he underwriters revenue growth, and what he sees in the world-beaters he invests in. We discuss several of his most formative investments—Robinhood as a 27-year-old’s first check, and again during the first week of COVID; Figma at a price people thought was insane; and a 14-second conviction on Vanta’s—and what each taught him about conviction, timing, and not flinching. Andrew shares his perspective on serving as a board member, knowing when to double down, closing deals, and how craft can be a commercial input. We also talk extensively about Sequoia Capital and its legendary leaders, from Don Valentine, to Doug Leone and Mike Moritz, to newly-appointed Co-Steward Pat Grady. Andrew reflects on what it means to apprentice at an institution where greatness is the expectation and the champagne toast lasts five minutes.
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Speaker A: But it's February 2014 was when the WhatsApp-Facebook deal was announced. And that was like a $4 billion-ish gain for Sequoia. Speaker B: That's the bar. Speaker A: Yeah. Speaker B: Welcome to the company. Speaker A: Yeah. And it was obviously that was amazing. And then literally, you know, email goes out saying, you know, meet in the— we were in this dingy office. We were— it was like Sequoia's longtime office. Meet in the lobby at noon for like a champagne toast. It's like, oh, champagne toast. It was literally 5 minutes long.
And then everyone goes back to their desk and just keeps working. And that was an interesting moment. I don't know what to take from it besides like Jim Goetz is a legend and also that like, yeah, greatness is sort of expected, you know, opportunities that you're really excited about reveal themselves highly infrequently and never at opportune times. You know, I dreamed— I grew up around New York City. I had dreams of, you know, facing— and I graduated high school in 2008. I remember I read The Big Short right when it came out and I had to go, how am I going to react to like a crisis in finance?
I picture myself on Park Avenue wheeling and dealing, going to a boardroom, making a deal happen when, you know, things were blowing up. And then you, you know, that's how you envision it in your head. And like, I really wanted to be a great investor. I like imagined myself in the moment so many times. What it actually looked like was I just bought a house. It had a pool outside. There was no furniture in the house. We were locked down because of COVID I was doing circles around my pool talking to Vlad and Beiju about this investment when, you know, the market was gapping down 5 points every single day.
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