TBH I have seen some of this behavior but I think it’s unfair to call it the “Sequoia scam”
This has happened ~5 times during my 7 years at Sequoia
What happens is other investors are willing to pay a high for a hot company (usually AI)
That’s multiples above what we’re willing to pay
So we try to decouple a) company building partner from b) capital
And this leads to two tranches at different valuations in close succession
I’m not aware of anything shady here but if you’ve seen it I’d love to know about it
VC is a repeated game so it just doesn’t make sense for us to try to mislead people
And if anyone has I’d love to know about it
And in general congrats on the success of Mercor — it was a miss for us
the “sequoia scam” is worse than a single horror story…
in the last 6 mo’s ive seen a half dozen rounds where sequoia invests in 2 tranches. everyone pretends they only did the higher valuation. founders misrepresent this to their employees & then shop it to angels too
sequoia’s blended price is blatantly deceptive - 50% of the one projected to the market 🤔