@jamesfly
Partner @Sequoia | racket sport enthusiast | 🇨🇦
Y Combinator @ycombinatorAfter hearing feedback from Canadian founders in our network, we’ve decided to add Canada back to our list of accepted countries of incorporation. Going forward, YC will once again invest in US, Canada, Cayman, and Singapore corporations.
Ben Liu @BenjamineYLiu
Sequoia Capital @sequoiaAnnouncing No Limit: a bot building tournament hosted by @Sequoia, @citsecurities and @OpenAI. Teams of 1 or 2 get 60 minutes to build a pokerbot from scratch. Agents play thousands of games across six scored rounds. Open to university students and recent grads (‘25 or ‘26). Regionals in Boston, Pittsburgh and the Bay Area in early November. Top five teams from each fly to the Finals. $100K grand prize.
Isaiah @ilboone@useblacksmith is a breakout company. thrilled to lead their series C
Steven Schwartz 🦅 @culturedWhop has raised $200M in Series D funding at a $5.1B valuation, backed by @sequoia and @shopify. It really feels like we are barely touching the tip of the iceberg in a market larger than anyone can imagine. We first launched Whop as a better way for us to sell sneaker bots, one of the most niche types of desktop software out there. Total TAM? Probably $20,000 per day. Who cares, tiny market. But, what people discounted is the idea that there were actually 70,000 other markets exactly like that one. Beyond the investment itself, I am especially excited to welcome legendary silicon valley investor @dougleone to our board of directors. Doug and the sequoia team are nothing but a brilliant, resourceful, and principled group of people. My co-founder Cameron and I started building on Shopify when we were 13 years old. Shopify is one of the most impactful all-in-one cloud ecosystems ever created; @tobi has pioneered modern entrepreneurship the way we know it and we are thrilled to have him in our corner. We have a tenet at Whop to be the dumbest in the room and I am very grateful that this has recently become a lot easier. We are focused on markets, scale economies, and progressive media. If that is up your alley, please message me directly. The $200M raised will support our expansion as we build economic infrastructure for the next century, continuing on our mission of delivering everyone an income.
Josh @joshavata
Chamath Palihapitiya @chamath“We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models.” Dario makes the case to stop open source and concentrate enormous technological and economic power with Anthropic.
Dev Ittycheria @dittycheriaBeing a founder is one of the loneliest roles there is. Everyone's livelihood rides on your decisions, but no one else carries the same weight of responsibility. The hardest calls are made in isolation, and you own the outcome either way. The job is only getting harder. AI is changing what companies build, what small teams can do, how they reach customers, and the capital required to scale. The rate of change is accelerating, so the advantage goes to whoever learns and adapts fastest. Yet the decisions that determine whether a company lives or dies haven't changed. Nailing product-market fit. Constructing an effective go-to-market engine. Building a cohesive leadership team that can scale. Knowing when to raise, and how to allocate capital you may never get a second chance to deploy. Get these wrong, and no technology saves you. Few firms have helped founders answer those questions longer, or better, than Sequoia. For over fifty years, it has backed founders early and stayed with them as they built enduring companies. What's struck me most, though, isn't the track record. It's the institution. Sequoia has treated the firm as something to be perpetuated, not a vehicle for individual partners. It approached succession with unusual care and reinvented itself as markets shifted. That mindset is why it endured while firms that once stood beside it disappeared. I've seen how they operate up close. My relationship with Sequoia goes back 16 years. I met Doug Leone in 2010, and for over 11 years I worked closely with Roelof Botha at MongoDB, where Sequoia was our largest investor. I saw firsthand how they behaved when we were winning and when we faced our hardest calls. The advice was thoughtful, the feedback direct, the support consistent. They understood that being a good partner doesn't mean always agreeing with you. It means being honest, staying engaged, and prioritizing the company's long-term interests. After nearly three decades of building, leading, and investing in technology companies, I'm joining Sequoia as a Senior Advisor. As both an operator and an investor, I've lived through the questions founders face. Helping the next generation answer them is exactly where I want to spend my next chapter.
