Inside Sequoia's Investment Committee | How the SpaceX & Citadel Deals Went Down | Julien Bek
Aug 24, 2026 · 1:28:28
Julien Bek, a Partner at Sequoia Capital, says Sequoia wins by hunting with conviction, not waiting for inbound calls, and shares founder-reading lessons from Don Valentine, Doug Leone, Pat Grady, Alfred Lin, and Shaun Maguire. He highlights Leone's 'worst reference' question, Lin's warning not to mistake an outlier operator for an outlier founder, and Maguire's ELO method for calibrating references. Bek also explains how asking 'why' five times exposed a fraudulent founder, how his read changes by country (French/German references get 1-2 extra points; Americans get subtracted), and why he missed Anton Osaka of Lovable. On AI, he argues agents become the new customer, AEO parallels SEO, and the next trillion-dollar company will be software masquerading as services. He tells how his mother invested in Revolut at a ~$200M valuation, now worth over $100B.
