# Roelof Botha

Member of the Board of Directors, Mahalo

Managing Partner at Sequoia Capital

**Location:** San Francisco, California
**Gender:** Male
**Focus areas:** The unconventional. So many times, I’ve led an investment and been made fun of. YouTube. Instagram. MongoDB. There's a little defiance in saying, “We'll show you!” I remember in 2001, when I was at PayPal, there was an article titled “Earth to Palo Alto.” It said we were deranged, we didn’t know what we were doing. In the meantime, I was inside the building, knowing that we were months away from being profitable and on our way to being a public company.

There’s something intriguing to me about somebody who's an original thinker, who is quirky, and maybe an outsider. I love spending time with people like that. Often, I judge based on how I feel when I meet someone the second time. With most people, you can have a pretty interesting conversation once. The real test is the second conversation—do I lose interest? Or does my imagination start to run off as I think about what this company can become, and understand the depth and significance of the person’s idea? There are few things as exhilarating as sitting in a room with a founder and riffing with them on their idea.

## About

I’ve always thought, “What can I do that opens up possibilities?” I grew up in South Africa and went to an Afrikaans high school, and we didn't speak English at home. But I pushed myself to go to an English-speaking university, and that opened up a door. Then I chose to work for McKinsey, because I thought it would open another door and maybe I’d get a chance to work overseas. I was reading about what was happening in Silicon Valley in the mid 90s, before I came to the U.S. Already, I'm starting to see the beginnings of the internet. Did I fathom how big it would be? Absolutely not. I didn’t know what venture capital was. I didn’t know that I would join a startup. I just had an intuition that I needed to be here. A friend of mine introduced me to Elon in 1999 and I joined PayPal. Then when Mike Moritz asked me to come interview at Sequoia, that was just another door opening. Where might this one lead? Whenever I interview people, I ask about those key moments in somebody’s life where they've made career decisions. And I think about companies in the same way—there are these crucible moments that have an enormous bearing on ultimate outcomes.

> If you’re going to be really successful in this business, you have to be contrarian—and right.

## Full profile

Sign in to see Roelof's full profile, with contact & links, date of birth, experience, education, portfolio, and colleagues at Sequoia Capital: [Roelof Botha on Zero G Talent](https://zerogtalent.com/people/roelof-botha)

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