Sequoia led their one of their rounds, everyone assumed sequoia did enough due diligence, everyone goes in and fills the round; it's assumed its a trustworthy platform for retail
That's exactly how most funds operate. They don't want to spend the time and money to do due diligence so they just wait around for one of the bigger funds to supposedly do the due diligence. So if they see them invest, they will join the round. it's so much easier to fill out a round one you get your first big VC on board.
I honestly feel Sequoia should be held partially responsible for funding and marketing such a blatant criminal enterprise. I'm a little tired of these venture capitalists claiming all innonence when they should have a burden of responsibility. They want all the upsides and none of the downsides to throwing millions at people.
They could be held partially responsible as they could have their fund LPs sue them for negligence, especially if they had any materials detailing that they did diligence.
They won’t be though, because everyone would be afraid for future repercussions. That said, they’re on a list of VC firms I would hesitate to take calls from going forward.
Plus VC get the most insane tax break, ability to roll over some percent of their gains tax free into perpetuity until they withdraw, the withdrawal gets taxed. I understand that helps compensate for risk, but it also means they can swing at the fence with FTX and that microfluidics scam Elizabeth Holmes.
>They want all the upsides and none of the downsides to throwing millions at people.
I see what you're getting at, but this is a bit of a silly statement. The obvious downside of "throwing millions at people" is that you lose millions of dollars.
It's not a right to have a guaranteed return on an investment. It isn't silly at all. They literally only want a single downside (losing their initial investment), absolving themselves of all responsibility for their investments while retaining maximum return in the event such a return on investment happens. They will also do everything they can, a la various modes of propaganda, to manipulate avoiding that single downside as well.
The startup culture that has fetishized making it big at all costs (move fast and break things) has lead to customer (and non-customer) deaths amongst several other massive failures. The investors should have some responsibility and accountability assigned. Right now, they have zero.
The downside of throwing millions of dollars at someone is losing those millions, which they did. You are basically suggesting that a fraud victim should be punished more than the money they lost because they were too stupid to see the fraud.
> You are basically suggesting that a fraud victim should be punished more than the money they lost
Their actions brought in more victims, and therefore investors ought to be wary of listening to them in future. They ought to be also punished by a hit to their reputation i.e. by being held partially responsible.
It's a bit strong to call Sequoia "fraud victims". They were at a minimum incompetent and at a maximum intentionally misleading to other investors. You shouldn't write an article like this (https://archive.ph/GQkCp) unless you have done your research. Did they do literally any due diligence prior to leading a massive investment round?
Just because they stand to lose millions doesn't excuse their responsibility and influence. Venture capitalists have no one to blame but themselves for the risky companies out there. They are effectively snake oil salesmen, just looking to siphon off relatively short-term profits under the guise of "changing the world".
Isn't it a bigger indictment of the "follower" investors who did no due diligence of their own because Sequoia was investing? Why would anyone trust their money with these investors instead of investing with Sequoia if that's all they do?
