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When it comes to a list of the top Venture Capital firms in the world, there's usually one name on top of the list:

Sequoia Capital.

Sequoia has been an early investor in hypergrowth companies like Airbnb, Dropbox, Stripe, and Google (and recently joined Drift as an investor in our Series B).

And on this episode of Seeking Wisdom, we're joined by Sequoia's Pat Grady. Pat is an investor in Drift, and this year was on the Forbes Midas Brink list as one of the top VC's to watch over the coming years.

We talked to Pat about pattern matching, first principles, how he thinks about the funnel at Sequoia, books he's reading, and more.

Enjoy.

01:29 - Pattern matching

02:38 - Thinking and investing using first principles

07:22 - Filtering the lead funnel at Sequoia

10:08 - Don Valentine of Sequoia Capital: "Target Big Markets". Watch at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKN-abRJMEw

12:55 - How Pat got started in investing and at Sequoia

18:29 - Growth integration at Sequoia

21:34 - Company growth and Dunbar’s number of 150

24:15 - Pat’s advice for young entrepreneurs

27:40 - Pat’s recommended books: Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin (https://www.amazon.com/Extreme-Ownership-U-S-Navy-SEALs/dp/1250067057/), and The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown (https://www.amazon.com/Boys-Boat-Americans-Berlin-Olympics/dp/0143125478/)

29:55 - See Pat on social media on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/gradypb/) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/gradypb?lang=en)

3 Key Points:

Companies exist to solve a problem. Answer this first principle question: What is the problem you are solving?

Target big markets. Focus on the big problems.

Create systems and a culture to sustain your company when the number of employees grows well beyond 150.

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