Adapting Episode 2: Sequoia’s Black Swan Memo (with Roelof Botha)

On March 5th 2020, Sequoia Capital published a Medium post entitled ‘Coronavirus: The Black Swan of 2020’. The memo minces no words, admonishing founders & CEOs to “question every assumption about your business”, and portends that “as Darwin surmised, those who [will] survive ‘are not the strongest or the most intelligent, but the most adaptable to change.’” We’re joined by longtime Sequoia partner and head of the firm’s US business Roelof Botha to discuss on what Sequoia saw leading up to the memo and why they decided to publish it, how they and their portfolio companies are adapting to the new world it warned of, and what lasting changes might come to Sequoia itself from this moment. For anyone facing hard decisions and/or looking for ways to think about opportunity, this is not one to miss. 

Sponsors:

• Anthropic: https://bit.ly/acquiredclaude25
• Sentry: https://bit.ly/acquiredsentry
• WorkOS: https://bit.ly/workos25
• Statsig: https://bit.ly/acquiredstatsig26

More Acquired!

• Get email updates with hints on next episode and follow-ups from recent episodes
• Join the Slack
• Subscribe to ACQ2
• Merch Store!

© Copyright 2015-2026 ACQ, LLC

Links:

• The Black Swan Memo:  https://medium.com/sequoia-capital/coronavirus-the-black-swan-of-2020-7c72bdeb9753 
• The COVID-19 Decision Matrix:  https://medium.com/sequoia-capital/the-matrix-for-covid-19-c25bd5195f46