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Sequoia Capital

4 resources from Sequoia Capital we point founders to, and the questions each answers.

📋 Template
✓ Link checked Free Beginner

The de facto global standard for pitch deck structure, straight from Sequoia. The same outline Airbnb's founders used; if you follow one template, follow this one.

Writing a Business Plan (The Sequoia Pitch Deck Template)

From Sequoia Capital by Sequoia Capital 10 min read

  • Ten-slide structure: purpose, problem, solution, why now, market size, competition, product, model, team, financials
  • Define your company in a single declarative sentence up front
  • One idea per slide; the deck earns the meeting, it doesn't answer everything
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Answers How big does my market need to be for this to be a real business? My market is small right now but growing fast. Is that a problem? What slides should my pitch deck have, and in what order? What are the most common mistakes that kill a pitch deck? How long should my deck be, and what goes in the appendix? Investors keep asking for a top-down TAM slide, but I built my number bottoms-up. Which do I show? Is it smarter to enter a market while it's still forming, or wait until demand is obvious and proven? Everyone says my market is too niche to be venture-scale. When are they right, and when are they wrong? Is it smarter to ride a trend that's clearly rising, or to bet on a trend that hasn't started yet? What should be in my seed pitch deck, and what kills a deck in the first 30 seconds?
📋 Template
✓ Link checked Free Intermediate

This is the source of the rule your answer is built on: build the deck from the reports you already run the company with, send it one to two days ahead, and the meeting becomes discussion instead of presentation. It hands you the exact time split (15 min big picture, 45 to 60 min metrics calibration, 30 min company building, 60 min working sessions on your hardest problems, 15 min closed session) so you can drop it onto a calendar invite tomorrow.

Preparing a Board Deck

From Sequoia Capital by Sequoia Capital 15 min read

  • Report to the board using the materials you already use to run the company, do not build a special deck from scratch
  • Ship materials one to two days before so nobody discovers the numbers live and the meeting is spent discussing, not reciting
  • The single biggest block of time is the working session on two or three real challenges, which is where the board's brain is worth more than yours
Open articles.sequoiacap.com →
Answers What do I actually do at a board meeting, and how do I run one so it helps me instead of wasting a day?
✍️ Essay
✓ Link checked Free Advanced

To spot what is newly possible you need to know what the models can suddenly do that they could not before, and this essay maps the jump to reasoning and agentic capability. It points at the killer apps and new interfaces that jump unlocks. Read it to update your sense of the frontier so you are hunting for ideas that need the latest capability, not last year's.

Generative AI's Act o1: The Reasoning Era Begins

From Sequoia Capital by Sonya Huang and Pat Grady 18 min read

  • Reasoning models open jobs that pure chat could not touch
  • New capability creates a short window of open opportunity
  • The interface and workflow around the model is where apps win
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Answers How do I spot an idea that AI just made possible that was not viable two years ago?
📋 Template
✓ Link checked Free Beginner

This is the original Sequoia template that put "Why now" on the map as a named slide investors expect. It states the test plainly: nature hates a vacuum, so why has your solution not been built and won already. Use it as a checklist to pressure test your own timing story before anyone else does.

Writing a Business Plan

From Sequoia Capital by Sequoia Capital 10 min read

  • "Why now" is a standard section great companies can almost always answer
  • Frame it as the recent shift that made your solution newly possible
  • If you cannot say why it was not built five years ago, the timing case is weak
Open articles.sequoiacap.com →
Answers Why does 'why now?' matter so much for a startup idea? How much does 'why you?' actually matter to investors and to success? How do I tell whether a market is genuinely emerging or just a fad that will fade in a year? I keep hearing 'why you' matters to investors. What are they actually looking for when they ask it?
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