www.cruciblemoments.com Open in urlscan Pro
63.35.51.142  Public Scan

Form analysis
1 forms found in the DOM

Name: wf-form-Teaser-Form — GET

<form id="wf-form-Teaser-Form" name="wf-form-Teaser-Form" data-name="Teaser Form" method="get" class="teaser_form" data-wf-page-id="64d12038416e2515e06037eb" data-wf-element-id="d0e30fad-3864-720f-7d27-77368e138382" aria-label="Teaser Form"><input
    type="email" class="form-input w-input" maxlength="256" name="Email" data-name="Email" placeholder="Enter your email" id="Email-2" required=""><input type="submit" value="Subscribe" data-wait="Please wait..." class="button is-form w-button">
</form>

Text Content

All episodes

Episodes

Home
E1
PayPal – Max Levchin

E2
Airbnb – Brian Chesky

E3
Block – Jack Dorsey

E4
Eventbrite – Julia Hartz

E5
HubSpot — Brian Halligan & Dharmesh Shah

E6
Jawbone — Hosain Rahman

E7
23andMe – Anne Wojcicki
Coming November 16th
E8
Nvidia — Jensen Huang
Coming November 30th




LISTEN NOW ON

Apple Podcasts

spotify

Youtube

Google Play

Amazon Music


SUCCEED OR FAIL, EVERY STARTUP FACES CRITICAL CROSSROADS THAT DEFINE ITS
JOURNEY. CRUCIBLE MOMENTS ARE PIVOTAL INFLECTION POINTS WHERE A CHOICE YOU MAKE
TODAY HAS AN OUTSIZED BEARING ON YOUR TRAJECTORY FOR YEARS OR EVEN DECADES. IN
THIS PODCAST SERIES, HEAR FROM FOUNDERS OF SOME OF THE MOST IMPORTANT COMPANIES
OF OUR TIME AS THEY BRING YOU INSIDE THE CRUCIBLE MOMENTS THAT SHAPED THEIR
STORIES. HOSTED BY ROELOF BOTHA OF SEQUOIA CAPITAL.

Play Trailer
https://arc-us.s3.amazonaws.com/audio/Frontpage/Top/Trailer%20for%20frontpage.mp3


“I’m gonna lead from the front.” — Brian Chesky, Airbnb /
I was willing to take that credibility hit and willing to protect this thing
because I believed in it.” — Jack Dorsey, Block /
“Even if you have spent 14 years building something, it could truly be gone in
14 days.” — Julia Hartz, Eventbrite /
“I’m gonna lead from the front.” — Brian Chesky, Airbnb /
I was willing to take that credibility hit and willing to protect this thing
because I believed in it.” — Jack Dorsey, Block /
“Even if you have spent 14 years building something, it could truly be gone in
14 days.” — Julia Hartz, Eventbrite /
Airbnb – Brian Chesky
https://arc-us.s3.amazonaws.com/audio/Episodes/Airbnb/airbnb-Crazy-Idea.mp3
23andMe — Anne Wojcicki
https://upliftwebdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Caelon-Keys.mp3
“I look at crucible moments as opportunities to pivot and explore a new path.”
Anne Wojcicki  —  23andMe, Ep 7
"I think the general pattern of lean in, get bruised but not killed by
adversity, figure out how to get out of it, do it again, is a pretty good
formula for startups."
Max Levchin  —  PayPal, Ep 1
Eventbrite – Julia Hartz
https://upliftwebdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Caelon-Keys.mp3
Palo Alto, 2002


EPISODES

Episode 1


PAYPAL – MAX LEVCHIN

Go to Episode


https://arc-us.s3.amazonaws.com/audio/Frontpage/Episodes/Paypal-clip.mp3


Episode 2


AIRBNB – BRIAN CHESKY

Go to Episode


https://arc-us.s3.amazonaws.com/audio/Episodes/Airbnb/AirBnb-Intro.mp3


Episode 3


BLOCK – JACK DORSEY

Go to Episode


https://arc-us.s3.amazonaws.com/audio/Episodes/Block/Willing-to-lose-credibility.mp3


Episode 4


EVENTBRITE – JULIA HARTZ

Go to Episode


https://arc-us.s3.amazonaws.com/audio/Episodes/Eventbrite/Freefall.mp3


Episode 5


HUBSPOT — BRIAN HALLIGAN & DHARMESH SHAH

Go to Episode


https://arc-us.s3.amazonaws.com/audio/Episodes/Hubspot/Defining-a-Price-Point.mp3


Episode 6


JAWBONE — HOSAIN RAHMAN

Go to Episode


https://arc-us.s3.amazonaws.com/audio/Episodes/Hubspot/Capturing-imagination-through-design.mp3


Episode 7


23ANDME – ANNE WOJCICKI

Coming November 16th

Go to Episode


https://upliftwebdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Caelon-Keys.mp3


Episode 8


NVIDIA — JENSEN HUANG

Coming November 30th

Go to Episode




Subscribe below and get notified when new episodes go live.
THANK YOU

Something went wrong while submitting the form, please try again.


YOUR HOST

Sequoia Capital - Roelof Botha
“If you’re going to be really successful in this business, you have to be
contrarian—and right."

Roelof Botha


CRUCIBLE MOMENTS: THE PIVOTAL DECISIONS THAT DEFINE US

By Roelof Botha
In 2012, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang noticed something strange. The GPUs his company
was producing for gaming consoles and computer graphics were starting to pop up
in research labs and academic circles. Machine learning computations that had
been taking weeks to complete shrunk to hours when run on Nvidia processors.
There were no commercial applications for this technology—but Jensen saw a
far-off opportunity and pounced, leading what he calls a “wholesale pivot” to
reorient Nvidia toward enabling AI. Most saw this as profoundly risky. It took a
full decade, until ChatGPT launched in 2022, to comprehend the magnitude of
Jensen's audacious decision.

This is what we at Sequoia call a crucible moment—an inflection point where a
choice you make today has an outsized bearing on your trajectory for years or
even decades. Crucible moments define companies. They also shape our careers and
lives.

I can identify a handful of decisions that disproportionately influenced the
trajectory of my life. I grew up in South Africa. The country’s history cast a
shadow, and I always felt that the innovation pushing the world forward—which I
longed to be a part of—was happening elsewhere. Leaving my home, where I had
deep roots, and setting off for the unknown in California was unnerving and
lonely. It was full of risk. But it was also full of promise. Embracing
uncertainty and moving to the heart of Silicon Valley just as the internet was
taking off in the late 1990s profoundly altered the course of my life.

I faced another crucible moment soon after arriving in California for business
school. A currency collapse in South Africa in 1998 wiped out my savings. I had
a stark choice to make. I could rejoin McKinsey (where I’d worked briefly in
South Africa), which generously offered to pay for my education. Instead, I was
drawn toward a scrappy startup I’d met that was facilitating payments over the
nascent internet. The company was burning cash and had offered me a scant salary
to work part-time while finishing my degree. But it was building a magical
product with transformational potential. It wasn’t the obvious choice, but I
joined PayPal—and once again my life changed course.

At Sequoia, we have had the privilege of partnering early with many of the most
iconic founders of the past half-century. Time and again, we’ve seen how their
willingness to make bold decisions in crucible moments—to optimize for long-term
impact over short-term wins—is what enables them to build legendary companies.

Sometimes these moments are proactive, like Jensen pivoting to AI long before
its time. Sometimes external factors create a forcing function for
transformational change. A powerful example is Brian Chesky radically
repositioning Airbnb through the pandemic. Airbnb’s revenue plunged 80% as
lockdowns took hold—just as the company was preparing for an IPO. Less than two
years later, after doubling down on its community and adapting its product for
long-term stays, Airbnb went public at a valuation double its initial plan.
That’s the impact of a crucible moment.

Crucible moments typically don’t announce themselves. They can sneak up on you.
I believe learning to recognize them and having the courage to act
decisively—even when it requires defying conventional wisdom—is the single
biggest determinant of sustained success.

Following through on the initial insight often requires making painful changes.
You may discover you need a new set of capabilities on your team—or that
capabilities you’ve toiled to build no longer serve you. In every case,
navigating a crucible moment requires conviction and the grit to overcome
naysayers, near-term obstacles, and the possibility of failure.

For over 50 years, Sequoia has faced its own crucible moments. When I joined in
2003, the scars of the 2000 dot-com crash remained fresh. Most firms had
afforded themselves a “mulligan,” telling LPs that funds raised in the lead-up
to the crash had been written off. Sequoia chose to do the opposite. We
forfeited fees and reinvested proceeds until the funds yielded gains for our
LPs. The decision established a defining principle that we would not let our
clients lose money and helped crystallize core values of performance and
stewardship that still guide us today.

More recently, we have made foundational changes: we established the Sequoia
Capital Fund, an innovative open-ended structure designed to weather short-term
market fluctuations in order to attain the best long-term performance. The trust
we earned with LPs following the dot-com crash and our continued performance
allowed us to pioneer this approach. And in early 2023, after 15 years of
growing leading firms under the Sequoia banner in China and India, we
collectively decided to become fully independent partnerships across all five
business units. Separating was not an obvious choice given each unit’s
success—and yet it was the right decision for enduring impact in the coming
decades.

Recognizing the opportunities and risks inherent to crucible moments is core to
how we work with founders. Each company will face a unique set of pivotal
decisions that shapes their trajectory, and we spend most of our time helping
identify and navigate them. Occasionally, we convene our companies to help them
see around corners when seismic shifts create a crucible moment for everyone—as
we did in the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, at the start of pandemic in 2020,
and early in the 2022 market correction.

Most recently, we convened founders at our AI Ascent event in March, 2023 to
call attention to the collective crucible moment we all currently face. The era
of low-cost capital and easy fundraising has ended; meanwhile, an era of
unprecedented innovation potential and productivity growth driven by AI is just
beginning. The convergence of these factors requires us to adapt. How we do will
define the next decade. Careers will be made. Companies will be formed that
change how we live, work and play.

We created our new podcast series, Crucible Moments, to offer a window into this
mindset and this critical aspect of company-building. Legendary founders like
Max Levchin of PayPal, Jack Dorsey of Block, Jensen Huang of Nvidia, Anne
Wojcicki of 23andMe, Brian Chesky of Airbnb and Julia Hartz of Eventbrite will
bring you inside their decision-making and reveal how they navigated the
crucible moments that shaped their journeys. Jensen will break down that pivotal
pursuit of AI; you’ll learn how Airbnb navigated the pandemic to emerge
stronger, and much more.

At Sequoia, we help the daring build legendary companies from idea to IPO and
beyond. We hope this series will prove useful and inspiring to a new generation
of ambitious founders—and anyone curious for a new perspective on how to
navigate the most important decisions you face when the answers are unclear.

Continue reading