Sequoia says, Get Real or Go Home, quite late in the game

Sequoia is a small investor in Fon. Sequoia is probably the most famous VC firm in the world. But Sequoia, as you can see from this presentation is confused and in a state of panic because first they made all these investments some very recently, and now they are telling their own companies to Get Real or Go Home. Plus they are coming very late in the “we warned you” advisory role. Allen and Co is another investor in Fon and Allen and Co advised us that markets were drying up for start up fund a year before Sequoia. At Fon we listened to Allen and Co closely and made the necessary adjustments. These painful cost reductions were done at Fon half a year before the other Sequoia companies who are only getting their warnings now, in the midst of the hurricane. So we are ahead of the game thanks to Allen and Co. We now find ourselves losing around 300K euros per month still significant but down from 1.2 million euros a year ago. With revenues and margins growing we are going towards profitability in 09. September was our best month in terms of revenues, margins and cash burn. Sequoia now only owns around 1% of Fon but if I had Sequoia as my lead investor I would wonder why is it that it took them so long to warn their companies. Maybe because Allen and Co is in NYC they seat at the center of the current financial hurricane and were able to warn us so much earlier but my advise to Sequoia would be to stop panicking and take advantage of the crisis to make more opportunistic investments.