Mike Moritz at Sequoia

Sequoia invested in Fon. This morning we had our first working session with Mike Moritz. It was my first time seeing Mike Moritz at work. I was impressed. Now what defines a top VC firm and a top VC? Two key criteria, adoption and nurturing. Probably half of Sequoia´s time is spent selecting firms to invest in but the other half, equally as important, is spent nurturing these firms. In the case of Fon for example Mike offered that Fon USA be incubated at their offices. Indeed we went on a tour of Sequoia´s offices in Sand Hill Road and Sequoia is building a whole section to incubate up to 5 companies with less than 6 employees at the same time. One office was offered to Fon. Personally I thought this offer reflected a great difference between Sequoia and other VCs I had worked with in the past at the three ISPs that I founded Viatel, Jazztel and Ya.com. If you are en entrepreneur selecting a VC a key question to ask the VC is how much time their firm spends selecting companies vs nurturing companies. I don´t know if you will get a straight answer but in the case of Sequoia I think their success is based on evenly splitting the tasks. Mike Moritz and Mark Kvamme his partner had a great deal of positive recommendations and contacts for us. Unfortunately I can´t disclose the exact nature but I can say that some of these were great ideas on key industry people to partner with. One related to a whole new class of ISPs who were not on our radar screen and thanks to their help we will now contact.