Uncapped with Jack Altman9 Des 2025

Uncapped #36 | Pat Grady & Alfred Lin from Sequoia

Pat Grady and Alfred Lin are partners at Sequoia and were recently named as the storied firm’s new co-stewards. Alfred joined the firm in 2010, where he has led major investments into category-defining companies like Airbnb, DoorDash, and Kalshi. Pat has been a partner at the firm for nearly 19 years and has led Sequoia’s growth-stage investing since 2015, backing companies like Snowflake, OpenAI, and Harvey. In this episode, we unpack how Sequoia actually works: their partnership model, how they pick outliers, and what stewardship means inside one of the most respected firms in venture capital.

Some highlights:

Consensus doesn’t matter, conviction does
Freedom within frameworks: see, pick, win, help, harvest
Mid-funnel decisions are the most important
The two fears that lead to bad decisions
To do this business well, you need courage

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Timestamps:

(0:00) Intro

(1:01) Initial mindset as stewards

(4:30) The business of outliers

(6:27) Managing the inputs in venture

(12:11) Sourcing coverage goals

(17:57) Seeing the right companies

(22:36) Proprietary map of talent

(24:39) The impact of great engineers

(29:06) Picking winners with conviction

(36:26) Coaching asymmetry into picking

(43:16) Mentoring younger investors

(46:45) Frameworks on picking

(53:20) What it takes to win

(58:32) How to onboard with a founder

(1:02:59) Proudest board seats

(1:06:12) 2026 in the new roles

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Episoder(57)

Uncapped #57 | Andrew Feldman from Cerebras

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Uncapped #56 | Brian Singerman from GPx

Brian Singerman is the co-founder of GPx, a fund launched in 2025 alongside Lee Linden of Quiet Capital. GPx backs elite emerging managers at the early stage, then provides programmatic capital to co-...

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Uncapped #55 | Tony Xu from DoorDash

Tony Xu is the co-founder and CEO of DoorDash, the leading local commerce platform in the United States. Since co-founding DoorDash in 2013, Tony has built the company into a publicly traded business ...

28 Jul 47min

Uncapped #54 | Sam Blond from Monaco

Sam Blond is the co-founder and CEO of Monaco, an AI-native revenue automation platform built to replace the CRM as the system of record for sales. Before Monaco, Sam was a Partner at Founders Fund an...

14 Jul 1h 9min

Uncapped #53 | Trae and Delian from Founders Fund

Trae Stephens is a Partner at Founders Fund and co-founder and Executive Chairman of Anduril Industries, a defense technology company building autonomous systems for the U.S. military and its allies. ...

30 Jun 1h 11min

Uncapped #52 | Mike Volpi from Hanabi Capital

Mike Volpi is a General Partner at Hanabi Capital, with a background that spans senior operating roles and nearly two decades of investing. Mike currently sits on the boards of several innovative comp...

10 Jun 56min

Uncapped #51 | Joe Lonsdale from 8VC

Joe Lonsdale is the Founder and Managing Partner at 8VC, an early-stage venture capital firm managing over $6 billion in capital. In 2003, he founded Palantir (NASDAQ:PLTR), a global software company ...

27 Mai 43min

Uncapped #50 | Tobi Lütke from Shopify

Tobi Lütke is the co-founder of Shopify, where he has served as the company's CEO since 2008. Under his leadership, Shopify grew from an online snowboard shop in Ottawa, Canada in 2004 to the world's...

20 Mai 58min