> In reality, the road ahead is going to be a long one. It will have ups and downs. But almost certainly it will be worthwhile.
The biggest takeaway from this piece is the stark realism of this article (maybe a bit too bearish, imo) compared to the usual Sequoia VC-speak. Maybe FTX did teach them something, after all.
VCs in general hate core AI because it is dominated by large players that don't need VC money to be successful. If someone was taking Sequoia money to buy GPUs they'd be singing a completely different tune.
I don’t think FTX is the right contrast here. This document is mostly about business realism: revenue, margins, etc.
VCs did get burned by speculative investing in the 2019-21 period but FTX wasn’t like the others. At the time of its collapse, FTX was profitable and had $1+ bn in revenue, its doom had nothing to do with product market fit, revenue, margins, etc.
Quibi might be a more relevant example of a learning opportunity.
I know, my point is that I fail to see how the FTX collapse would lead them to a tone change.
> Maybe FTX did teach them something
The new tone is all about business fundamentals and the FTX collapse had literally nothing to do with business fundamentals. If this is the lesson they learned they learned the wrong lesson.
The biggest takeaway from this piece is the stark realism of this article (maybe a bit too bearish, imo) compared to the usual Sequoia VC-speak. Maybe FTX did teach them something, after all.