Douglas Leone

I was working on boats as a teenager, sweating like a pig during a summer job.

Raise as little as you can to get you to something that you can show - plus maybe a quarter or two so you have a little bit of cushion - and then raise some more money. Raise as little - not as much - as you can because that's the most expensive equity you're going to sell.

If I could press a button and have all of Sequoia Capital on the Midas List, I would choose to do that over a honoring a single individual.

We have co-opted seed funds. You know, Y Combinator, that was completely our money. We have secret handshakes with a whole bunch of people. Very dangerous, because word gets out that so-and-so's money is Sequoia's money, that would not be a good thing.

We've tried to build Sequoia Capital with an eye for the long term that we really look for in the companies we like to partner with.

You meet with a CEO or founder. You talk about sales, engineering, product management and give some ideas or suggestions. And the founder quickly understands that you really can help them both operationally and from a strategic standpoint.

Give me an entrepreneur with a lot of courage, gusto and who iterates rapidly, and I will back that person day in and day out.

Our business is all about helping someone - a founder, a CEO - building a great business. It's not about seeing our names in the press.

In a globalized world, one application can spread like wildfire and there's only one winning company, which means you have to invest more than you've ever had.

I routinely make trips to China and India where we have offices to continue to maintain the linkages that are necessary to run a successful business.

You have to be willing to risk things; otherwise, somebody else will put you out of business.

We like companies that can get big and powerful on $50 million or less and not two, three, four or five billion.