Sequoia schließt London-Büro: Rückzug aus Europa? – Mathias Ockenfels (b2venture)

Sequoia closes London office and retreats from early stage

Sequoia is closing its London office and folding its European early-stage effort back into the mothership. Ockenfels reads that as generational change at the firm rather than a verdict on Europe, since a brand that strong attracts deals anywhere and a $10bn fund must write large later-stage cheques. The question is whether other US funds follow, and Europe still depends on American IPOs for its returns.

Takeaways

• Sequoia closes London office and cuts its European team. Only one or two team members move back to San Francisco to strengthen the US team. Coatue and Andreessen Horowitz took the same path about a year earlier. Luciana Lixandru, who built the office from Accel, stays with her portfolio companies and is on maternity leave.
• The driver is generational change, not politics. Founding partners have stepped back and a new group has taken over, which Ockenfels sees as the real driver. He rejects politics and the US midterms as explanations, saying Sequoia's brand is strong enough that good deals find it anywhere.
• Sequoia also ends its scout programme. The scout programme ran for about 16 years and backed Stripe and Uber. Sequoia is merging its growth and early teams and ending another early-stage initiative, which Ockenfels reads as a retreat from early stage toward its later-stage core business.
• A $10bn fund must write very large cheques. Ockenfels says later-stage funds earn more in absolute terms while smaller funds win on multiples and IRR, and few companies can absorb such large cheques. He contrasts Matt Miller's $1.5m first round in N26 with a $180m Series C.
• Sequoia missed many strong European companies. Ockenfels argues Sequoia missed many outstanding European companies during four to five years with a local team. Its bets included Hugging Face's Series C, N26, Revolut, Bolt and Roblox, and the team's cost was never the issue given Sequoia's management fees.
• Ockenfels criticises investors who follow political power. He calls out Andreessen Horowitz's closeness to Trump and its American Dynamism slogan, saying tech leaders shift with political power like a weathervane out of business interest. He says Sequoia kept a lower profile, though Pat Grady answered critics directly on X.

The coming IPO wave

• Anthropic and SpaceX are heading for IPOs and OpenAI may follow, and Ockenfels warns the wave may take the oxygen from other listings.
• The windfall lands mainly in the US. Europe would need something like a Revolut to give its VCs, LPs, angels and entrepreneurs a comparable payout.
• Secondaries and tender offers, as at Revolut, let employees and early investors cash out and take pressure off a listing.