Sequoia has balls of brass

Sequoia Capital, arguably Silicon Valley’s most successful venture capital firm, is big-footing one of its most respected investors.

It brazenly demanded that Yale University invest in Sequoia’s risky adventures abroad in places like China, India and in later-stage investing. And when Yale refused, Sequoia reportedly rejected the university from access to its well-performing early stage funds — the ones that in the past have invested in companies like Google and Yahoo.

Sequoia’s aggressive handling of Yale came to light in a memo issued by the university, a highly respected investor because it commits money long term and has long embraced venture capital. The memo was cited today by Rebecca Buckman of WSJ.

Yale has a $19 b corpus that gets invested in many ways. If Sequoia can say “invest…or else” to such a bulge bracket investor, it sure has balls of brass, indeed!

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