Sequoia backed WhatsApp before mobile messaging economics looked obvious. A small early venture bet gained exposure to a product that scaled with almost no marketing and was later acquired by Facebook for a transaction valued in the tens of billions.
Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins jointly put $25 million behind Google in 1999, financing the leap from promising search engine to scalable Internet company.
Sequoia backed Yahoo before its business model was settled, betting that control of Web navigation could become a durable media and advertising asset.
Sequoia's $2 million Cisco investment helped turn a Stanford-born router company into a commercial network infrastructure giant.
Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins institutionalized a repeatable model for financing young technology companies, helping turn Silicon Valley venture investing into an industry.