One of the things humans are bad at is remembering the past and incorporating the lessons they learned from difficult experiences. I’m sure there’s a philosophical word for this, but I’ve now heard the phrase “this time it is different” so many times that it doesn’t register with me as a valid input.
I woke up this morning to Howard Lindzon’s post R.I.P Good Times (Said Sequoia in October, 2008) and Nobody Knows Anything pointing to David Frankel’s tweet:
.@sequoia R.I.P. Good Times is nearly 10 years old! Wonder how many of today’s young seed investors have even heard of it … https://t.co/PBjVxirzew pic.twitter.com/hnjj4y8FNn
— David Frankel (@dafrankel) May 15, 2018
All of this ultimately led to me reviewing Sequoia’s classic slide deck from 2008.
I remember reading it in 2008. We were about a year into our first Foundry Group fund, which we raised in 2007. That now feels like a very long time ago.
I encourage everyone to review the deck. It would be awesome if an economist (Ian Hathaway, are you out there?) made a new deck with an update to 4 through 38 that extended the time frame (and analysis) to 2018.