While many of his former PayPal peers have spent the last week rallying around who they will support in the 2024 election cycle, Sequoia Capital’s top partner Roelof Botha criticized the level of division in the country on Tuesday and said that his firm would not wade in.
“At Sequoia as a partnership, we don’t take a political point of view,” Botha said Tuesday at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference in Park City, Utah. He added: “We're proud of the fact that we've enabled many of our partners to express their respected individual views along the way, and given them that freedom.”
For his part, Botha said he is “not a registered member of either party,” and that he is “much more focused on the policies that will drive entrepreneurship, job creation, and making sure that the United States stays ahead.”
Botha’s comments were said in a wide-ranging interview with Fortune Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell, touching on everything from the state of the venture industry to AI to politics. His comments came as many of his venture capital peers are rallying support behind former President Donald Trump in the upcoming election. Just a few hours before Botha spoke on Tuesday, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz published a video on YouTube in which they announced and explained their decision to back former President Trump in the upcoming election. Venture capitalist David Sacks of Craft Ventures, a former PayPal employee who worked with Botha there, spoke earlier on Tuesday at the Republican National Convention and a few weeks ago held a fundraiser for Donald Trump at his home. Trump’s newly announced running mate, J.D. Vance, himself had a brief stint in venture capital.
Botha focused his comments about the current state of politics on how there has been a significant increase in discord, emphasizing that the partisan divide in the U.S. had grown over the last 20 years. “I think it's really unhealthy for the future of this country,” Botha said.
The U.S. is an “incredible country” Botha said. “There's a reason people like myself want to come here, there's a reason about 40% of the founders we back are first generation immigrants.”
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