Pat Grady & Alfred Lin on the Tactics of Great Venture Investing | Ep. 36

ℹ️ EPISODE INFO

Released

December 9, 2025

Duration

1h 9m

Channel

Uncapped with Jack Altman

Watch on YouTube

▶ Open ↗

📝 EPISODE DESCRIPTION

Alfred Lin and Pat Grady are partners at Sequoia and were recently named as the storied firm’s new co-stewards. Alfred joined the firm in 2010, where he has led major investments into category-defining companies like Airbnb, DoorDash, and Kalshi. Pat has been a partner at the firm for nearly 19 years and has led Sequoia’s growth-stage investing since 2015, backing companies like Snowflake, OpenAI, and Harvey. In this episode, we unpack how Sequoia actually works: their partnership model, how they pick outliers, and what stewardship means inside one of the most respected firms in venture capital. Some highlights:

• Consensus doesn’t matter, conviction does
• Freedom within frameworks: see, pick, win, help, harvest
• Mid-funnel decisions are the most important
• The two fears that lead to bad decisions
• To do this business well, you need courage

Timestamps: (0:00) Intro (1:01) Initial mindset as stewards (4:30) The business of outliers (6:27) Managing the inputs in venture (12:11) Sourcing coverage goals (17:57) Seeing the right companies (22:36) Proprietary map of talent (24:39) The impact of great engineers (29:06) Picking winners with conviction (36:26) Coaching asymmetry into picking (43:16) Mentoring younger investors (46:45) Frameworks on picking (53:20) What it takes to win (58:32) How to onboard with a founder (1:02:59) Proudest board seats (1:06:12) 2026 in the new roles More on Alfred & Pat: https://sequoiacap.com/ https://x.com/Alfred_Lin https://x.com/gradypb More on Jack: https://www.altcap.com/ https://x.com/jaltma https://linktr.ee/uncappedpod Email: friends@uncappedpod.com

🎤 SPEAKERS

• Pat Grady

  guest

• Alfred Lin

  guest

🧾 EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of Uncapped with Jack Altman, featuring Pat Grady and Alfred Lin, Pat Grady & Alfred Lin on the Tactics of Great Venture Investing | Ep. 36 explores sequoia’s new stewards on conviction, craft, and outlier investing tactics Grady and Lin frame Sequoia’s leadership transition as “stewardship,” emphasizing enabling a team of “outliers” rather than running a hierarchical, CEO-style organization.

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