Sequoia Capital

Can social apps kill enterprise software?

Big, expensive, custom software from blue-chip software and consulting companies has been a rule of thumb for giant corporations for decades now. Is it possible a new breed of cloud-oriented startups can change all that?

Anyone who's had to sort through a clunky "reply all" email chain at work or tried to post a document to the intranet knows that there's got to be a better way. In fact, they probably MORE

The right way to lay people off

By Ben Horowitz, contributor

Cloud computing company Opsware was nobody's darling. Then founders Andreessen and Horowitz put the company through three rounds of layoffs. The unlikely result was a big buyout -- here's how it happened.

"I'm tryin' to right my wrongs / But it's funny them same wrongs helped me write this song" -Kanye West

Shortly after we sold Opsware to Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), I had a conversation with the legendary venture MORE

Sweet! Is Sugar the future of publishing?

The women-centric collection of sites is shaking up the web -- and traditional media.

The state of affairs in publishing is beyond depressing. Unless, of course, by publishing you mean the shiny new online-only startups who are behaving as if it were boom times for journalism. An example is Sugar Publishing, the 3 1/2-year old blogging company that focuses on young women. Run by the husband-and-wife team Brian and Lisa Sugar, MORE

Sequoia branches too far

A storied financier of startups expands -- but its new businesses have yet to take root.

A year ago, when venture capital firm Sequoia Capital ordered its portfolio companies to slash costs in the face of a sick economy, even healthy businesses, such as LinkedIn and Zappos.com, complied.

As word of the edict spread, many non-Sequoia startups also trimmed their budgets -- a testament to the venture firm's influence in Silicon Valley MORE