Asheem’s journey in cybersecurity is remarkable. From leading product management at Check Point in the early days of the firewall industry to identifying and incubating generations of category-defining companies—Palo Alto Networks, Imperva, Rubrik, Abnormal and many others. And now, coming full circle with Sovereign and on-premise. An unconventional and unexpected next chapter for someone who has spent 30 years seeing around corners. @GreylockVC @CylakeAI @nirzuk @chandna
Cybersecurity has always been asymmetric: attackers only need to find one opening, while defenders have to protect everything that matters. Now, AI is changing the scale and speed of that equation.
@chandna, Partner at @GreylockVC and Cylake board member, believes we're entering an era of machines fighting machines, where increasingly sophisticated attacks powered by “bad AI” will require equally capable “good AI” on defense.
In Episode 6 of Inside Cybersecurity, Asheem joins @renebonvanie to discuss what AI means for the cybersecurity stack, why truly AI-native architectures need to be built differently, and what three decades in cybersecurity have taught him about the people and companies that successfully navigate major technology shifts.
🎧 Watch Episode 6 of Inside Cybersecurity: cylake.substack.com/p/good-a…
jim goetz retweeted
Listen Labs is joining @Salesforce!
A year and a half ago we launched Listen, an AI platform for understanding customers, and it’s been a crazy ride ever since.
Today, we work with some of the largest companies in the world, including Microsoft, Anthropic, and Sweetgreen.
What started as an AI interviewer is now a full platform for understanding customers. Listen finds the right people, interviews them, analyzes what they say, and even simulates how they'll behave.
Listen’s growth quickly accelerated and while we were raising our next round, we met @Benioff.
Marc is a hero of mine. I've taken countless ideas from Behind the Cloud and watched him framemog every AI CEO on the planet. We're honored to get framemogged next.
With Salesforce, we can bring Listen to every company in the world, much faster.
To our customers, our mission remains the same.I stay CEO, @Florian stays CTO and the same team will keep building the product you rely on, now inside Salesforce AI Labs. Thank you for believing in us early.
To our team, families, and everyone who believed in us before there was much to believe in, thank you.
These years have been the most fun years of my life, and it’s still only just the beginning for Listen.
Now back to work. 🚀
i had the good fortune to be mentored by “mm” when i joined sequoia, shadowing him my first year and learning more than i imagined. working alongside him was a privilege, occasionally intimidating, and often a joy. props to patrick for drawing out the wit, charm and heart of sir michael. left me smiling and misty-eyed. well worth a listen. @sequoia
My conversation with Michael Moritz, one of the great venture investors of the last 40 years.
Michael joined Sequoia in 1986 and co-led the firm with Doug Leone (@dougleone) from 1995 to 2012. His investments include Google, Yahoo, PayPal, and Stripe.
His new book, Ausländer, traces his parents' escape from Nazi Germany and helps explain his lifelong interest in what shapes exceptional people.
We discuss:
- The infamous Steve Jobs profile
- Why Don Valentine hired him
- The question he finds most revealing when interviewing people
- Monomania and the cost of greatness
- Why he has never felt good at anything
- Writing, journalism and AI
- What he learned about himself writing Ausländer
I'd recommend watching this one if you can. Michael was incredibly thoughtful and reflective throughout, particularly when talking about his parents, childhood, and the more difficult parts of his personal story.
Enjoy!
TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Intro
0:53 Family History & Identity
7:03 Survival & Outsider Instinct
18:53 Studying Exceptional People
33:50 Self-Doubt & Success
41:17 Steve Jobs & Obsession
52:50 Joining Sequoia
1:03:22 Leadership & Alex Ferguson
1:08:25 Elon Musk & AI
1:17:12 Becoming Who You Are
Nikesh Arora’s decade at Google, spent debating technology strategy and organizational design with some of the best minds in tech, shaped a conviction that still holds today: the future of the enterprise will be defined as much by organizational design as by technology itself.
if you’re early in your career, this is the kind of opportunity you should chase. work alongside some of the best minds in cybersecurity as they rethink the architecture for an increasingly offensive and agentic world. hard problems, elite teammates willing to mentor and steep learning curves.
Cylake is building next-generation cybersecurity products from the ground up.
We’re hiring an Endpoint Engineer to help build the core endpoint platform. This role is for people who want to solve complex problems alongside a highly collaborative team that has spent decades building category-defining cybersecurity products.
Join us in building what comes next.
jobs.ashbyhq.com/cylake-inc/…
isaac @0xine just dropped one of the more thoughtful takes on mythos and the broader direction of code security. the headline is simple but uncomfortable: this wave meaningfully favors offense. @semgrep @sequoia @PaloAltoNtwks @okta
I think Mythos is a significant step in a trend that favors offense. Also, turns out the Semgrep team inadvertently had a role in Cal.com going closed source: semgrep.dev/blog/2026/mythos…
we competed fiercely with benchmark for decades. still do. deep respect for the firm. i don’t always agree with @bgurley’s public positions and, candidly, neither do some of his partners, but this is too good not to shamelessly echo. his narrative is timeless and searing. @peterfenton @benchmark @sequoia @ericvishria
"So You Want to be a VC"
Im enjoying this week in Boston visiting students promoting my new book - Runnin Down a Dream. Not surprisingly, many ask me about trying to break into venture capital. I wrote a letter answering this question 15 years ago. I would send it out when people inquired. I'm making it public for the first time - with zero modifications.
1) I think it holds up well
2) make sure and read my new book also
3) I probably can't help with followups (as suggested in the letter)
Hope you find it useful. Good luck!
back at it with @nirzuk @chandna and @MarkatPANW. round two.
great to have @IQT and katie gray join as strategic investors. nation state needs will be a new focus.
We’ve formed our Board with @chandna, @jimgoetz, @MarkatPANW, and @nirzuk; leaders who helped build one of cybersecurity’s most consequential companies.
We’re also announcing a strategic investment from In-Q-Tel.
We're building a new architecture.
bit.ly/4tzKLz3
love this photo of sergio leone. early 90s, i was a young founder walking into sequoia’s spartan offices. doug still had a full head of hair back then, along with some impressively awkward reading glasses.
don valentine, founder and chairman at the time, had a habit of introducing doug to newly backed founders as “sergio.” it was classic don equal parts mischief and a kind of familial playfulness that defined the partnership.
i am certain don is smiling somewhere today, just like the rest of us, seeing sergio back in the mix as chairman.
@sequoia @dougleone @gradypb @andrew__reed
the end of all nighters for associates on page mill road. harvey is bringing joy back to the law, one automated workflow at a time.
Welcome back home, Carl. @sequoia
It’s time to return to the place where I know I can have the most impact. I am beyond excited to be rejoining @sequoia as a Partner. Here is what I shared with @gradypb @alfred_lin on how I am approaching my next chapter.
jim goetz retweeted
One of the biggest acquisitions of all time...!
We @sequoia are incredibly proud of the @wiz_io team
The Israeli tech ecosystem will never be the same -- Wiz raised the bar for everyone
Huge congrats to the Wizards! 🪄
Everyone knows @wiz_io broke a record reaching $100M ARR in 18 months.
What everyone doesn’t know is that the team was using a clever hack - leveraging their Israeli time zone. They’d code all day, and then the engineers would get on the phone to make sales calls all night.
Everything about Wiz changed fast in the early days - the idea, the product, the market.
What never changed was the teamwork of @assaf_rappaport, Yinon Costica, Roy Reznik & @amiluttwak - their clarity of vision, their ability to listen to customers and iterate, and the commitment to moving faster than anyone else could match.
Founders: remember that in any technology cycle, in any market, a willingness to outwork everyone else is a superpower.
Congrats to @wiz_io. Excited for your next chapter with @Google
Thrilled to see "code security" finally going mainstream in the AI era with today’s Claude Code security announcement.
anthropic.com/news/claude-co…
@semgrep has been leading an open source effort in this space for years, and most major labs have trained on and learned from that corpus. That is a healthy signal for the ecosystem. Props to @0xine and @DrewDennison for open sourcing their work five years ago and helping catalyze the movement.
Despite some of today's public market reaction, it is not surprising to see Anthropic ship vulnerability detection. OpenAI launched Aardvark in October. Google introduced BigSleep in November 2024. The real question is not who ships first, but who operates at scale.
Anthropic recently cited ~500 “high severity” vulnerabilities discovered by Opus 4.6. Google reported ~20 from BigSleep. OpenAI has not shared public numbers. Volume is interesting. Severity, precision, and economics matter more.
DARPA’s AIxCC competition did it right by requiring disclosure of cost per vulnerability and false positive rates. Without cost curves and confusion matrices, it is hard to know which foundation model is truly leading.
LLMs are clearly powerful for vulnerability discovery. But false positives and unit economics will determine whether this becomes durable security infrastructure or just an impressive demo.
@sequoia
jim goetz retweeted
The latest on Outlier's Path - Our Sequoia
--
This is Our Sequoia. It has always been Our Sequoia.
It was never Don’s Sequoia, nor Michael’s, Doug’s, Jim’s, or Roelof’s. From the very beginning—when Don chose to build a partnership and name it after the longest-living tree on Earth—Sequoia was meant to endure not through individuals, but through us—the collective strength, integrity, and vision of the partnership.
And just as it was not theirs alone, it will not be Pat and Alfred’s Sequoia. It will always be Our Sequoia.
We are responsible for something enduring—privileged to stand on the foundation built by those who came before us, and responsible for making it stronger for those who will come after. Together, we have the opportunity to do our life’s work, to make a dent in the universe, to leave our fingerprints on the partnership, and to shape Sequoia into the place we want it to be for the future.
Principles guide us—anchored in purpose and mission. Beyond that, we want to trust and empower one another.
Our purpose and mission remain to help the daring build legendary companies.
Our guiding principles are:
* Founders > LPs > Sequoia > Team > Self
* We’re only as good as our next investment
* Always do the right thing—and do it the right way
* When we fall short (because we are all human), apologize, fix it, and move on
* Influence comes from expertise and reason, not from hierarchy or tenure
If you see something that needs to change, speak up. Lead the change. Sequoia thrives when every voice, every insight, and every act of courage helps us grow stronger together.
Some people have asked if we will continue to make new investments and lead the investment teams. The answer is an unequivocal yes. We will source and lead new investments and will remain co-leads of the Early and Growth teams. Externally, we will all be referred to simply as Partners. Although everyone may know that we are Sequoia’s stewards due to last week’s news cycle, our LinkedIn profiles and external bios will still list us as Partners of Sequoia.
This is not just a partnership—it is a living, breathing legacy. It is Our Sequoia. Always has been. Always will be.
Pat and Alfred, on behalf of Our Sequoia
props to @roelofbotha for an extraordinary leadership run developing the next generation at @sequoia. @alfred_lin and @gradypb embody the partnership’s culture of stewardship and are ready for this moment. proud to witness another sequoia harmonic in the generational transition that DTV set in motion 40 years ago.
Not many people can say they helped bend the arc of an entire industry and still made time to prank their colleagues along the way. Nir Zuk managed both—20 years of invention, debate, brilliance, and just enough chaos to keep us all on our toes. Thank you for including us. @sequoia @GreylockVC @nirzuk
jim goetz retweeted
1/6 @assaf_rappaport thought I was Don Valentine when we first met. A mistaken encounter turned into a decade-plus relationship with @sequoia leading the earliest rounds in Assaf’s first company, Adallom, and @wiz_io.
Today @Google announced its intent to acquire Wiz.
