Why Sequoia ended Scouts, the 2009 programme that found Uber and Stripe
What happened? Sequoia has ended its Scouts programme. In "The Sequoia of Tomorrow", a memo posted on X on 4 November 2026 and signed by its seven general partners, the firm said it had "sunset our batch accelerator (Arc) and Scouts programs" as part of a push to focus on "high-conviction, highly selective venture capital investing". Its explanation: "Putting more energy behind fewer people and things means better support for the founders we back." The same memo closed the London office, merged the Early and Growth teams, flattened the partnership and dropped the Monday partner meeting, and said the firm has raised about $10 billion in new funds.
What the programme was: Sequoia started Scouts around 2009. It gave founders and operators, many of them from its own portfolio at first, small cheques to invest in startups on the firm's behalf, and shared the profits with them. In 2019 TechCrunch reported that scouts got up to $100,000 each and that the programme was in its fifth batch, funded through dedicated scout funds, including a $180 million fund closed in 2018. It also reported that more than 230 scout-backed companies had raised over $6 billion in follow-on funding, not counting Uber. The early scouts included Jason CalacanisDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, who brought Uber to the firm with a two-word memo ("Cabs suck"), and Sam Altman, whose scout cheque into Stripe was later worth about $25 million, according to Calacanis. Brian Chesky, Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi were also early scouts. Many venture firms have since copied the model.
Why end it? Sequoia's only stated reason is focus. The memo describes a "~20 year expansionary phase" of multiple businesses and geographies that brought hierarchy with it, and says the firm's "objective function is not scale, but quality". It does not say anything more specific about Scouts. Any other reasons are analysis, not anything Sequoia has said. Commentators point to three. First, a scout network is a costly way to source deals when a seven-GP partnership wants to own each relationship directly. Second, sharing carry with scouts matters less to a firm now deploying around $10 billion, much of it into large rounds. Third, scouts who are active founders and angels in their own right raise the conflict and allocation questions that come with any distributed network. The timing also matters: AI-era seed rounds are larger and more competitive, so a $100,000 scout cheque buys less access than it did in 2009.
What it means for scout programmes: Sequoia invented the modern scout model, so its exit is a signal, but not proof that the model is dead. For founders, the practical effect is one fewer low-friction way into the firm. With both Arc and Scouts gone, access to Sequoia now runs through direct relationships with its partners. For rival firms that still run scout and angel networks, and for seed funds built around operator networks, the door Sequoia has closed is an opening. Sequoia acknowledged the trade-off in its memo: "It is scary to break something that's already working just fine."
Read more: Sequoia: The Sequoia of Tomorrow (X), TechCrunch (2026), TechCrunch on the scout programme (2019), Silicon Republic, Adjacent, ValueAddVC
Image: Sequoia co-steward Alfred Lin at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco 2019. Credit: TechCrunch, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
