Its impressive string of successes appears at an end. Aside from reaping profits in the hundreds of millions from its YouTube and Isilon investments last year, Sequoia Capital profited last year when Topio was sold to Network Appliance for $160 million in cash and Atom Entertainment was purchased by Viacom for $200 million.
But, Sequoia's zeal for consumer Internet companies such as YouTube is starting to bite back. Insider Pages, an online local service guide backed by Sequoia, Softbank and Idealab with $10 million, reportedly laid off two thirds of their staff, according to TechCrunch and The Local Onliner. It seems that Sequoia's and firm general partner Roelof Botha's entry into the local advertising segment wasn't as lucrative as its bet on the online video sharing market.
That's okay. The gains from Sequoia's winners outweigh the losers so far. And the firm has still got stakes in the podcasting (Podshow), online advertising (Adbrite), instant messaging (Meebo), online slide shows (RockYou) professional social networking (LinkedIn, Plaxo) and travel vertical search (Kayak.com) segments. That means Sequoia has a lot more chances to win and lose big again as the winners in each of those categories become more apparent in the coming months.
Tags: insider+pages, sequoia+capital, vc, venture capital
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