Roelof Botha

Family and education

Roelof Botha was born in Pretoria, Alec Hogg of News24 wrote in February 2017, when Botha was 43; Hogg wrote that he carried "the same name as his father, one of South Africa's top economists and long-time advisors to PWC, and his grandfather, former SA Foreign Minister 'Pik'," Pik Botha, who is a different man from P.W. Botha. Hogg wrote that Botha had recorded the highest marks in the University of Cape Town's actuarial science examinations, had become South Africa's youngest actuary at 25, and had moved to California in 1998 to attend Stanford's business school, where he was valedictorian.¹

PayPal's prospectus of February 2002 gives his age as 28 and records a B.S. in actuarial science, economics and statistics from the University of Cape Town in 1994, fellowship of the Faculty of Actuaries in 1996, work as a management consultant for McKinsey & Company from August 1996 to July 1998, and an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2000.²

PayPal

Botha joined PayPal in March 2000, served as vice president of financial and risk management, and became chief financial officer in August 2001.² In April 2000 the company assumed a $70,000 loan at 9 percent that he owed to his former employer, and forgave it in 25 percent annual installments from June 2001. In July 2001 he took a non-recourse loan of $112,500 under an employee liquidity program in which PayPal then repurchased part of the participants' stock; David Sacks and Reid Hoffman took $450,000 and $500,000 under the same program.²

The board in the prospectus included Michael Moritz, a partner of Sequoia Capital since 1986 and a director since August 1999, whose appointment the prospectus describes as "a condition to the obligation of entities affiliated with Sequoia Capital to complete their investment." In August 1999 Sequoia funds had bought 15,000,000 shares of Series A preferred stock from Elon Musk for $5.0 million. Moritz sat on the audit committee with Musk and Shailesh Mehta, former chief executive of Providian. Entities affiliated with Sequoia owned 9.9 percent of PayPal before the offering.²

Sequoia Capital

Botha joined Sequoia in January 2003.³ A Form 8-K of SpaceX states that he was a managing member of Sequoia Capital Operations, LLC from 2007 to 2025.⁴ Square's registration statement of 2015 names him among the directors and stockholders of SC US (TTGP), Ltd. who exercised voting and investment discretion over Sequoia's 2010 United States venture funds, with Jim Goetz, Michael Goguen, Doug Leone and Moritz.³

On January 31, 2017 Goetz wrote to Sequoia's investors that he would step aside from his leadership responsibilities, thanking "Doug and Sir Michael for the trust they placed in me." News24 printed the letter and reported that Goetz's place as one of the firm's three stewards went to Botha, alongside Leone and Neil Shen, who ran the China business.¹

When 23andMe went public through a merger in June 2021, Botha was listed as a director and beneficial owner of 18,442,574 Class B shares, 4.54 percent, of which 17,818,438 were held by Sequoia Capital Operations, LLC; the filing named Leone and Botha as the directors of SC US (TTGP) with discretion over the Global Growth Fund II funds.⁵ A Schedule 13D for Maplebear (Instacart), filed on February 27, 2024 and signed by Botha as authorized signatory, lists Cayman Islands funds, their management partnerships, SC US (TTGP), Ltd., Leone and Botha as reporting persons, and states that "the directors and stockholders of SC US (TTGP) who exercise voting and investment discretion" are Leone and Botha. It records that Sequoia managing member Ravi Gupta had joined Maplebear's board in August 2023.⁶

Square, Xoom and other boards

Botha became a director of Square in January 2011, as the designee of the Series B preferred holders.³ Square's Form D of September 2011 lists him with Jack Dorsey, Jim McKelvey, Vinod Khosla, Larry Summers and Mary Meeker as directors, and Keith Rabois as an executive officer.⁷ Rabois resigned as chief operating officer in January 2013 amid an employee's allegation of sexual harassment, which he denied.⁸ In the registration statement of November 2015, Sequoia's 2010 funds held 15,728,310 shares, 5.3 percent, and Khosla Ventures III, LP held 16.9 percent; Botha sat on the audit and risk committee with David Viniar and Summers and on the compensation committee with Meeker, and also served on the boards of Natera and Xoom Corporation.³ Rabois was a Xoom director until May 2015.⁹ At the annual meeting of the renamed Block, Inc. in June 2026, Botha was re-elected a Class II director with 869,045,360 votes for and 127,444,544 withheld, alongside Shawn Carter and McKelvey.¹⁰

Senior steward

TechCrunch reported that Botha took the firm's highest role, senior steward, in mid-2022.¹¹ On November 9, 2022 Sequoia wrote to the limited partners of its Global Growth Fund III, and posted the letter publicly, that it was marking its investment in FTX to zero: "In recent days, a liquidity crunch has created solvency risk for FTX." The letter gave a cost basis of $150 million in that fund and $63.5 million in SCGE Fund, L.P., and said: "We are in the business of taking risk."¹² The investment had been made in FTX's Series B in July 2021, when the exchange was valued at $18 billion.¹²

On June 6, 2023 Botha, Neil Shen and Shailendra Singh announced that Sequoia would separate into Sequoia Capital in the United States and Europe, Peak XV Partners in India and Southeast Asia, and HongShan in China by March 2024, writing that "It has become increasingly complex to run a decentralized global investment business."¹³

The House Select Committee

On October 17, 2023 Mike Gallagher and Raja Krishnamoorthi, chairman and ranking member of the House Select Committee on the CCP, wrote to Botha as managing partner and to Don Vieira, partner and global chief policy officer. The letter named investments by Sequoia Capital China in EverSec, 4Paradigm, DJI and DeepGlint and support by both Sequoia entities for ByteDance. It stated the committee's understanding, from "source material on file," that roughly 20 percent of the carry from each deal had flowed to the top of the Sequoia family, that a compliance office in Menlo Park had reviewed every deal, and that 60 to 70 percent of Sequoia Capital China's limited partners had been American, falling to about half. It described an internal screening process set up in the summer of 2022 covering only Chinese quantum computing, semiconductor and aerospace investments, and asked for answers by November 1, 2023.¹⁴

The committee's report of February 8, 2024 stated that Sequoia Capital and Sequoia Capital China had invested about $1.4 billion in ByteDance from March 2014, that Shen sat on ByteDance's board and was a representative to the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, and that Sequoia Capital China had invested about $32 million in BGI Tech, a subsidiary of the genomics company BGI Group, from 2013 to November 2020; the report quotes an internal Sequoia China memo of September 2012 that touted BGI's acquisition of the American sequencer Complete Genomics. It recorded Sequoia's statement that its entry into China "coincided with expressed government policies and public positions in the US that encouraged businesses to invest in the region."¹⁵

Vieira, according to Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, had been chief of staff of the National Security Division of the Department of Justice and counselor to the assistant attorney general for national security from 2009 to 2011, an espionage prosecutor, and deputy chief counsel of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. At Sequoia he founded the firm's Washington office, served as chief legal officer and represented the firm on the board of the National Venture Capital Association; he also sat on the boards of Genuity Science and Hakluyt & Co.. Skadden announced his return on September 9, 2025.¹⁶

23andMe, Unity and MongoDB

At 23andMe's annual meeting on August 25, 2022, Botha was re-elected a Class I director with 1,797,444,732 votes for and 16,584,769 withheld.¹⁷ On September 17, 2024 he and the six other independent directors, including Neal Mohan, resigned together, writing to the chief executive Anne Wojcicki that "we have yet to receive from you a fully financed, fully diligenced, actionable proposal" and that "because of your concentrated voting power" they would resign "rather than have a protracted and distracting difference of view with you as to the direction of the Company." Botha was then on the audit committee.¹⁸

On October 9, 2023 Botha, as chairman of Unity Technologies, accepted the resignation of its chief executive John Riccitiello, who left his posts that day and was to retire on April 9, 2024; Botha's letter extended the period for exercising Riccitiello's vested equity to five years and permitted continued vesting, in exchange for a separation agreement.¹⁹ On May 1, 2024 Unity announced that Botha would return from chairman to lead independent director.²⁰ At MongoDB's annual meeting on June 25, 2024 he was re-elected a Class I director with 34,836,881 votes for, 22,488,981 withheld and 9,306,416 broker non-votes.²¹

Departure from leadership

In 2025 Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire called the New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani an "Islamist" who "comes from a culture that lies about everything." In August the firm's chief operating officer, Sumaiya Balbale, resigned over the decision not to discipline him. At the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in October 2025 Botha said: "Internally, we celebrate a diversity of opinions, and we need spiky people inside of Sequoia." On November 4, 2025 Sequoia announced that Alfred Lin and Pat Grady would succeed him as co-stewards. Marina Temkin of TechCrunch reported that he had overseen the distribution of $50 billion to limited partners since taking over the firm's United States and European business in 2017.¹¹ A profile of Sam Bankman-Fried that Sequoia published on its website in September 2022 credited Lin and Michelle Bailhe with pursuing the FTX investment.²² Sequoia's Form ADV amendment of July 17, 2026 lists Leone, Goetz, Lin, Grady, Maguire and others as direct owners and executive officers of Sequoia Capital Operations, LLC and does not list Botha.²³

SpaceX and Stanford

On June 16, 2026 the board of SpaceX elected Botha an independent director to fill a vacancy and appointed him to its audit committee. The Form 8-K states that he has been a trustee of Stanford University since 2024 and that a member of his family had worked at SpaceX since January 2025 on the enterprise operations team, with 2025 compensation above the $120,000 reporting threshold, "generally commensurate with their peers' compensation." SpaceX does not pay its non-employee directors.⁴

Political contributions

Federal Election Commission records show two contributions under his name, each of $5,000, to VenturePAC of the National Venture Capital Association, on November 19, 2021 and September 15, 2022, with Sequoia Capital as employer.²⁴ Leone, the other director of SC US (TTGP) named in the 2024 filing, gave $2,000,000 to Never Back Down Inc. on April 19, 2023, $1,000,000 to America PAC on June 14, 2024 and $250,000 to the Trump 47 Committee on October 30, 2024.²⁴