Sequoia Capital venture capitalist Alfred Lin participated in an industry event that was hosted in San Francisco, California, and talked about a number of things regarding the VC company as well as their investment in crypto currency exchange FTX, which had an epic downfall in 2022.
“I thought [Bankman-Fried] was very smart” Lin said, according to TechCrunch’s Connie Loizos. “He answers questions very logically and very succinctly. Could we have spotted any tells? I don’t know. There’s what I know today and what I knew at the time. If I knew at the time, we wouldn’t have invested. So today, I think the thing that gets me to reassess is . . . it’s not that we made the investment. It’s the year-and-a-half working relationship afterward, and I still didn’t see it. And that is difficult.”
When discussing the industry Lin said it’s “a trust business. And yes, we need to trust and verify, and we try to verify what we can. But we start from a position of trust, because if we don’t trust the founders that we work with, why would you ever invest in them?”.
Lin said he believes Bankman-Fried, whom he said he felt “bad” for, was capable enough to have “raised money or propped up” the company “in a legit way.”
Despite the challenging year for the crypto space Lin says that Sequoia remains “long-term optimistic” about crypto, later adding that “The whole economy is interrelated.”
Lin also touched on a number of topics including Sequoia’s current business, funds, generative AI, and more, which you can watch below.
