Sequoia Capital

MongoDB founder and former CEO Dwight Merriman led the company through a pivot from a platform-as-a-service to a focused database product they’d originally built for internal purposes, setting the stage for its eventual success as an open source developer data platform. CEO and President Dev Ittycheria took the reins in 2014 and led the company from $40M revenue to almost $2B. Their journey offers many lessons for entrepreneurs: 🔹 Be willing to radically change course early. Just a year into building their original platform-as-a-service vision, MongoDB’s founders realized the scope was too broad—and Google App Engine came out, threatening to steamroll over their initial idea. Despite positive user feedback, they made the difficult decision to scrap most of their code and pivot to focus solely on the database component. Having the courage to dramatically change direction—even when things seem to be going well—can be critical to long-term success. 🔹 Technical founders are not always well-suited to hyper-scaling operations. Dwight Merriman built a product that developers loved, but the organization he led was somewhat dysfunctional and the company was badly missing plan. The decision to bring in Dev Ittycheria unlocked the operational excellence MongoDB needed to become an exceptional company. 🔹 Proactively address existential threats. MongoDB recognized an increasingly cloud-based world posed an existential threat to their business model, which was based on downloadable software. Rather than wait for this to play out, they proactively developed Atlas, their own cloud database service. Anticipating and addressing potential disruptions to your business model is crucial. 🔹 Make bold moves to protect your business. When MongoDB feared the cloud hyperscalers would “strip mine” their open-source product, they made the controversial decision to change their licensing model to SSPL. Despite some backlash from open-source purists, this move protected their ability to build a sustainable business around their technology. Sometimes protecting your company’s future requires making unpopular decisions. 🔹 Build for developer love, but don’t neglect business fundamentals. MongoDB’s success was built on creating a database developers loved to use. However, translating that popularity into a sustainable business required developing strong go-to-market capabilities and transitioning to a cloud service model. Technical excellence alone is rarely enough—you need to pair it with solid business execution. 🔹 Be willing to radically expand your vision over time. While MongoDB started by narrowing its focus from a platform to a database, its success has allowed it to expand back towards its original platform vision. As you achieve success in one focused area, seize opportunities to expand your product’s scope to capture more customer value over time.

Sequoia Capital kindly invited me to their podcast, Training Data. We talked about Project GR00T, NVIDIA's moonshot initiative to build the AI brain for humanoid robots, and "Foundation Agent", our quest to build a generalist embodied AI that transcends skills, forms, and realities. Special thanks to Sonya Huang and Stephanie Zhan for hosting me and asking so many thought-provoking questions! Full episode links: - YouTube: https://lnkd.in/grYWsv3Q - Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gKY42vdp

Join us on September 19th to take a look behind the scenes at how we’re building the world’s largest autonomous delivery system. Register now for the virtual event. https://bit.ly/3XxhvMl

I recently participated in Sequoia Capital’s Crucible Moments podcast to discuss the pivotal moments during my tenure at #MongoDB that have not only shaped where the company is today but also who I am as a leader. If you’re not familiar, Sequoia Capital defines "crucible moments" as inflection points where a choice you make today has an outsized bearing on your trajectory for the years or even decades that follow. While it was not a term I was familiar with until Roelof Botha mentioned it many years ago, it is a philosophy I’ve believed in since the beginning of my time as CEO of MongoDB. I want to thank Roelof, Dwight Merriman, and Tom Killalea for helping to bring the MongoDB story to life in this episode. And, importantly, I want to thank the other founders, our other early investors, and the fabulous MongoDB team, including the current team and those who have since left, for helping bring the company to where it is today. I hope you enjoy it! https://lnkd.in/eMJM8Bj2

Hear the story of MongoDB on a new episode of Crucible Moments. YouTube: https://seq.vc/na6 Apple: https://seq.vc/yla Spotify: https://seq.vc/0n4

How do you scrap your business plan, the majority of your code, and pivot to a smaller scope after your product is already in the market? Dwight Merriman and the 10gen team did just that, abruptly dropping their platform-as-a-service idea to focus on a database product, MongoDB. Hear the whole story on a new episode of Crucible Moments featuring Dwight, Dev Ittycheria, and Tom Killalea. 🔊 👇 https://seq.vc/0n4

On the latest episode of Training Data from Sequoia Capital, we're excited to feature Eric Steinberger of Magic. Eric is one of the great AI researchers of the current/next generation, from the epic story of how he became Noam Brown's collaborator as a high school student to advice for young researchers. In this episode, Eric shared his thoughts on how bridging together LLMs and reinforcement learning could provide both specialized and general problem-solving power, what it means to build AI that feels like a colleague, updated us where he’s at on his AGI to-do list, provided advice for young AI researchers, and more. Listen to the full episode here or wherever you listen to podcasts:  YouTube: https://seq.vc/3i3 Spotify: https://seq.vc/8i8

A year after founding MongoDB – then called 10gen – and opening in beta, Google App Engine released and steamrolled over the founders’ initial idea. They scrapped their business plan, most of their code, and pivoted to a smaller scope: a novel database they’d developed internally. Tomorrow on Crucible Moments, hear the surprising story of MongoDB and its journey to global scale.

LangChain Academy is live! Our first course — Introduction to LangGraph — teaches you the in-and-outs of building a reliable AI agent. In this course, you’ll learn how to: 🛠️ Build agents with LangGraph's graph-based workflows 🔄 Use memory + human-in-the-loop for smarter, self-corrective agents 📚 Create your own AI assistant that can perform knowledge tasks Enroll now for free ➡️ academy.langchain.com Bring LangChain Academy to your company ➡️ https://lnkd.in/gmUC6D2V 

Being a pioneer isn't easy. With leading global customers like UBS, Deutsche Bank, and General Electric, ServiceNow had to create a reliable cloud network at a time when cloud infrastructure didn't really exist. Figuring out how to do that was one of Fred Luddy and Frank Slootman's biggest challenges, and ultimately, biggest successes.