Roelof Botha

Last updated

Roelof Botha
Roelof Botha.jpg
Roelof Botha, September 2010
Born19 September 1973 (1973-09-19) (age 50) [1]
Pretoria, South Africa
Alma mater University of Cape Town
Stanford University
Occupation Venture capitalist
Known forCFO of PayPal
Partner, Sequoia Capital Chairman of the Board of Directors, Unity Technologies

Roelof F. Botha [2] (born 19 September 1973 [1] ) is a South African actuary, venture capitalist and company director.

Contents

Botha is a partner at Sequoia Capital and as of 2022 sits on the boards of MongoDB, Evernote, Bird, Ethos, Natera, Square, Unity, and Xoom. He also worked with AssureRX, FutureAdvisor, Instagram, Mixpanel and Mu Sigma. [3] He previously sat on the board of directors of Meebo and YouTube before they were each acquired by Google, Weebly before they were acquired by Square, and Tumblr before they were acquired by Yahoo!. He previously sat on the boards of Eventbrite, Jawbone, Mahalo, Nimbula, Tokbox, and Whisper.

On Forbes ' Midas List, an annual ranking of venture capital professionals, he ranked 22nd in 2008, [4] 9th in 2021, [5] and 36th in 2022. [6]

Education and career

Botha was born in Pretoria, South Africa, and at the age of six he moved to Cape Town with his parents. He was raised in Hout Bay, a suburb of Cape Town, and attended Hoërskool Jan van Riebeeck. Botha earned a BSc in Actuarial Science, Economics, and Statistics from the University of Cape Town, graduating in 1996. He worked as a business analyst at McKinsey & Co. in Johannesburg from 1996 through 1998. He then moved to the United States, where he received an MBA from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

In 2000, prior to his graduation from Stanford, Botha became director of corporate development for PayPal. He moved on to vice-president of finance and was named CFO in September 2001. PayPal went public in February 2002, and was purchased by eBay in October 2002. Meg Whitman offered Botha the opportunity to stay on as CFO post-acquisition, but he left to join Sequoia Capital in January 2003. [7] [8] [9] [10]

At Sequoia, Botha oversaw the firm's investment in YouTube, Instagram, and Square, among others. [11] [12] He also helped to plan the acquisition of Xoom by PayPal. [11] In 2017, Botha took over lead responsibility for Sequoia's US operations from Jim Goetz. [13] In April 2022, Sequoia announced that, starting in July 2022, Botha would replace Doug Leone as Senior Steward of Sequoia's global brand and operations. [14]

Botha has led or co-led Sequoia's investments in several early and growth stage companies. As of 2022, his active investments include Ethos, Evernote, GenEdit, Landis, mmhmm, Pendulum, Skiff, Temporal Technologies, and The Org. [15]

On October 9, 2023, Botha became Chairman of the Board of Directors at Unity Technologies. [16] [17] [18]

Family

Botha's father, also named Roelof, is an economist. [9] [19] His uncle was the rock musician Piet Botha. His grandfather was Roelof Frederik "Pik" Botha, [9] a South African politician who served as the country's last foreign minister under the Apartheid government, and the first minister of Mineral and Energy Affairs under Nelson Mandela. Roelof is married to Huifen Chen and they have a daughter named Saskia Botha. [20]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PayPal</span> American multinational financial technology company

PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American multinational financial technology company operating an online payments system in the majority of countries that support online money transfers; it serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper methods such as checks and money orders. The company operates as a payment processor for online vendors, auction sites and many other commercial users, for which it charges a fee.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pik Botha</span> South African politician (1932–2018)

Roelof Frederik "Pik" Botha, was a South African politician who served as the country's foreign minister in the last years of the apartheid era, the longest-serving in South African history. Known as a liberal within the party, Botha served to present a friendly, conciliatory face on the regime, while criticised internally. He was a leading contender for the leadership of the National Party upon John Vorster's resignation in 1978, but was ultimately not chosen. Staying in the government after the first non-racial general election in 1994, he served under Mandela as Minister of Mineral and Energy Affairs from 1994 to 1996.

Sequoia Capital is an American venture capital firm headquartered in Menlo Park, California which specializes in seed stage, early stage, and growth stage investments in private companies across technology sectors. As of 2022, the firm had approximately US$85 billion in assets under management.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Moritz</span> Welsh businessman (born 1954)

Sir Michael Jonathan Moritz is a Welsh-born American billionaire venture capitalist, philanthropist, author, and former journalist. Moritz works for Sequoia Capital, wrote the first history of Apple Inc., The Little Kingdom, and authored Going for Broke: Lee Iacocca's Battle to Save Chrysler. Previously, Moritz was a staff writer at Time magazine and a member of the board of directors of Google. He studied at the University of Oxford and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and went on to found Technologic Partners before becoming a venture capitalist in the 1980s. Moritz was named as the No. 1 venture capitalist on the Forbes Midas List in 2006 and 2007.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David O. Sacks</span> South African American entrepreneur (born 1972)

David Oliver Sacks is an entrepreneur, author and investor in internet technology firms. He is a general partner of Craft Ventures, a venture capital fund he co-founded in late 2017. Additionally, he is a co-host of the All In podcast, alongside Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis and David Friedberg. Previously, Sacks was the COO and product leader of PayPal, and founder and CEO of Yammer. In 2016, he became interim CEO of Zenefits for ten months. In 2017, Sacks co-founded Craft Ventures, an early-stage venture fund. His angel investments include Facebook, Uber, SpaceX, Palantir Technologies, and Airbnb.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Index Ventures</span> European worldwide venture capital firm

Index Ventures is a European venture capital firm with dual headquarters in San Francisco and London, investing in technology-enabled companies with a focus on e-commerce, fintech, mobility, gaming, infrastructure/AI, and security. Since its founding in 1996, the firm has invested in a number of companies and raised approximately $5.6 billion. Index Venture partners appear frequently on Forbes’ Midas List of the top tech investors in Europe and Israel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark Stevens (venture capitalist)</span> American venture capitalist

Mark Stevens is an American billionaire venture capitalist, and a partner at S-Cubed Capital in Menlo Park, California. He was previously with Intel and Sequoia Capital. He serves on the board of Nvidia, and is an investor in the Golden State Warriors of the National Basketball Association.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Douglas Leone</span> American billionaire venture capitalist

Douglas M. Leone is an American billionaire venture capitalist and former managing partner of Sequoia Capital, from which role he stepped aside in 2022 while remaining a general partner. As of August 2022, his net worth was estimated at US$6.1 billion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Morgenthaler</span> American private equity investment firm

Morgenthaler is one of the oldest private equity investment firms in the US investing through both venture capital and leverage buyout transactions. Morgenthaler operates two connected private equity businesses:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PayPal Mafia</span> Term for a group of former PayPal employees

The "PayPal Mafia" is a group of former PayPal employees and founders who have since founded and/or developed additional technology companies based in Silicon Valley such as Tesla, Inc., LinkedIn, Palantir Technologies, SpaceX, Affirm, Slide, Kiva, YouTube, Yelp, and Yammer. Most of the members attended Stanford University or University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign at some point in their studies.

Klaus Hommels is a German venture capitalist. He focuses on early and growth-stage investments and has founded his own venture capital fund by the name of Lakestar, through which he has been investing mainly in digital businesses. He has been invested in Facebook, Skype and Xing; other examples are Klarna and Revolut.

James J. Goetz is an American venture capitalist and businessman who is a partner with Sequoia Capital. Goetz is known for his focus on mobile and enterprise startups, including successful investments in AdMob, WhatsApp, Chartboost and GitHub. In 2017, Goetz announced he was stepping back from his leadership role with Sequoia, but continues to invest and represent the firm on company boards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Xoom Corporation</span> San Francisco-based digital money transfer company

Xoom Corporation is an electronic funds transfer and remittance provider.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alfred Lin</span> American businessman

Alfred Lin is an American venture capitalist at Sequoia Capital. Lin was the COO, CFO, and Chairman of Zappos.com until 2010.

Nimbula was a computer software company that existed from 2008 to 2017. It developed software for the implementation of public and private cloud computing environments.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Piet Botha</span> South African musician (1955–2019)

Piet Botha was a South African musician and the frontman of the South African rock band Jack Hammer, which has been an opening act for bands such as ZZ Top, Deep Purple and Uriah Heep. He also performed solo.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Keith Rabois</span> American technology executive and investor

Keith Rabois is an American technology executive and investor. He is a managing director at Khosla Ventures. He was an early-stage startup investor, and executive, at PayPal, LinkedIn, Slide, and Square. Rabois invested in Yelp and the Xoom Corporation prior to each company's initial public offering (IPO). For both investments he insisted on being a board of directors member.

Michael Lewis Goguen is an American engineer and businessman. He is a former partner at the venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, and as of 2015 was ranked at number 52 on Forbes magazine's annual Midas List of the best dealmakers in technology and life science venture capital.

Evernote Corporation is a privately owned company headquartered in Redwood City, California that develops Evernote. Its current CEO, Francesco Patarnello, has been in his position since January 2023 following the acquisition by Bending Spoons. Evernote has domestic offices in Austin, San Diego, and Bothell, Washington. It has international offices in India, Switzerland, Chile, and Japan. As of February 2023, the company employed nearly 400 people.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neil Shen</span> Chinese Venture Capitalist

Neil Shen is a Chinese Venture Capitalist and entrepreneur who is the founding and managing partner of HongShan, formerly known as Sequoia China, the Chinese arm of venture capital firm, Sequoia Capital. Prior to that, he was a co-founder of two companies, Ctrip.com and Home Inn.

References

  1. 1 2 "Johannes-J-Joubert - User Trees - Genealogy.com". www.genealogy.com.
  2. ↑ "EXECUTIVE PROFILE: Roelof F. Botha". Bloomberg Businessweek . Archived from the original on 13 July 2012. Retrieved 17 February 2011.
  3. ↑ Roelof Botha profile. Sequoia Capital.
  4. ↑ "#22 Roelof Botha", Forbes.com Midas List 2008, 24 January 2008[ dead link ]
  5. ↑ "Roelof Botha". Forbes.
  6. ↑ "The Midas List 2022". Forbes. Retrieved 10 November 2022.
  7. ↑ "Roelof Botha". 26 October 2020.
  8. ↑ Brown, Erika (12 February 2007). "The Art of Selling Out". Forbes . Archived from the original on 2 February 2007.
  9. 1 2 3 McLeod, Duncan (14 December 2007). "Roelef Botha: Hi-tech market mover". Financial Mail . Archived from the original on 23 November 2010.
  10. ↑ "Roelof Botha profile". Sequoia Capital. Retrieved 30 April 2007.
  11. 1 2 "Roelof Botha". Forbes. Retrieved 13 July 2017.
  12. ↑ de la Merced, Michael (31 January 2017). "Sequoia Capital Reshuffles Leadership". The New York Times. Retrieved 13 July 2017.
  13. ↑ Loizos, Connie (31 January 2017). "Sequoia Capital has quietly announced a leadership change-up, with partner Jim Goetz taking a step back". Tech Crunch. Retrieved 13 July 2017.
  14. ↑ Konrad, Alex (4 April 2022). "VC Heavyweight Sequoia Names Roelof Botha As New Global Leader". Forbes. Retrieved 23 April 2022.
  15. ↑ "Roelof Botha". Sequoia Capital US/Europe. Retrieved 10 November 2022.
  16. ↑ "Unity Announces Leadership Transition". www.businesswire.com. 9 October 2023. Retrieved 9 October 2023.
  17. ↑ "Unity Software CEO to retire effective immediately". Reuters. 9 October 2023. Retrieved 10 October 2023.
  18. ↑ "Unity Technologies - Governance - Board of directors - Person Details". investors.unity.com. Retrieved 10 October 2023.
  19. ↑ "Famous Faces Bookings - Dr. Roelof Botha". 16 January 2015.
  20. ↑ https://drewaltizer.com/event/20365-asian-art-museum-gala/gallery/60f125a3e694aa7bcf4cbd52
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.