Roelof F. Botha (born 19 September 1973
/ref>) is a South African actuary,

venture capitalist Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which ha ...

and company director. Botha is a partner at

Sequoia Capital Sequoia Capital is an American venture capital firm. The firm is headquartered in Menlo Park, California, and specializes in seed stage, early stage, and growth stage investments in private companies across technology sectors. , Sequoia's total a ...

and as of 2022 sits on the boards of

MongoDB MongoDB is a source-available cross-platform document-oriented database program. Classified as a NoSQL database program, MongoDB uses JSON-like documents with optional schemas. MongoDB is developed by MongoDB Inc. and licensed under the Ser ...

Evernote Evernote is a note-taking and task management application. It is developed by the Evernote Corporation, headquartered in Redwood City, California. It is intended for archiving and creating notes in which photos, audio and saved web content can ...

Bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweigh ...

, Ethos, Natera,

Square In Euclidean geometry, a square is a regular quadrilateral, which means that it has four equal sides and four equal angles (90- degree angles, π/2 radian angles, or right angles). It can also be defined as a rectangle with two equal-length a ...

Unity Unity may refer to: Buildings * Unity Building, Oregon, Illinois, US; a historic building * Unity Building (Chicago), Illinois, US; a skyscraper * Unity Buildings, Liverpool, UK; two buildings in England * Unity Chapel, Wyoming, Wisconsin, US; ...

, and Xoom. He also worked with AssureRX, FutureAdvisor,

Instagram Instagram is a photo and video sharing social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. The app allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters and organized by hashtags and geographical tagging. Posts can ...

Mixpanel Mixpanel is a business analytics service company. It tracks user interactions with web and mobile applications and provides tools for targeted communication with them. Data collected is used to build custom reports and measure user engagement ...

and Mu Sigma. He previously sat on the board of directors of

Meebo Meebo (often stylized as meebo) was an instant messaging and social networking service provider. It was founded in September 2005 by Sandy Jen, Seth Sternberg, and Elaine Wherry, and was based in Mountain View, California. Initially the company o ...

and

YouTube YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...

before they were each acquired by

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

Weebly Weebly () is a web hosting service, headquartered in San Francisco. Weebly is a subsidiary of Block, Inc. History Weebly was founded in 2006 by Chief Executive Officer David Rusenko, Chief Technology Officer Chris Fanini, and former Chief Pr ...

before they were acquired by

, and

Tumblr Tumblr (stylized as tumblr; pronounced "tumbler") is an American microblogging and social networking website founded by David Karp in 2007 and currently owned by Automattic. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a sho ...

before they were acquired by

Yahoo! Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Man ...

. He previously sat on the boards of

Eventbrite Eventbrite is an American event management and ticketing website. The service allows users to browse, create, and promote local events. The service charges a fee to event organizers in exchange for online ticketing services, unless the event is f ...

, Jawbone,

Mahalo "Mahalo" is a Hawaiian word meaning thanks, gratitude, admiration, praise, esteem, regards, or respects. According to the Pukui and Elbert Hawaiian Dictionary, it is derived from the Proto-Polynesian ''*masalo.'' Some sources support that the m ...

Nimbula 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. History The company was first incorporated as Benguela, based in Menlo Park, ...

, Tokbox, and

Whisper Whispering is an unvoiced mode of phonation in which the vocal cords are abducted so that they do not vibrate; air passes between the arytenoid cartilages to create audible turbulence during speech. Supralaryngeal articulation remains the ...

. On ''

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also re ...

Midas List The ''Forbes'' Midas list is the annual ranking by ''Forbes'' magazine of the most influential and best-performing venture capital investors. Described by Kara Swisher as the "Oscars for venture capitalists in tech," the Midas List uses parameters ...

, an annual ranking of venture capital professionals, he ranked 22nd in 2008, 9th in 2021, and 36th in 2022.

Education and career

Botha was born in

Pretoria Pretoria () is South Africa's administrative capital, serving as the seat of the executive branch of government, and as the host to all foreign embassies to South Africa. Pretoria straddles the Apies River and extends eastward into the foot ...

, South Africa, and at the age of six he moved to

Cape Town Cape Town ( af, Kaapstad; , xh, iKapa) is one of South Africa's three capital cities, serving as the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. It is the legislative capital of the country, the oldest city in the country, and the second largest ...

with his parents. He was raised in

Hout Bay Hout Bay ( af, Houtbaai, meaning "Wood Bay") is a harbour town in the Western Cape province of South Africa. It is situated in a valley on the Atlantic seaboard of the Cape Peninsula, twenty kilometres south of Cape Town. The name "Hout Bay" can ...

, a suburb of Cape Town, and attended

Hoërskool Jan van Riebeeck Hoërskool Jan van Riebieck is a public Afrikaans medium co-educational high school situated in Gardens in Cape Town in the Western Cape province of South Africa. It was founded in 1926 by J.J. Jordaan. Overview The school is situated at the fo ...

. Botha earned a BSc in Actuarial Science, Economics, and Statistics from the

University of Cape Town The University of Cape Town (UCT) ( af, Universiteit van Kaapstad, xh, Yunibesithi ya yaseKapa) is a public research university in Cape Town, South Africa. Established in 1829 as the South African College, it was granted full university statu ...

, graduating in 1996. He worked as a business analyst at McKinsey & Co. in

Johannesburg Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu and xh, eGoli ), colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, or "The City of Gold", is the largest city in South Africa, classified as a megacity, and is one of the 100 largest urban areas in the world. According to Demo ...

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 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, and serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper ...

. He moved on to vice-president of finance and was named

CFO The chief financial officer (CFO) is an officer of a company or organization that is assigned the primary responsibility for managing the company's finances, including financial planning, management of financial risks, record-keeping, and financ ...

in September 2001. PayPal went public in February 2002, and was purchased by

eBay eBay Inc. ( ) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that facilitates consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer sales through its website. eBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar in 1995 and became ...

in October 2002.

Meg Whitman Margaret Cushing Whitman (born August 4, 1956) is the US ambassador to Kenya, an American business executive and former gubernatorial candidate for California. She is a board member of Procter & Gamble and General Motors. Whitman was previously ...

offered Botha the opportunity to stay on as CFO post-acquisition, but he left to join

in January 2003. At Sequoia, Botha oversaw the firm's investment in

, and

, among others. He also helped to plan the acquisition of Xoom by

. In 2017, Botha took over lead responsibility for Sequoia's US operations from Jim Goetz. 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. Botha has led or co-led Sequoia's investments in several early and growth stage companies. As of 2022, his active investments include Ethos,

GenEditLandismmhmmPendulumSkiffTemporal Technologies
an
The Org

Family

Botha's father, also named Roelof, is an economist.Dr. Roelof Botha
/ref> His uncle was the rock musician

Piet Botha Piet Botha (18 July 1955 – 2 June 2019) was a South African musician
at Musicians.co.z ...

. His grandfather was Roelof Frederik "Pik" Botha, a South African politician who served as the country's last foreign minister under the

Apartheid Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...

government, and the first minister of Mineral and Energy Affairs under

Nelson Mandela Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (; ; 18 July 1918 – 5 December 2013) was a South African Internal resistance to apartheid, anti-apartheid activist who served as the President of South Africa, first president of South Africa from 1994 to 1 ...

References

External links

Roelof Botha Bio
Sequoia. {{DEFAULTSORT:Botha, Roelof 1973 births Living people Actuaries Afrikaner people Alumni of Hoërskool Jan van Riebeeck PayPal people People from Pretoria South African businesspeople South African investors South African people of German descent South African venture capitalists Stanford Graduate School of Business alumni University of Cape Town alumni