Douglas M. Leone (born July 4, 1957) is an American billionaire

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 former managing partner of

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 ...

, 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.

Early life

Leone was born July 4, 1957, in

Genoa Genoa ( ; it, Genova ; lij, Zêna ). is the capital of the Italian region of Liguria and the sixth-largest city in Italy. In 2015, 594,733 people lived within the city's administrative limits. As of the 2011 Italian census, the Province of ...

, Italy. His family moved to the United States when Leone was 11 and settled in

Mount Vernon, New York Mount Vernon is a city in Westchester County, New York, United States. It is an inner suburb of New York City, immediately to the north of the borough of the Bronx. As of the 2020 census, Mount Vernon had a population of 73,893, making it th ...

. Leone earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...

in 1979, a master's in industrial engineering from

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

's School of Engineering and Applied Science in 1986,"Executive Profile: Douglas M. Leone"
"Bloomberg". Retrieved June 28, 2016. and a master's degree in management from the

MIT Sloan School of Management The MIT Sloan School of Management (MIT Sloan or Sloan) is the business school of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT Sloan offers bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degree programs ...

in 1988.

Career

Leone began his career in sales and management positions at

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, t ...

Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...

, and Prime Computer. He joined

in 1988, became a managing partner in 1996, and then the global managing partner in 2012. In 2017, Forbes named him a top-10 investor in the technology industry in the United States. Leone has been involved in Sequoia investments in numerous companies, including Aruba Networks, Hyperion/Arbor Software, International Network Services,

Medallia Medallia is an American customer and employee experience management company based in San Francisco, California, with offices in Buenos Aires, London, Tel Aviv, Munich, Paris, New York City, Washington DC, Austin and Sydney. Medallia provides soft ...

Netezza IBM Netezza (pronounced ne-teez-a) is a subsidiary of American technology company IBM that designs and markets high-performance data warehouse appliances and advanced analytics applications for uses including enterprise data warehousing, busin ...

PlanGrid PlanGrid is a construction productivity software designed for onsite construction workers. PlanGrid digitises blueprints. It has features such as version control and collaboration tools such as field markups, progress photos and issues tracking. P ...

, Rackspace, RingCentral, and ServiceNow. He also led Sequoia's international expansion into China and India. In 2017, he was ranked #693 on ''Forbes'' list of the World's Billionaires, with a net worth of US$2.9 billion. In 2020, he was named on the Forbes Billionaires list with wealth of US$3.5 billion and ranked #538. His ranking on the list in 2022 was #350, with a net worth of US$6.9 billion. Leone and his wife donated $100,000 to support President

Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of P ...

's 2020 re-election campaign, and Leone was appointed to Trump's task force on re-opening the economy in the wake of the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...

. The ''Washington Post'' reported that Leone proposed using his connections in the Trump Administration to help smooth the sale of

TikTok TikTok, known in China as Douyin (), is a short-form video hosting service owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which can range in duration from 15 seconds to 10 minutes. TikTok is an international version o ...

(in which Sequoia had invested heavily) to a US corporation. Leone renounced his support for Trump following the

2021 storming of the United States Capitol On January 6, 2021, following the defeat of then-United States President, U.S. President Donald Trump in the 2020 United States presidential election, 2020 presidential election, a mob of his supporters attacked the United States Capitol, U ...

. In April 2022, Sequoia announced that Roelof Botha would replace Leone as its senior steward of global brand and operations, effective from July 5, following Leone's 65th birthday. Since then, Leone continues to be a general partner in Sequoia's existing funds.

Boards

Leone is a board member for several companies, including ActionIQ, Cyera, Island,

Nubank Nubank is a Brazilian neobank and the largest fintech bank in Latin America. Its headquarters are located in São Paulo, Brazil. The company also has engineering offices in Berlin, Germany, Buenos Aires, Argentina, and an office in Mexico City, ...

, strongDM, Trade Republic, and Wiz.

Personal life

Leone is married to Patricia Perkins-Leone. The couple has four children, and lives in

Atherton, California Atherton () is an incorporated town in San Mateo County, California, United States. Its population was 7,188 as of 2020. Atherton is known for its wealth; in 1990 and 2019, Atherton was ranked as having the highest per capita income among U.S. ...

. They have been seeking to build an oceanfront home in Makena, Maui, Hawaii, but as of November 2017, the Hawaii Supreme Court has ruled against the development. In May 2021, Leone was conferred with the Order of the Star of Italy, in the class of Officer (''Ufficiale dell'Ordine della Stella d'Italia'').

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Leone, Douglas Living people 1957 births 20th-century American businesspeople American billionaires American investors American venture capitalists Businesspeople from New York City Columbia School of Engineering and Applied Science alumni Cornell University College of Engineering alumni Italian emigrants to the United States MIT Sloan School of Management alumni People from Atherton, California Midas List