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The South African who helped make YouTube and Instagram global giants
Roelof Botha has become one of the most prominent Venture Capital investors in the USA, having been an early investor in YouTube and Instagram.
Botha was born in Pretoria and moved to Cape Town at age six, where he later attended Hoërskool Jan van Riebeeck.
He would go on to acquire a BSC in actuarial sciences, economics and statistics from the University of Cape Town.
Botha said that he didn’t speak much English at home but pushed himself to go to an English-speaking university, which opened many doors.
His father, Roelof, is also a renowned economist in South Africa and regularly appears in the media.
His grandfather was Pik Botha, South Africa’s foreign minister in the final years of apartheid and the Minister of Mineral and Energy Affairs in Nelson Mandela’s first government of national unity (GNU).
Botha started working at the consulting firm McKinsey in Johannesburg in 1996, which he believed would open the door to work overseas.
He started reading about Silicon Valley in the mid-90s when he was starting to see the beginnings of the internet. At the time, he didn’t even know what Venture Capital was.
He would move to the United States, where he studied for an MBA at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.
He was later introduced to Elon Musk in 1999, a fellow South African living in the US who would go on to become the world’s richest man, and joined him at payment platform PayPal.
Even before graduating from Stanford, Botha quickly rose through the ranks at the payment platform. He became director of corporate development in 2000 and was then named CFO in September 2001.
The company would then be purchased by e-commerce giant eBay in 2002. Despite requests for Botha to stay on as CFO, he left to join venture capital firm Sequoia Capital in early 2003.
Sequoia is one of the most prolific investors in Silicon Valley and was an early investor in Apple, Nvidia and many other companies. However, Botha was confused by their interest in his skills.
“They were looking for a computer science major hooked on product management and enterprise software company, and I was an actuary running finance at a financial services company,” said Botha.
“And I left every interview thinking it was my last, but eventually they made me an offer, to my surprise, and I guess they still haven’t figured out that I’m not a good match.”
Investment successes
Botha has worked closely with some of the world’s biggest technology companies, with the most notable being YouTube and Instagram.
Sequoia partnered with YouTube in 2005, the same year the company was formed. A year later, Google purchased it for $1.65 billion.
Sequoia received a massive payout, with its investments of $5 million in YouTube turning into a return of $500 million.
YouTube has gone on to become the world’s leading video-sharing service and is the web’s second most visited website.
Another popular company that Botha was involved in was Instagram, with Sequoia partnering with the image-sharing service in 2012.
The service would quickly be acquired by Facebook, now Meta, for $1 billion. A decade later the site is now worth $500 billion.
In addition to the more widely known companies, Botha has been involved with MongoDB, Evertone, Xoom, and Tumblr. He also serves as the Lead Independent Director at Unity Technologies.
In 2022, Sequoia said that Botah would become the Senior Steward of Sequoia’s global brand and operations.
Botha said that his investment philosophy is very similar to how he interviews people, with a specific focus on events that shape people.
“Whenever I interview people, I ask about those key moments in somebody’s life where they’ve made career decisions,” said Botha.
“And I think about companies in the same way—there are these crucible moments that have an enormous bearing on ultimate outcomes.”
He said that he is always on the lookout for the unconventional. He has led several investments that were made fun of, such as YouTube and Instagram.
He said that there was defiance for those saying, “We’ll show you,” which he experienced during his time at PayPal.
Although there were question marks over PayPal in its early years, Botha knew the company was close to its first profits.
“There’s something intriguing to me about somebody who’s an original thinker, who is quirky, and maybe an outsider,” said Botha.
“I love spending time with people like that. Often, I judge based on how I feel when I meet someone the second time.”
“With most people, you can have a pretty interesting conversation once. The real test is the second conversation—do I lose interest?”
He said that there are very few things that are as exhilarating as sitting in a room with a founder and speaking about an idea with them.
SOURCE:The South African who helped make YouTube and Instagram global giants – BusinessTech
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