R.I.P Good Times (Said Sequoia in October, 2008) and Nobody Knows Anything

David Frankel – a great Venture Capitalist – reminded me that R.I.P Good Times was written by Sequoia Capital almost 10 years ago today.

On Twitter he was pondering whether the $100 billion Softbank Vision Fund was the beginning of the end of this cycle. I replied to him with this tweet:

In October 2008 Sequoia Capital published R.I.P Good times… today Lime is raising $500 million because of the e-scooter wars… carry on.

Yes…e-scooter wars are real!

That same October back in 2008, Satoshi published his whitepaper and Bitcoin was born and the cryptocurrency market is down 50 percent and still at $400 billion!

The powerpoint Sequoia sent around to their CEO’s in the middle of the market panic is probably more valuable to read today. Every founder and investor should. These three slides were REALLY part of the 56 slide presentation:

Let me get to the point…

NOBODY KNOWS much when it comes to timing the markets.

It’s why I like to sell on the way up – or ‘when you can’.

I remember where I was sitting when I read this the first time. I blogged my cynicism at the time as Sequoia trying to scare everyone out of the market to scoop up deals for themselves. I wrote ‘Too Small to Fail‘ and kept pecking away at a few stocks and investing in startups. I was in the middle of starting Stocktwits.

Time sure has flown.