Sequoia’s company building immersion for outlier founders

Strong company foundations compound in value over time. That's why we created Arc, a company building immersion designed to help Sequoia's pre-seed and seed-stage founders build businesses that endure. Accelerate your journey with access to Sequoia’s 50+ years of experience partnering with category-defining legends. Elevate your game by joining our exceptional community of outliers.

Applications for Arc Spring '25 will open on February 3rd, 2025.

The Spring cohort will kick off on April 21st. Sign up below to get notified when applications go live.

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Elevate your Game

From the founding engineers of PayPal and YouTube and the former CEO of Tinder to leading open source and AI builders from DeepMind, GitHub and Pydantic, Arc brings together a highly-curated community of Sequoia’s pre-seed and seed-stage founders. Lean on, learn from and connect with outlier peers on a similar journey.
Samuel Colvin
founder and CEO of pydantic
Creator of the Pydantic open source  project, which is used by 19 of the top 20 largest companies on the NASDAQ and downloaded > 140M/month.

“Participating in Arc was a transformative experience that perfectly aligned with our process of exploring what to build. We leveraged the weekly learnings to iterate faster, and we discovered how to be practical about finding product-market fit—removing the emotion and celebrating learning from failures to quickly move on.”

Youssef Ahres
co-founder and CEO of FlagshIP
Ex-Director of Data Science at Instagram.
Now empowering creators everywhere with Flagship.

“As founders, it’s easy to get pulled in the day to day and try to just get the next thing done. Arc taught me that, sometimes, we need to take a step back to leap forward. We should not mistake motion for progress.”

ELLEN DASILVA
CO-FOUNDER AND CEO OF Summer Health
Ex-Hims & Hers and Twitter. Now radically simplifying access to healthcare.

“What you learn in Arc is applicable from day 1 and is grounded in pragmatism. Sequoia partners and operators helped us navigate the product-market fit journey and provided frameworks that we continue to revisit as we scale. The Arc community is also unparalleled.”

YU PAN
CO-FOUNDER AND CEO OF Mindy
Founding engineer at PayPal and YouTube. Now building an email-first Chief of Staff.

“Arc redefined how we think about company building. My co-founders and I have lots of insights from building PayPal, YouTube and more, but Arc helped us intentionally lay the right foundation. We learned how to be more empathetic about the people we’re serving, which informed our company culture, our product and how we go-to-market.”

Devin Bhushan
founder and CEO of Squint
Formerly at Splunk and Yahoo. Now empowering industrial workers with AR.

“As a founder, you don't know what you don't know. Arc provides years of learnings from some of the most brilliant people in the space, condensed down to these short lectures full of golden nuggets. It's a very time efficient way to learn all of these things.”

RENATE NYBORG
founder of meeno
Former CEO of Tinder. Now helping combat the loneliness epidemic.

“While my career provided the insights to build Meeno, Arc helped me uncover my personal motivation to solve the loneliness problem, which gave rise to a more holistic approach to product development and storytelling. The program also helped us gauge new benchmarks for product-market fit in a post-generative AI world, thanks to introducing a community of founders who I can trust to be open with.”

Accelerate your Journey

Establish strong company foundations with Sequoia’s proprietary company building workshops and unique platform services 
PMF Workshop and Check-Ins
Learn the Arc Product-Market Fit Framework. Demystify PMF and focus on it during weekly check-ins.
WORKSHOP 1
FOUNDER STORY
What makes an outlier? 
Understand the shared qualities of outlier founders and companies. Uncover your own motivations and the scale of your ambition.
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3 days in-person
WORKSHOP 2
CUSTOMER STORY
Who are you building for?
Identify your customer, crisply articulate the problem to be solved and validate that it is a problem worth solving.
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2.5 hours remote
WORKSHOP 3
PRODUCT STORY
What are you building?
Set a strong product mission and establish the right metric, strategy and tactics to build winning products with speed.
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2.5 hours remote
WORKSHOP 4
GTM STORY
How are you different, not merely better?
Learn the fundamentals of brand, sales and marketing to better position your company in the market.
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2.5 hours remote
WORKSHOP 5
Business Story
How will you create value?
Understand what it means to build a business, not just a product. Align all the strategic elements to drive your company forward.
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3 days in-person

JESS LEE

PARTNER AT SEQUOIA

Sebastian Siemiatkowski

Founder and CEO of KLARNA

Kevin Systrom

Founder of Instagram

Mike Krieger

Founder of Instagram

Lynn Jurich

Co-Founder and former CEO of Sunrun

ROELOF BOTHA

PARTNER AT SEQUOIA

Miki Kuusi

CEO of Wolt and Head of DoorDash International

Ivan Zhao

Founder and CEO of NOTION

SUMAIYA BALBALE

PARTNER AT SEQUOIA

Ilkka Paananen

CEO of Supercell

NOLAN BUSHNELL

Founder and CEO of ATARI

Derek Muller

Creator of Youtube Channel, Veritasium

JESS LEE

PARTNER AT SEQUOIA

Sebastian Siemiatkowski

Founder and CEO of KLARNA

Kevin Systrom

Founder of Instagram

Mike Krieger

Founder of Instagram

Lynn Jurich

Co-Founder and former CEO of Sunrun

ROELOF BOTHA

PARTNER AT SEQUOIA

Miki Kuusi

CEO of Wolt and Head of DoorDash International

Ivan Zhao

Founder and CEO of NOTION

SUMAIYA BALBALE

PARTNER AT SEQUOIA

Ilkka Paananen

CEO of Supercell

NOLAN BUSHNELL

Founder and CEO of ATARI

Derek Muller

Creator of Youtube Channel, Veritasium

GUEST SPEAKERS

A sampling of past and current teachers and speakers

JESS LEE

PARTNER AT SEQUOIA

Sebastian Siemiatkowski

Founder and CEO of Klarna

Kevin Systrom

Founder of Instagram

Lynn Jurich

Co-Founder and former CEO of Sunrun

ROELOF BOTHA

PARTNER AT SEQUOIA

Ivan Zhao

Founder and CEO of NOTION

Miki Kuusi

CEO of Wolt and Head of DoorDash International

Alfred LIN

PARTNER AT SEQUOIA

SUMAIYA BALBALE

Operating Partner AT SEQUOIA

Ilkka Paananen

CEO of Supercell

NOLAN BUSHNELL

Founder and CEO of ATARI

BRIAN HALLIGAN

Co-founder of hubspot

FAQ

  • 01/
    What is Arc
    Arc is our company building immersion designed to help Sequoia's pre-seed and seed-stage founders build companies that endure. Over 5 weeks, you will accelerate your journey by establishing strong company foundations through Sequoia’s proprietary company building workshops. You’ll also become part of our exceptional community of outliers, whom you can lean on and learn from along the way.
  • 02/
    Who should apply to Arc?
    Arc is for pre-seed and seed-stage founders actively working on an idea, product and company. You can come to us with an idea and no lines of code, or an MVP with early customer traction. Sequoia founders come from a variety of backgrounds: some are first or second-time founders, while others have helped scale top tech companies.
  • 03/
    What dates will Arc take place this year?
    Arc Spring ‘25 will run Monday, April 21st - Friday, May 16th.
    Arc Fall ‘25 will kick off in early October.
  • 04/
    Can companies from both the Americas and Europe apply?
    Yes. Arc is open to companies headquartered in the Americas and Europe.
  • 05/
    Is Arc in person?
    The first and last week of the program will be in person. The remaining weeks will be held remotely via Zoom.
  • 06/
    Is travel required?
    Yes. For each Arc cohort, expect to spend 3 days in New York City and 3 days in the Bay Area.
  • 07/
    What is the schedule?
    Arc is a hybrid in-person/virtual experience with workshops that take place over a month. The first and last week of the program will be in person. The remaining weeks will be held remotely via Zoom.
  • 08/
    How many companies are in the program?
    Each Arc cohort will consist of ~10-15 companies. All co-founders of a company are strongly encouraged to attend.
  • 09/
    What are the terms?
    Every new pre-seed or seed stage partnership with Sequoia is unique. As such any terms are company specific.

What do I receive as part of Arc?

In addition to the funding you will receive as a Sequoia company, you will also get access to:
  • 01/
    The Power of Team Sequoia
    From the weekly workshops to 1:1s with our partners and operators, you’ll have the full support of our team.
  • 02/
    Ampersand
    Our digital hub for founders with self-serve company building resources, content and Sequoia’s network rolodex, including access to our Builder community.
  • 03/
    Marketplace Credits
    Sequoia founders are eligible for 200+ exclusive benefits, including:

    NVIDIA - up to $500k in savings
    Microsoft Azure - up to $350k in credits
    Datadog - up to $100k in credits
    Replicate - $75k in credits
    Modal - $25k in credits
    Anthropic - $10k in credits
    Fireworks AI - $10k in credits
    Linear - up to $9k in savings
    GitHub - up to $7,500 in savings
    Render - $5k in credits
    Pilot - $3k in savings
    Vercel - $1,200 in credits

    …And 200+ more including AWS, OpenAI, Google Cloud, ElevenLabs, and more.

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