Sequoia Capital's Alfred Lin on the firm's bet on Sam Bankman-Fried: "It's not sympathy; I feel bad for him"

Friday! Before we disappear for the weekend, we leave you with this week's StrictlyVC Download, featuring our interview last night with Alfred Lin of Sequoia Capital. Note that we also wrote about the interview below, and you can check out the full video over at TechCrunch, where we made it available in its entirety. Even so, we thought others of you might prefer to listen to it while, say, tooling over to your favorite brunch spot, or feverishly stacking up sandbags against your home to keep it from flooding. (The gallows humor is aimed at those of us in California who have had it up to here with these storms already.)

Stay tuned for more coverage from the event. In the meantime, massive thanks to Sustain Life for sponsoring this week's episode. In the company's words, get a handle on your carbon footprint with Sustain Life’s complete carbon accounting and ESG platform. More here. 

We will be back on Monday, though the issue will be short in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. 💚

Bitcoin surged over $21,000 today amid optimism that it may have bottomed and inflation may have peaked. The largest cryptocurrency rose as much as 7.5% to $21,299. It hadn’t been above $20,000 since Nov. 8; it's currently the 11th straight day advancing, notes Bloomberg.

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Last night, at our StrictlyVC event, venture capitalist Alfred Lin of Sequoia Capital sat down for a one-on-one conversation about the evolution of his storied investment firm, which has enjoyed a largely unblemished record of stunning success — a record since marred by its roughly $200 million investment in the crypto currency exchange FTX.

The investment, once a source of pride for the firm, has tarnished not only Sequoia but also Lin, who led the deal on behalf of Sequoia and who was also the firm’s point of contact with CEO Sam Bankman-Fried for a year and a half. He spoke thoughtfully yesterday about how he feels today about a bet gone so wrong.

Asked, for example, whether looking back, there were signs that Lin sees now that he missed earlier, he answered after a pause: “I thought [Bankman-Fried] was very smart . . . He answers questions very logically and very succinctly. Could we have spotted any tells? I don’t know. There’s what I know today and what I knew at the time. If I knew at the time, we wouldn’t have invested. So today, I think the thing that gets me to reassess is . . . it’s not that we made the investment. It’s the year-and-a-half working relationship afterward, and I still didn’t see it. And that is difficult.”

If it was particularly challenging for Lin given that just a year earlier, he topped Forbes’ annual Midas List, he didn’t say so. But he suggested that experience remains disturbing to him because Bankman-Fried seemed to seize on what the venture industry sees as one of its greatest strengths.

More here.

CyberX, a nine-year-old Singapore startup that is a digital asset market maker, raised a $15 million Series A+ round from Foresight Ventures that valued the company in the "few hundred million dollar range." The Block has more here.

SpiderOak, a nearly 16-year-old, Reston, Va.-based cybersecurity specialist that's focused on space-based assets, has raised $16.4 million in a Series C investment round led by Empyrean Technology Solutions, a space technology platform affiliated with the private equity firm Madison Dearborn Partners. Method Capital and OCA Ventures also participated. SpaceNews has more here.

Digital Village, a seven-year-old Sydney startup whose technology platform helps brands and creators fashion virtual worlds, raised a $4 million round from L'Oréal, The Venture Reality Fund, Venrex, and the British Fashion Council. WWD has more here.

enrichAg, a Vancouver startup that uses sensing technology to enable farmers to self-test and analyze their soil, raised a $6 million seed round. At One Ventures was the deal lead. AFN has more here.

Ferrum Health, a five-year-old San Francisco startup whose AI platform analyzes medical data to provide doctors with insights and recommendations that can help improve patient care, raised a $6 million round. Urban Innovation Fund, Singtel Innov8, and Cercano Management co-led the deal. More here.

Mayfair, a Miami fintech startup that offers businesses up to 4.02% APY on their cash, announced that it has raised $10 million in venture funding across a $2 million pre-seed round and $8 million seed round. Amity and BoxGroup co-led Mayfair’s pre-seed financing;Tiger Global led the company’s seed round, with Amity and BoxGroup also participating. The company has raised a total of $14 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Sortium, a startup that has built a web3 gaming studio, raised a $7.75 million seed round from crypto hedge fund Arca as well as "other crypto-native firms." CoinDesk has more here.

What three best practices should your firm adopt to improve its deal sourcing this year? Affinity has the answers. Download this guide for tips that cover turning data into insights to guide your sourcing decisions, accessing data-driven intelligence in your everyday tools, and maximizing relationships to make data more valuable.

World View, a 10-year-old, Seattle company developing stratospheric balloons for Earth observation and tourism, is heading to the public markets. The company announced today that it will merge with special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) Leo Holdings Corp. II in a deal worth $350 million, as it seeks to build out what it calls “the stratospheric economy.” TechCrunch has more here.

From "bitcoin billionares" to SEC Charges: a brief crypto history of the Winklevoss twins.

YouTube is testing a new hub of free, ad-supported streaming channels, reports the WSJ. The outlet says the Alphabet-owned video platform is in talks with entertainment companies about featuring their shows and movies in the hub of cable-like channels and is testing the concept with a small number of media partners.

Twitter won a ruling forcing a group of laid-off workers fighting the company over their severance packages to pursue their claims in individual arbitration rather than through a class-action lawsuit. “Insisting that workers file claims one by one has backfired for many companies our firm has taken on,” said lawyer Shannon Liss-Riordan, who is representing 500 laid-off Twitter employees. “These companies think they can make employees just go away and not assert their rights by using arbitration clauses, but we have made them sorry about what they wished for.” Bloomberg has more here.

A new lawsuit is claiming that Sta­ble Dif­fu­sion is a 21st-cen­tury col­lage tool that vio­lates the rights of artists. More here.

Draymond Green sets us straight on the real NBA.

The fight for the right . . . to use stripes.

A close listen to All-In, the infuriating, fascinating safe space for Silicon Valley’s money men.

Three words: marble wash station.

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