Dj Sequoia Doesn't Want A 'King' To Run Its $9 Billion Hedge Fund

By Juliet Chung

Following a streak of disappointing performance, tension over profit-sharing and complaints about a negative culture, Sequoia's $9 billion hedge fund is trying a new approach to leadership: "No kings."

The firm has installed a group of four leaders in an attempt to make the hedge fund's operation look similar to that of its more famous relative, Sequoia Capital, the giant venture-capital firm, according to people familiar with the fund. It is an unusual move for the hedge fund world, where co-portfolio manager relationships have been known to blow up and clients tend to like a single boss.

Sequoia Capital Global Equities is a large hedge-fund investor in tech and has long been seen as a way for clients to get some access to Sequoia's private investments. It is a growth investor with bets on both public and private tech companies. Its private portfolio has included Stripe, TikTok parent ByteDance, SpaceX, Chinese food-delivery giant Meituan, Chime Financial and failed crypto firm FTX.

The hedge fund reports to a board that includes partners of Sequoia Capital, which recently shook up its own leadership. Alfred Lin and Pat Grady, who Sequoia named as stewards in November, are reviewing the hedge fund's operations, said a person familiar with the firm.

The changes at the top of the hedge fund started in February when its longtime head, Jeff Wang, stepped down. Some of his team had complained to Sequoia leaders that he wasn't sharing enough of the fund's profits and that he had created a negative culture, some people familiar with Sequoia said. Wang, who had run the fund for about a decade, had shouted and cursed at members of his team and made at least one analyst cry, the people said.

Senior leaders of the firm asked Wang to step aside or share his decision-making power; Wang ultimately agreed to exit, according to people familiar with the matter.

In a LinkedIn post announcing his departure in February, Wang thanked the leadership of Sequoia Capital, touted his returns and said he would help the fund transition. "We built a great foundation and team that will carry on the torch," he wrote.

Several people close to Wang said the investment team had a high-performance culture and had stayed intact even after the fund suffered a record loss in 2022.

Sequoia promoted four internal investors to run the hedge fund together. Bryce Kam was named portfolio manager and Vince Wu was made chief investment officer. They are paired with two general partners, Aneesh Venkat and Rock Meng. Sequoia Capital also took a greater share of the fund's profits than it previously had, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The hedge fund benefits from its relationship with the powerful venture firm, which allows it access to late-stage private companies even though it falls lower in the Sequoia pecking order. Some clients also view being a loyal investor in the hedge fund as a way to increase chances they will get access to or more capacity in the venture funds, people familiar with the fund said.

Wang was an early employee of the hedge fund, which started with internal money in 2009 as the brainchild of former Sequoia steward Jim Goetz, Wang said in a podcast last year with 20VC. Michael Moritz, Doug Leone and Roelof Botha helped launch the fund, he said. In 2016, after the fund's prior head left, Wang had to make a presentation to Sequoia's partnership for the fund's survival — a "refounding" moment, he recalled — pitching a new focus on fast-growing tech.

The fund grew from around $600 million in assets to more than $9 billion under Wang, he wrote on LinkedIn. It notched big gains in 2020, thanks in part to big bets he made on e-commerce.

In late 2021, Wang's co-portfolio manager, Patrick Fu, stepped down over tensions about their profit-sharing, according to people familiar with the matter. Fu, who now manages his own family office, has told people the co-head model was difficult, some of the people said.

In 2022, when tech stocks tumbled, the fund lost about 29%, including private investments. The Nasdaq composite, which some investors use as a benchmark for the fund, lost 32.5%.

Sequoia executives told some clients that Wang became gun-shy after that record loss, subsequently failing to take sufficient advantage of soaring markets and having difficulty making decisions, according to people familiar with the conversations.

The fund had gains of 13.4% and 19.3% after fees in 2023 and 2024, based on a hypothetical track record Sequoia uses to standardize returns. It is up 14% this year through September on that metric. Those gains helped the fund make up its 2022 loss, the people familiar with Sequoia said.

The Nasdaq gained 44.6% and 29.6%, including dividends, in 2023 and 2024, respectively, and is up 17.9% this year through September. (The fund's public portfolio also bets against, or shorts, companies.)

In the LinkedIn post, Wang said he was proud of the 17.3% internal rate of return — a return metric that takes into account the length of investments — the fund earned over his tenure.

"I'll be helping transition and then off to new adventures in 2026!" he wrote. Wang plans to launch his own hedge fund, Augnition Global Investors, in the first half of 2026, data provider S&P Global With Intelligence recently reported.

Write to Juliet Chung at Juliet.Chung@wsj.com

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