Carl Eschenbach

Growing up in northeast Pennsylvania, my life was all about family. My father, who I consider my mentor, worked at a dynamite factory, then started multiple businesses—we sold ice cream in the summers and Christmas trees in the winters. He was a hard-working man who taught me integrity, humility and, most importantly, placing family first. I got a wrestling scholarship to a four-year college. But I saw my brother-in-law go to a technical school and start building a successful career, and I decided to switch to DeVry. That was a crucible moment for me. Without it I never would have gotten into tech.

When Diane Green hired me, there were 200 people at VMWare, and when I left there were 20,000. We scaled the business from $30M in my first year to $7B 14 years later. I can tell you there’s no playbook for that kind of growth. Many days I woke up in the morning and wasn’t sure what to do—we just figured it out. I took on nearly every role at the company, including CFO, COO and President.

After more than 25 years on airplanes, I wanted to be home for my kids’ high school years. When Jim Goetz first suggested Sequoia, I thought, “No way. I’m an operator, not a VC.” But it’s been an amazing journey. I’ve learned a lot from my partners—I feel blessed to be part of Sequoia and to help our portfolio companies scale and grow.

I’m a specialist, not a generalist. It’s great to learn something new—like being on the board of a self-driving vehicle company—and my partners have taught me a lot about things like consumer apps and crypto. But anything associated with infrastructure, SaaS, cloud and selling into the enterprise, or building businesses bottoms up are very much my sweet spots.

When it comes to hiring, I focus on SKQs—skills, knowledge and qualities. Founders need all three, but the first two can be taught, so I focus on the qualities. Do they have integrity? Do they care about others? Do they love being part of a team? Do they have drive, are they passionate? Are they resilient but flexible? These are things that typically can’t be taught. A founder with the right qualities is the starting point for building the culture you need to scale.