During an interview at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 on Monday, Sequoia Capital managing partner Roelof Botha defended his colleague, partner Shaun Maguire, over controversial comments Maguire made earlier this year. Botha stated the firm is a believer in his partner’s right to “free speech.”
The situation began on July 4th when Maguire posted on X, attacking New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. Maguire called the politician an “Islamist” who “comes from a culture that lies about everything.” His remarks led to a sizable online backlash and a debate about the reputational risk to the venture capital firm, which has backed companies like Airbnb, Google, Nvidia, and Stripe.
Shortly after the event, over a thousand founders and tech industry professionals signed an open letter urging Sequoia to take action and make it clear that “silence in the face of hate has consequences.” Last week, it was reported that Sequoia’s chief operating officer Sumaiya Balbale, a practicing Muslim, quit over the firm’s decision not to discipline Maguire following his remarks.
On stage, Botha declined to comment on the COO’s departure, saying only that he appreciated everything Balbale had contributed to the firm. However, when it came to Maguire, Botha argued that Sequoia has always supported a diversity of views. He noted that, for example, Sequoia VC Michael Moritz had been outspoken in his opposition to President Trump, while former managing partner Doug Leone was a vocal Trump supporter.
Botha told the audience that internally, the firm celebrates diversity of opinions and needs what he called “spiky” people inside Sequoia. He said the partnership holds a tremendous breadth of opinion, and they celebrate that some people choose to express it differently. Botha explained that some partners are active in philanthropy or private dealings but are not as vocal as Maguire is on social media, and the firm has always honored the right to free speech of each individual partner.
He also argued that Maguire has a specific profile that appeals to a certain set of founders. Maguire has deep connections with Elon Musk’s companies, managing Sequoia’s investments in Neuralink, SpaceX, The Boring Company, X, and xAI. Botha said Maguire is also attracting founders in the defense tech industry, having backed autonomous weapons company Mach Industries. Botha highlighted that Maguire is a physics PhD who dropped out of high school and is very technical.
Botha did, however, admit that Maguire’s brand of outspokenness is not completely free from consequences. He acknowledged that it does come with trade-offs.