Sequoia's mishandling of its 14,000-word SBF profile by journalist Adam Fischer and then deleting it served no purpose other than to embarrass everyone involved
Context & Ripple Effects
The day before this Bloomberg piece ran, Sequoia published a 14,000-word Adam Fischer profile of Sam Bankman-Fried at the peak of its FTX exposure — then deleted it once the exchange collapsed. Bloomberg's verdict is that the deletion compounded the original error: the piece had been framed as hagiography, and scrubbing it read as an attempt to erase evidence rather than own a lapse.
The episode lands mid-arc for a firm whose brand was quiet competence: within days it would be apologizing to fund investors over the bet, and the following year would bring a shrunken crypto fund, a board resignation at Citizen, and open friction between past and present leaders.
First-order effects
- Sequoia takes immediate reputational damage on two fronts at once — for publishing a glowing portrait of Bankman-Fried weeks before FTX's collapse, and for deleting it, which converted a bad editorial call into a public story about the firm's judgment.
- Adam Fischer's reporting is collateral damage: the deletion attaches his byline to Sequoia's embarrassment rather than letting the work stand or fall on its own terms.
Second-order effects
- The firm moves from spin to repair mode, apologizing to its fund investors for the $150M lost on FTX and detailing changes to its due diligence process — an acknowledgment that the profile reflected diligence failures, not just PR ones.
- Sequoia's crypto ambitions get repriced downstream: months later it cuts its cryptocurrency fund from $585M to $200M, shrinking the vehicle that would have deployed capital into the sector the profile celebrated.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the deeper cost is internal and cultural: a firm built on discretion sees tensions between past and present leaders spill into the open, suggesting the FTX-era missteps accelerated a generational handoff already under strain.
- For limited partners across venture, the episode becomes a case study in why LPs increasingly scrutinize how firms market founders — brand-building around a single operator now reads as diligence risk rather than deal flow.
The trend: Venture firms are learning that founder-hagiography and rapid deletions carry their own reputational cost, pushing the industry toward more defensive LP communication and leaner thematic funds after FTX.