business
Hosted by Sequoia Capital · business · EN
A podcast about the inflection points that shaped some of the most significant companies of our time. Crucible moments are pivotal decisions that determine your trajectory. In Season 2, hear from founders and leaders like Steve Chen of YouTube, Drew Houston of Dropbox, Frank Slootman of ServiceNow and Tony Xu of DoorDash, Steve Huffman of Reddit and more about how they navigated the challenges and opportunities that defined their stories. Hosted by Roelof Botha of Sequoia Capital. The content of this podcast does not constitute investment advice, an offer to provide investment advisory services or an offer to sell or solicitation of an offer to buy an interest in any investment fund.
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Contact path
Verified email
Booking probability
31%
Guest openness
Selective
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Signup to Generate a PitchA podcast about the inflection points that shaped some of the most significant companies of our time. Crucible moments are pivotal decisions that determine your trajectory.
Crucible Moments is hosted by Sequoia Capital. The show has published 28 episodes to date.
Recent episodes include "Palo Alto Networks ft Nir Zuk & Nikesh Arora - The Grudge That Transformed Cybersecurity" (4 December 2025, 47 minutes), "Bolt ft. Markus Villig - From Bootstrapping in Estonia to a Global Leader in Mobility" (20 November 2025, 43 minutes), and "Supercell ft Ilkka Paananen - How an Early Pivot Led to ‘Clash of Clans’ and ‘Brawl Stars’" (6 November 2025, 43 minutes).
Crucible Moments publishes roughly every two weeks, with episodes averaging 41 minutes across 28 episodes.
Booking probability for Crucible Moments is 31%, and the host is rated Selective on guests. Crucible Moments requires a Pod Score of 80 or higher. Crucible Moments's contact route on record: verified email.
The strongest fits for Crucible Moments are Investing & Wealth Management and Business & Management Consulting. Crucible Moments has a business audience.
Sequoia Capital hosts Crucible Moments, a business podcast with 28 episodes published.
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Episode #4
<p>In the early 2000s, the cybersecurity industry was dominated by incumbents focused on high margins, not innovation. Nir Zuk tells the story of how, frustrated by this stagnant culture, he set out on his own with a...
Episode #3
<p>At 19, Markus Villig borrowed €5,000 from his parents to fix Estonia's broken taxi system. What happened next defied every conventional startup playbook. </p> <p>Markus started by making fleet dispatch software for...
Episode #2
<p>Founder and CEO Ilkka Paananen set out to create a different kind of game company—one where the game development teams would have decision-making power, not upper management. Ilkka recalls the early decision to scrap...
Episode #1
<p>In 2014, Keller Cliffton made an audacious pivot: shut down his robotic toy company and rebuild it as an autonomous drone delivery system for life-saving medical supplies. Investors were skeptical: The team knew...
Crucible Moments
<p>Previously on Crucible Moments, we explored the inflection points that shaped some of the most significant names in technology. Now, we're returning for a brand new season. Join us as leaders from Stripe, Zipline...
Episode #10
<p>When Nubank started 10 years ago, a few big banks in Brazil had a stranglehold on the largest economy in Latin America: they controlled nearly all the market share, and imposed some of the highest fees and worst...
Episode #9
<p>A scrappy upstart taking on hyperscalers in a category with lots of hand-wavers, Dropbox became the canonical example of Silicon Valley viral growth, adding 50 million users in the first years following their 2008...
Episode #9
<p>Earlier this season we heard the startup story of ServiceNow—from Fred Luddy setting out to reinvent IT workflows as a first-time founder, to Frank Slootman joining as CEO to scale the business to an IPO. Even more...
Episode #8
<p>Millions of Americans use their smartphones to invest and manage their finances every day—but before Robinhood started in 2013, finance looked very different. Investing was something for the wealthy, with steep fees...
Episode #7
<p>This episode takes us back to the earliest days of YouTube, as the founders explain why it was a longshot that succeeded against all odds. When cofounders Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim left PayPal to start...
Episode #6
<p>Founder Matthew Rabinowitz opens up about the intensely personal journey that set him on a course to revolutionizing healthcare. A PhD in electrical engineering, he had no background in genetics or biology, but after...
Crucible Moments
<p>Tony Xu and Miki Kuusi share insights from building two of the world's most successful delivery platforms—DoorDash and Wolt—which merged in 2022 to create an $80B GOV business operating in 32 countries. In this...
Episode #5
<p>DoorDash faced skeptics from the start. Grubhub, Delivery.com, and others were already addressing the restaurant delivery market when CEO Tony Xu and his co-founders started in 2013. But after talking to hundreds of...
Episode #4
<p>The biggest enterprise software company to come out of Europe in the last decade didn’t come from London, Paris, Berlin or Stockholm—but Bucharest, Romania. </p><p><br></p><p>UiPath, founded in 2005 and originally...
Episode #3
<p>Reddit is one of the largest and most culturally influential sites on the internet—and its journey is one of the most unusual company stories in internet history. College roommates Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian...
Episode #2
<p>MongoDB, founded in 2007, originally aimed to create a platform-as-a-service system with a new database layer. Facing competition from Google, the founders pivoted to focus solely on their database product, MongoDB—a...
Episode #1
<p>In 2004, bankrupt after the company where he’d previously worked had imploded, Fred Luddy decided to start over as a first-time founder at age 50. His vision was to reinvent the nascent IT software field for the...
Crucible Moments
<p>In Season 1 of Crucible Moments, we heard from founders like PayPal’s Max Levchin, Block’s Jack Dorsey, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and more about the turning points and key decisions that shaped their journeys. Now...
Crucible Moments
<p>Crucible Moments will be back shortly with season 2. You’ll hear from the founders of YouTube, DoorDash, Reddit, and more. In the meantime, we’d love to introduce you to a new original podcast, Training Data, where...
Episode #8
<p>CEO Jensen Huang tells the legendary story of Nvidia, from the company’s early days pioneering 3D graphics cards for a niche PC gaming market to powering the AI revolution as the sixth most valuable company in the...
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