“They’re a key input to make sure we have the best product for our users,” Reyes said.
Similarly, Sequoia’s first fellowship award last year, FastAPI, leans heavily on Pydantic, the popular data validation library created by the eponymous startup in Sequoia’s portfolio.
However, Sequoia Capital partner Lauren Reeder told TechCrunch that this cross-pollination between fellows and portfolio isn’t a strict condition of its funding decisions, merely a “nice bonus” when things do align. And in truth, when an open source project is genuinely popular, there’s every chance that it will be picked up by one of Sequoia’s portfolio companies, which is a good way for the VC firm to hear about worthwhile projects.