South African-born actuarial scientist,
Roelof Frederik Botha, has switched careers and successfully made a name for
himself as one of the leading venture capitalists in the cutting-edge high-tech
hub of Silicon Valley in the US.
He was CFO of PayPal when the secure
payment system was sold to Ebay for USD 1.5bn in 2003 and was the first to back
the video-sharing site YouTube as venture capitalist at Sequoia Capital.
YouTube was sold to Google for USD 1.65bn in 2006 effectively turning a USD 12mn
investment by Sequoia into a USD 450mn profit.
Botha is currently ranked 26th
on the Forbes Midas List of the top 100 influential Internet investors, and was
ranked 23rd and 22nd in 2007 and 2008 respectively.
Born in 1973, Botha spent six years in
Pretoria before moving to Hout Bay in Cape Town with his family, which includes
three brothers and a sister.
Botha, who has not had his favourite kudu
biltong “for a long time”, attended Jan van Riebeeck High School in
Tamboerskloof and actively participated in both rugby and chess. He excelled in
academics and was the top student in the Cape Province for his matriculation year
in 1990.
With his obvious flair for mathematics and
figures, Botha went on to be the top actuarial science student at the
University of Cape Town where he graduated with a Bachelor of Business Science
with majors in actuarial science, economics and statistics in 1994, at the age
of 22. He was the youngest person to qualify as an actuary in South Africa.
Botha became a Fellow of the Faculty of
Actuaries in 1996 and worked as a management consultant for McKinsey &
Company in Johannesburg for two years before leaving for the US in 1998 to study
for his MBA at Stanford University.
He graduated from Stanford Business School
in 2000, walking off with three MBA awards, including the Henry Ford Award as
valedictorian of his year.
While still completing his MBA, Botha was
recruited by fellow South African and co-founder of PayPal, Elon Musk, and
joined PayPal as its CFO in 2000.
He also met his Singaporean wife at
Stanford. They were classmates.
When PayPal was sold in 2003, Botha, joined
Sequoia Capital and embarked on a remarkably successful venture capital career.
Botha says Michael Moritz, a partner at
Sequoia Capital has had the biggest impact on his business life. “He led
Sequoia’s investments in Yahoo, Google and PayPal. He supported me as a young
CFO at PayPal and then invited me to interview at Sequoia Capital. I never
thought I would be in this career given that I don’t have an electrical engineering
or computer science background,” said Botha.
Focusing on services and software
investments, Botha has invested in instant messaging start-up Meebo, global
money transfer site Xoom, local business review site Insider Pages, and
lighting and technology firm Luxim, amongst others.
For Botha, who lives by the motto: “You’re
only as good as your next investment”, the biggest thrill in his daily work is
meeting an interesting new company and hearing a compelling idea from an
entrepreneur.
In contrast, the hardest part is calling a
business back to let them know that Sequoia has decided not to invest in their
idea.
“With investment being tighter since the
global financial crisis this means that companies need to demonstrate a stronger
edge in their value proposition. The return on investment and payback periods
also need to be more compelling before a company can win capital support,” said
Botha.
With the long-term goal to leave the world
a better place, Botha aims to help Sequoia invest in market-leading companies
that will transform the world and leave a legacy.
“I helped build PayPal into a global force.
The company serves almost 100-million users around the world and has an annual
turnover to USD 2bn just ten years after it started.
“YouTube is used by more than 350-million
people around the globe every month. Both these companies have had a worldwide
impact and I want to replicate those experiences. The natural consequence of
this goal is that we generate handsome financial returns for our investors,”
said Botha.
When not working, Botha likes to indulge in
soccer, watching rugby, and little things that keep him close to his Afrikaner
heritage (he is the grandson of former South Africa foreign affairs minister,
Pik Botha), such as making biltong.
Although he has little time
for reading anything other than science journals, Botha says his all time
favourite read is Duiwelskloof by
Andre Brink.
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