Don Valentine's original 1977 memo for Sequoia's investment into Apple Computer
Year First Appeared
1977
Creator
Don Valentine
A typed internal memo from November 3, 1977 in which Don Valentine, founder of Sequoia Capital, recommended a $600,000 financing round into a one-year-old "Home — Hobby Computers" company called Apple Computer. Released publicly by Sequoia in April 2026 to mark Apple's 50th anniversary (#Apple50), it is one of the few primary documents to survive from the founding round of the personal computing era.
On loan from Sequoia Capital.
Importance in Internet Culture
The memo captures the moment the venture-capital pattern that would define Silicon Valley met the company that would define the personal computer. Sequoia's participation helped Apple recruit Mike Markkula as Chairman and gave the company the operating discipline that turned the Apple II into the first mass-market PC. The document also helped fix the genre conventions of the modern VC memo — short, blunt, market-first, with explicit caveats about the team — that founders and investors have argued about ever since.
Interesting Fact
Valentine was introduced to Steve Jobs by Atari founder Nolan Bushnell, who had already turned Jobs down at $50,000 for a third of the company and told him, "Don't ask me, call Don." The memo's most-quoted line — "Leading company in a hot biz… $600k buys 10% — very rich deal, management questionable for this evaluation" — is bracingly skeptical for what became the most consequential personal computing investment in history.