Sequoia Capital is backing Blockit, a scheduling optimization startup founded by Kais Khimji and John Han. Sequoia first invested in Khimji in 2019, not as a founder but as a partner, writing in their internal thesis that he was 'the hardest worker in the room' with 'tenacity in spades.' When he left to build Blockit, they followed him with a second check.
The investment thesis on Blockit is direct: scheduling is broken, LLMs can fix it, and the business model holds up. Sequoia frames it as a freemium subscription with three compounding advantages: virality because scheduling requires multiple parties, network effects because more calendar inventory produces better matches, and strong monetization because it replaces labor, not software. Their internal projection puts peak revenue potential above $1 billion.
The piece is worth reading in full for one reason: Sequoia published both investment memos, word for word, on a person and on a market. That is rare. The memos reveal exactly how a top-tier firm thinks about conviction before a product exists, and what language they use internally when they believe something can become 'one of the most important companies of the next couple decades.'
[READ ORIGINAL →]