Meet Gideon Yu, just hired as a junior partner at Sequoia. The former Yahoo treasurer came to the venture capital partnership's notice when he moved to its star internet investment, Youtube. (I trust his colleagues called him Yu-tube.) Yu's path is similar to that of Roelof Botha, chief financial officer of Paypal before he joined Sand Hill Road's premier firm. Now he just needs an investment such as Youtube, Botha's find, to make his investing career. If an entrepreneur hopes to snow Sequoia's newbie, he or she should remember that Yu knows all the tricks. A Time Magazine reporter sat in on Youtube's management meetings, when the company was negotiating its sale to Google. Said Yu: "The finance team [at Google] has been pushing me really hard on budgeting, your favorite topic. So what I'm telling them and what I'm telling us are"—he paused—"different."

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