After founding and selling two companies, we are thrilled to welcome Aaref Hilaly to the Sequoia Capital team! Here’s Aaref on how to build a company from scratch from the OPEN SV forum 2011.

View the presentation while listening to Jim Goetz discuss founders, ideas and timing from Sequoia’s perspective at last weekend’s Y Combinator Start Up School 

http://bit.ly/ucc8Zj

Three pieces of advice that Dropbox’s Drew Houston gives young entrepreneurs (Sequoia Capital became Drew and Arash’s first business partner in 2007):

1) Everything starts small

2) Get out of your comfort zone

3) Stack the odds in your favor 

“Starting a company requires you to become oddly unemotional. That means dumping fear of failure, dumping fear of judgement, dumping the desire to impress anyone.” Max Levchin, Paypal Co-founder (Sequoia Capital got into business with Max in ‘99 at PayPal)

“Sequoia Capital’s 40 years of experience shows us that today is a spectacular time to start a company.” Jim Goetz at Y Combinator’s 7th Annual Start-up School 

Y Combinator tells GigaOM what they look for in an entrepreneur