“The “sequoia scam” is worse than a single horror story,” Foody wrote on X. “in the last 6 [months] ive seen a half dozen rounds where sequoia invests in 2 tranches. everyone pretends they only did the higher valuation. founders misrepresent this to their employees & then shop it to angels too.”

TechCrunch has previously reported on VCs investing in the same round at different valuations. Under this mechanism, the lead VC firm invests a significant chunk of its capital at a lower, preferential valuation, while putting a much smaller portion of capital in at a drastically higher price. The massive “headline” valuation that gets announced manufactures the perception of a dominant market winner, masking the fact that the lead investor’s actual average entry price was significantly lower.

The disparity can be stark. For example, when the AI-driven IT helpdesk startup Serval announced a $75 million Series B at a $1 billion valuation, the announcement didn’t tell the whole story. According to The Wall Street Journal, Sequoia’s actual lowest entry point valued the company at just $400 million — less than half the headline figure. The gap between those two numbers is the gap between perception and reality that Foody is pointing at.

Serval isn’t alone. At Aaru, a startup that uses AI to simulate user behavior for market research, lead investor Redpoint backed the company at a $450 million valuation despite an announced $1 billion headline price.