Roelof Botha

Botha was born in Pretoria, South Africa, and at the age of six he moved to Cape Town with his parents. His grandfather was Pik Botha, who was the country's foreign minister in the last years of the apartheid era. He was raised in Hout Bay, a suburb of Cape Town, and attended Hoërskool Jan van Riebeeck. Botha earned a BSc in Actuarial Science, Economics, and Statistics from the University of Cape Town, graduating in 1996, earning the best undergraduate grade point average in the history of the university. He worked as a business analyst at McKinsey & Company in Johannesburg from 1996 through 1998. He then moved to the United States, where he received an MBA from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, again graduating as valedictorian.

In 2000, prior to his graduation from Stanford, Botha became director of corporate development for PayPal. He moved on to vice-president of finance and was named chief financial officer (CFO) in September 2001. PayPal went public in February 2002, and was purchased by eBay in October 2002. Meg Whitman offered Botha the opportunity to stay on as CFO post-acquisition, but venture capitalist Michael Moritz, who had invested in PayPal and was a board member, offered him a partnership, which he accepted in January 2003.

At Sequoia Capital, Botha oversaw the firm's investment in YouTube, Instagram, and Block (formerly Square), among others. He helped to plan the acquisition of Xoom by PayPal. In 2017, Botha assumed responsibility for Sequoia's U.S. operations from Jim Goetz. In April 2022, Sequoia announced that, starting in July 2022, Botha would replace Doug Leone as Senior Steward of Sequoia's global brand and operations.

Botha has led or co-led Sequoia's investments in several early and growth stage companies. As of 2022, his active investments include Ethos Technologies, Evernote, GenEdit, Landis, mmhmm, Pendulum, Skiff, Temporal Technologies, and The Org. On October 9, 2023, Botha became chairman of the board of directors at Unity Technologies.

In November 2025, Botha resigned from his role as managing partner at Sequoia. He remained an advisor to the venture capital firm and retained his board positions but was formally succeeded by Alfred Lin and Pat Grady. Botha's tenure saw to "more than $50 billion in profit [returned to limited partners]". The Wall Street Journal reported that Sequoia's partners challenged Botha's leadership style as well as his handling of the firm's Chinese investment business spin-off. After 24 years, Botha departed the firm in 2026 to focus on his independent board service and private investments. That year he joined the board of SpaceX, rejoining Elon Musk.

Botha's father, also named Roelof, is an economist. His uncle was the rock musician Piet Botha. His grandfather was Roelof Frederik "Pik" Botha, a South African politician who was the country's last foreign minister under the Apartheid government, and the first Minister of Mineral and Energy Affairs under Nelson Mandela. Roelof is married to Huifen Chan and they have two children.