You have to also treat write ups like this as mostly marketing for the firm. There was a discussion recently about A16Z (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39901289) that made me think about that angle here as well. All these frameworks may have useful information but they are also simplistic. I think this is marketing for their Arc program, which is a selling point for early stage startups to consider Sequoia. In other words, this is about improving their deal flow. It also probably helps filter the flow, since now anyone seeking early stage funding from Sequoia will do the work to try to fit to this framework before wasting anyone’s time, and their pitch will also be easier for Sequoia to understand and evaluate.