South African Roelof Botha, 48, has been tapped to lead storied venture firm Sequoia Capital as new CEO. This was made known in a Twitter message from current chief Doug Leone late on Monday. Botha’s “keen instinct for innovation has made its mark on our partnership and on our industry,” Leone wrote in the statement. It also said that Botha will “set the overall tone and oversee the global centralised functions” of the firm, including its finance and culture, and that Botha will continue to lead Sequoia’s US and Europe business as managing partner.

Leone, 65, said he will remain a general partner in the firm’s existing funds and will keep his board seats.

As part of the announcement, Sequoia said that Neil Shen will continue to lead the firm’s China business as founding and managing partner.

Cape Town-educated Botha, who was born in Pretoria and whose grandfather was the last apartheid-era South African foreign minister Pik Botha (and the first minister of mineral & energy affairs in the Nelson Mandela administration), oversaw several of Sequoia’s key investments, including those in YouTube and Square.

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Botha, who relocated to the US from Johannesburg in the late 1990s, was also a key player, along with fellow South African Elon Musk, in PayPal’s formative years.

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry