Sequoia Open Source
Fellowship

Open source is the lifeblood of software. Almost every company today relies on libraries and programs made better and more reliable by open source contributors around the world. While we have worked with many incredible companies who have deep open source roots, including Temporal, Confluent and MongoDB, we also recognize that open source projects that don’t become businesses are still critical tools for our portfolio companies and the broader community. We started this fellowship to support open source software outside of the walls of companies.

Learn more

Apply to be a Fellow

Meet our 2024 Fellows

vLLM contributors Woosuk Kwon,

Zhuohan Li and Simon Mo

Angelopoulos, Chiang, Stoica and the

Chatbot Arena team

Meet our 2023 Fellows

Get to know Sebastián Ramírez - our first OSS Fellow

Keeping an Open Source Mind

After teaching himself to code (and to speak English) online, Colombia native Sebastián Ramírez—better known to many as “tiangolo”—is building open source tools to make coding more accessible for anyone, anywhere.

Read the Spotlight

Open Source at Sequoia

Supporting the software that supports all of us. We’re all better off with open source, whether it’s from intrepid individuals or through a company.

CHRIS WANSTRATH

GITHUB

CLÉMENT DELANGUE

HUGGING FACE

ELIOT HOROWITZ

MONGODB

RYAN DAHL

DENO

MAXIM FATEEV

TEMPORAL TECHNOLOGIES

BEN FIRSHMAN

REPLICATE

Sebastián Ramírez

FastAPI

SAMUEL COLVIN

PYDANTIC

AMANDA KELLY

Streamlit

FAQs

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Who should apply to OSS?

We want to support open source creators and projects that have real world adoption. That’s not always the same as having lots of stars on GitHub.

Our goal is to help our fellows make significant improvements or investments in existing open source projects or support their expansion.

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Who should apply to OSS?

We want to support open source creators and projects that have real world adoption. That’s not always the same as having lots of stars on GitHub.

Our goal is to help our fellows make significant improvements or investments in existing open source projects or support their expansion.

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Who owns what I make?

You do! We do not expect anything in return for sponsorship. Any code written before or after the program is yours to decide what to do with. You are also welcome to decide what to work on and we do not expect to have any influence over your roadmap.

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Who owns what I make?

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Am I expected to start a company or can I just work on my project?

We don’t expect you to start a company or require an entity to secure funding. You’re welcome to work at your own pace on either your existing project or even to begin something new.

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Am I expected to start a company or can I just work on my project?

We don’t expect you to start a company or require an entity to secure funding. You’re welcome to work at your own pace on either your existing project or even to begin something new.

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Is OSS in person?

No, it is location agnostic. You can live and work from anywhere. Digital nomads welcome!

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Is OSS in person?

No, it is location agnostic. You can live and work from anywhere. Digital nomads welcome!

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Is travel required?

No travel required, but you are welcome to join for Sequoia founder events.

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Is travel required?

No travel required, but you are welcome to join for Sequoia founder events.

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Why did you start the fellowship?

The entire tech ecosystem, from startups to large companies, is built on a foundation of open source software maintained by OSS developers. We are supporting this work because we all rely on it in order to thrive.

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Why did you start the fellowship?

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How many people are in the program?

We will likely select 2-3 fellows per year. We will take applications and accept fellows on a rolling basis.

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How many people are in the program?

We will likely select 2-3 fellows per year. We will take applications and accept fellows on a rolling basis.

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What are the terms?

Our goal is to cover reasonable living expenses for a 6 to 12 month period for our fellows. We do not take any equity or consider this to be an investment in any future company.

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