Sequoia Open Source Fellowship

About the role

Sequoia Capital runs a small grant for independent maintainers. The point is time, not a hiring pipeline. For six to twelve months the firm covers ordinary living costs so you can stay on a public project that already has users, grow that project, or start a new one, without incorporating and without giving Sequoia a share of anything you write. Fellows keep the code from before the program and after it. Sequoia says startups and large companies alike rest on libraries that independent maintainers keep alive, including tools used by firms it has backed. The fellowship exists to fund that work even when the project will never be a company. Applications are reviewed as they arrive.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Spend the funded months on a public project other people already depend on, with a change those users would notice.
• Expand that same project when the next honest step is growth of scope, not a private fork.
• Open a new public repository if a greenfield codebase is the better use of the window.
• Choose the work yourself. Sequoia does not assign tickets or redirect the roadmap.
• Move at your own pace. The listing does not set an office schedule.
• Live wherever you already live. The program is location-agnostic.
• Join Sequoia founder events only if they are useful to you. Travel is not required.
• Keep licensing, contribution rules, and release decisions. The grant is not a claim on the code.

Requirements

• You already make open source that other people use in the real world. A high star count is not the stated bar.
• The proposal is a serious improvement to an adopted project, an expansion of that project, or a new public project you will actually start.
• You can take six to twelve months of living support without Sequoia forming a company or other entity for you.
• You are prepared to work from any country. This is not a visa or relocation package.
• You accept that Sequoia takes no equity and does not treat the grant as a seed round in a future company.
• You are comfortable owning the technical plan for the whole period.

Nice to have

• A public history on a widely used library, in the same broad sense as earlier fellows on FastAPI, vLLM, or Chatbot Arena. Those names are history, not a required stack.

Practical notes

Sequoia expects about two or three people per year. There is no published close date. Use the form on the official OSS page when the work is ready.

2023 featured Sebastian Ramirez, known for FastAPI. 2024 featured vLLM contributors Woosuk Kwon, Zhuohan Li, and Simon Mo, and the Chatbot Arena group around Angelopoulos, Chiang, and Stoica. Those cohorts are examples of the kind of public work the program has already funded.

The same page lists Temporal, Confluent, and MongoDB as backed companies with deep open source roots. That explains why the firm cares. It is not a list of repositories you must touch. Other names on the page (GitHub, Hugging Face, Deno, Pydantic, Streamlit, Replicate) describe the ecosystem Sequoia is pointing at, not a reporting line.

The stipend is described only as reasonable living expenses for six to twelve months. You do not need to be building a startup during the grant; staying on an existing public project is enough. Sequoia also says you may begin something new if that is the better use of the months. Confirm the amount, duration, and tax treatment on the official apply page. Confirm details on the official apply page.