John Doerr

Venture capital kingpin at firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers has labored nearly 3 decades in Silicon Valley. Studied electrical engineering at Rice U., then Harvard M.B.A. Funded tech blockbusters: Sun Microsystems, Amazon, Intuit, Netscape. Also had a hand in some duds: AtHome, Handspring. Kleiner Perkins' $11.8 million investment in Google made him truly rich. Today on boards of privately held Zazzle, Purkinje, Good Technology, Spatial Photonics, Miasole. KP recently announced $500 million Green Growth Fund to battle climate crisis, $100 million fund for iPhone applications. Supports Democrats; brought on former Vice President and BFF Al Gore as a partner 2007. In 1974 John joined a small chipmaker, Intel, just as they invented the legendary 8080 microprocessor. (He feels he was very lucky, in the right place at the right time). He worked in engineering, marketing and became a top-ranked sales executive. John joined KPCB in 1980 and soon started Silicon Compilers, a VLSI CAD software company, and @Home, the first broadband cable Internet service. Eric Schmidt calls John "one of Google's best board members." And Jeff Bezos says, "Doerr (and Kleiner) is the center of gravity in the Internet." John has also been part of several big failures, most famously GO Corporation, chronicled by Jerry Kaplan in the book "Startup". John is a techie and inventor, holding patents for computer memory devices. He earned a BS and MS in Electrical Engineering from Rice University and an MBA from Harvard.