Eric Feng

Last updated
Eric Feng
NationalityAmerican
Education University of Texas at Austin (BS)
Occupations
  • Software engineer
  • business executive
  • financier

Eric Feng is an American software engineer, business executive, and financier. He is a former general partner at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, where he focused on leading early stage consumer investments [1] before leaving in 2018. [2] Previously he was CTO of Kleiner Perkins portfolio company Flipboard, along with other companies. [3]

Contents

Early life and education

From Texas, [4] Feng earned his B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin [5] in 1999, [1] and received the IEC Everitt Award [5] [1] as the top graduating engineering student. [4]

Career

He started his professional career at Trilogy Software, [4] where he cofounded Uberworks.com, [1] which was later acquired by a publicly traded Network Commerce in 2000. [6] He went on to hold leadership positions at Microsoft Research, [1] working with the Microsoft China research lab in Beijing [4] as a program manager. [7] In Beijing he co-founded [4] and served as CEO [1] of the online video platform startup called Mojiti, [4] which was acquired by Hulu in 2007. [8] As part of the acquisition, Feng joined Hulu [8] [4] as the founding CTO [1] and head of product. [5]

In 2010, Feng joined Kleiner Perkins [9] [8] and focused on sustainability [1] [5] [3] and digital media investments, [10] also becoming chief of staff to Kleiner Perkins partner Al Gore. [1] [5] Between 2011 [10] and 2015, [7] Feng incubated and worked at Kleiner Perkins portfolio companies Erly, [10] [5] [11] Airtime Media, [11] [12] and Flipboard, [12] [7] before rejoining Kleiner Perkins in 2015 [3] [13] as a general partner focused on early-stage consumer investing. [1] By 2016 he had led an investment into Handshake, a career network for college students, [13] and was involved in the funding of the dollar store goods e-commerce stores Hollar and BorderX Lab. [14] [15] He also recently incubated the video e-commerce mobile platform Packagd. [16] [17] He left Kleiner Perkins in 2018. [2]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vinod Khosla</span> Indian-American businessman (born 1955)

Vinod Khosla is an Indian-American billionaire businessman and venture capitalist. He is a co-founder of Sun Microsystems and the founder of Khosla Ventures. Khosla made his wealth from early venture capital investments in areas such as networking, software, and alternative energy technologies. He is considered one of the most successful and influential venture capitalists.

Kleiner Perkins, formerly Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), is an American venture capital firm which specializes in investing in incubation, early stage and growth companies. Since its founding in 1972, the firm has backed entrepreneurs in over 900 ventures, including America Online, Amazon.com, Tandem Computers, Compaq, Electronic Arts, JD.com, Square, Genentech, Google, Netscape, Sun Microsystems, Nest, Palo Alto Networks, Synack, Snap, AppDynamics, and Twitter. By 2019 it had raised around $9 billion in 19 venture capital funds and four growth funds.

Benchmark is a venture capital firm founded in 1995 by Bob Kagle, Bruce Dunlevie, Andy Rachleff, Kevin Harvey, and Val Vaden.

Airware was an American venture-funded startup that provided commercial unmanned aerial vehicles for enterprises. The company ceased operations on September 14, 2018.

Alex Fielding is an American engineer and manager. He is the CEO and co-founder of Privateer Space, a space startup with a global online marketplace that aims to connect customers seeking planetary data with orbiting satellites and AI. He co-founded the company with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and MacArthur Genius Moriba Jah. Privateer announced in 2023 that it had grown the business from the Google Maps of space to become the first AI powered space data ride sharing platform with an upcoming satellite autopilot system called Pono set to fly on SpaceX in December 2023. The International Space Station National Labs, in partnership with Privateer announced a deal whereby Privateer publicly tracks and displays mission data on International Space Station telemetry, astronauts, and mission objectives live on the ISS National Labs website. He was co-founder and CEO of robotics company Ripcord, Inc from 2014 to 2021.

Khosla Ventures is an American venture capital firm founded by Vinod Khosla, focused on early-stage companies in the Internet, computing, mobile, financial services, agriculture, healthcare and clean technology sectors. Some of its most successful investments include Affirm, DoorDash, Square, Impossible Foods, Instacart, and OpenAI.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Index Ventures</span> European worldwide venture capital firm

Index Ventures is a European venture capital firm with dual headquarters in San Francisco and London, investing in technology-enabled companies with a focus on e-commerce, fintech, mobility, gaming, infrastructure/AI, and security. Since its founding in 1996, the firm has invested in a number of companies and raised approximately $5.6 billion. Index Venture partners appear frequently on Forbes’ Midas List of the top tech investors in Europe and Israel.

Walmart Labs became part of Walmart Global Tech, the technology and business services organization within Walmart. Venky Harinarayan and Anand Rajaraman founded Kosmix in 2005. In April 2011, Walmart acquired Kosmix and formed @WalmartLabs, a research division, out of it. In 2016, Walmart combined Walmart Labs and its information systems division (ISD) into one team called Walmart Technology. In August 2020, Walmart Technology launched its new identity as Walmart Global Tech as part of a new technology and shared services organization within the world's largest retailer.

InMobi is an Indian multinational technology company, based in Bangalore. Its mobile-first platform allows brands, developers and publishers to engage consumers through contextual mobile advertising. The company was founded in 2007 under the name mKhoj by Naveen Tewari, Mohit Saxena, Amit Gupta and Abhay Singhal.

Graphiq is a semantic technology company that uses artificial intelligence to rapidly create interactive data-driven infographics. Its intent is similar to Wolfram Alpha which is designed to provide users with direct information on a variety of subjects rather than going through a search engine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lightbank</span> American venture capital investments firm

Lightbank is a financial organization that specializes in making venture capital investments including seed investments, Series A round and late-stage investments in companies across the United States. The company was founded in 2010, and is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nebula (company)</span>

Nebula, Inc. was a hardware and software company with offices in Mountain View, California, and Seattle, Washington, USA. Nebula developed Nebula One, a cloud computing hardware appliance that turned racks of standard servers into a private cloud. The Nebula One private cloud system was built on the OpenStack open source cloud framework, as well as many other open source software projects.

Shasta Ventures is an early-stage venture capital investment firm located in Silicon Valley that invests in enterprise and technology consumer startups. It is located on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park.

Mike Abbott was the Executive Vice President, Software for General Motors. He was formerly the vice president of Apple's Cloud Services team. He also previously worked as a general partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, vice president of engineering at Twitter, team lead for Azure at Microsoft and senior vice president of apps and services at Palm.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arthur van Hoff</span> Dutch computer scientist and businessman (born 1963)

Arthur van Hoff is a Dutch computer scientist and businessman.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aileen Lee</span> American investor

Aileen Lee is a U.S. venture capital angel investor and co-founder of Cowboy Ventures.

Ellen Pao v. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers LLC and DOES 1-20 is a lawsuit filed in 2012 in San Francisco County Superior Court under the law of California by executive Ellen Pao for gender discrimination against her employer, the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins. Overlapping with a number of studies condemning the representation of women in venture capital, the case was followed closely by reporters, advocacy groups and Silicon Valley executives. Given the tendency for similar cases to reach settlements out of court, coverage of Pao v. Kleiner Perkins described it as a landmark trial once it began in February 2015. On March 27, 2015 the jury found in favor of Kleiner Perkins on all counts.

Social Capital, formerly known as Social+Capital Partnership, is a venture capital firm based in Palo Alto, California. The firm specializes in technology startups, providing seed funding, venture capital, and private equity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Optoro</span>

Optoro is a reverse logistics technology company that works with retailers and manufacturers to manage and then resell their returned and excess merchandise. These products, which range from consumer electronics to home goods to clothing, are automatically listed on online marketplaces, including Amazon, eBay, Buy.com, BestBuy. Optoro also liquidates goods in bulk through its other proprietary website.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mamoon Hamid</span> Pakistani-American venture capitalist (born 1978)

Mamoon Hamid is a Pakistani-American venture capitalist currently serving as a Managing Member and General Partner at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 "Eric Feng". Bloomberg . Retrieved November 6, 2017.
  2. 1 2 Chernova, Yuliya (2018-12-08). "Eric Feng Won't Join Kleiner's Next Fund as General Partner". The Wall Street Journal. ISSN   0099-9660 . Retrieved 2020-11-10.
  3. 1 2 3 Yeung, Ken (October 13, 2015). "Mark Zuckerberg's sister officially joins Kleiner Perkins, along with Flipboard CTO Eric Feng". VentureBeat . Retrieved October 28, 2017.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Wang, Jack (May 18, 2014). "Hulu founding CTO and Flipboard CTO Eric Feng: Don't listen to your investors, never stop recruiting". TechinAsia. Retrieved November 6, 2017.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Eric Feng, Kleiner Perkins, retrieved November 6, 2017
  6. "Network Commerce acquires Trilogy's UberWorks". Puget Sound Business Journal . August 25, 2000. Retrieved November 6, 2017.
  7. 1 2 3 Primack, Dan (October 13, 2015). "Eric Feng leaves Flipboard to rejoin Kleiner Perkins". Fortune . Retrieved October 28, 2017.
  8. 1 2 3 Frommer, Dan (June 11, 2010). "Hulu CTO Eric Feng Leaves To Work With Al Gore At Kleiner Perkins". Business Insider . Retrieved October 28, 2017.
  9. Kincaid, Jason (June 11, 2010). "Hulu Founding CTO Eric Feng Leaving For KPCB, Al Gore". TechCrunch . Retrieved October 28, 2017.
  10. 1 2 3 Austin, Scott; McMahan, Ty (August 2, 2011). "Eric Feng's Clean-Tech Focus At Kleiner Perkins Lasts One Year". The Wall Street Journal . New York City, New York, United States. Retrieved October 28, 2017.
  11. 1 2 Thomas, Owen (February 8, 2013). "Flipboard Is Turning To Video, Hiring Hulu's Ex-CTO". Business Insider . Retrieved October 28, 2017.
  12. 1 2 Rao, Leena (February 8, 2013). "Former Kleiner Perkins Partner, Erly Founder And Hulu CTO Eric Feng Joins Flipboard As CTO". TechCrunch . Retrieved October 28, 2017.
  13. 1 2 Loizos, Connie (June 17, 2016). "Talking Kleiner 3.0 with Eric Feng, its new consumer investing partner". TechCrunch . Retrieved November 6, 2017.
  14. Perez, Sarah (November 3, 2016). "Hollar snags another $30 million for its fast-growing dollar store app". TechCrunch . Retrieved November 6, 2017.
  15. "BorderX Lab Raises $20M in Series B Funding Round Led by Kleiner Perkins". PR Newswire. May 10, 2018. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  16. Magistretti, Bérénice (June 8, 2017). "Ex-Hulu CTO raises $7.5 million for YouTube commerce startup Packagd". VentureBeat . Retrieved October 28, 2017.
  17. Spangler, Todd (June 8, 2017). "Ex-Hulu CTO Launches Startup Packagd to Sell Stuff Using YouTube Videos, Inspired by QVC and HSN". Variety . Retrieved October 28, 2017.