John Doerr | |
---|---|
Born | Louis John Doerr June 29, 1951 |
Education | Rice University (BS, MEng) Harvard University (MBA) |
Political party | Democratic |
Spouse | Ann Howland |
Children | 2 |
L. John Doerr (born June 29, 1951) is an American investor and venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins in Menlo Park, California. In February 2009, Doerr was appointed a member of the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board to provide the President and his administration with advice and counsel in trying to fix America's economic downturn. [1] Forbes ranked Doerr as the 40th richest person in tech in 2017, [2] and as of August 1, 2023, as the 146th richest person in the world, with a net worth of US$11.9 billion. [3] Doerr is the author of Measure What Matters, a book about goal-setting, and Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now. [4] [5]
In 2022, John and his wife Ann collaborated with Stanford University to launch its first new school in about 70 years: Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. [6]
Doerr was born in St. Louis, Missouri. One of five siblings, Doerr graduated from Chaminade College Preparatory School in St. Louis. Doerr obtained a B.S. and an M.E.E. degree in electrical engineering from Rice University and an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1976. [7]
Doerr joined Intel Corporation in 1974 just as the firm was developing the 8080 8-bit microprocessor. He eventually became one of Intel's most successful salespeople. He also holds several patents for memory devices. [8] [9] In 1980, Doerr was offered a job with Kleiner Perkins. Intel president Andrew Grove told him, "John, venture capital, that's not a real job. It's like being a real estate agent." [10]
He joined Kleiner Perkins that year, and since then has directed the distribution of venture capital funding to technology companies including Compaq, Netscape, Symantec, Sun Microsystems, drugstore.com, Amazon.com, Intuit, Macromedia, and Google. [11]
Doerr has backed entrepreneurs, including Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt of Google; Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com; and Scott Cook and Bill Campbell of Intuit.[ citation needed ]
Doerr co-founded and serves on the board of the New Schools Venture Fund, an education reform and charter public schools fund, and TechNet, a policy network of high-tech CEOs advocating education and litigation reform, and policies for the innovation economy. Doerr co-chaired California's Proposition 39 which lowered the threshold to approved school bonds, and Proposition 71 which created $3 billion in funding for California research into stem cell therapies. He serves on the board of Bono's ONE campaign to fight global poverty, particularly disease in Africa. His success in venture capital has garnered national attention; he has been listed on Forbes magazine's exclusive "Midas List" and is widely regarded as one of the top technology venture capitalists in the world. [12]
Doerr advocates innovation in clean energy technologies to combat climate change and has written and testified on the topic. In a 2007 TED conference, he cited his daughter's remark, "your generation created this problem, you better fix it", as a call to fight global warming. [13]
In 2008, he announced with Steve Jobs the Kleiner Perkins $100 million iFund, declaring the iPhone "more important than the personal computer" because "it knows who you are" and "where you are." In April 2010, he along with other iFund members announced an increase in iFund's value by another $100 million, making iFund the world's biggest investment pool in the cell phone application industry. [14]
He currently serves on the boards of Google, Watershed, Amyris Biotech, Tradesy, ASAPP, and Zynga. Doerr led Kleiner Perkins's $150 million investment in Twitter in 2012. [15] [16] [17]
In 2013, he invested in DreamBox, [18] [19] which has been acquired by Charter School Growth Fund. He had also funded the initial investments in Bloom Energy Inc. Doerr is a major backer of the education company Remind. [20]
In 2016, Doerr stepped down from his role leading Kleiner Perkins, ceding leadership to Ted Schlein. [3]
Doerr mentored Ellen Pao when she first joined Kleiner Perkins. [21] Before changing his mind in 2012, he was known for challenging those who gave her negative performance reviews. [22]
Doerr serves on the board of the Obama Foundation and ONE.org. [23] [24]
In February 2009, Doerr was appointed as a member of the USA Economic Recovery Advisory Board by President Barack Obama to provide the President and his administration with advice and counsel in fixing America's economic downturn. [25]
Doerr is married to Ann Howland Doerr. They live in Woodside, California, with their two children. [26]
In August 2010, they signed the Giving Pledge, a campaign set up by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Warren Buffett to get ultra-high-net-worth individuals to donate their fortunes to charitable causes within their lifetime. [27] [28]
In 1997, Doerr was named a Distinguished Alumnus of Rice University for his accomplishments in business. [29] In 2009, Doerr was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. [30] [31] [32] In 2010, Doerr was inducted into the California Hall of Fame. In 2019, Doerr received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. [33] [34]
He is also member of the Global Advisory Board of Khan Academy. [35]
On May 4, 2022, Stanford University announced Ann and John Doerr's donation of $1.1 billion to establish the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. [36] [37] The gift is the second largest to an academic institution—the first being Michael Bloomberg's $1.8 billion gift to Johns Hopkins University. It is the largest gift to Stanford in the university's history. [38]
Doerr is a supporter of the Democratic Party and has hosted fundraisers for the party on several occasions. [39] Along with Mark Zuckerberg and Reid Hoffman, John Doerr was a co-founder of FWD.us, a lobbying group focused on immigration reform, improvements in education, and scientific research. [40]
Eric Emerson Schmidt is an American businessman and former Computer Engineer who served as the CEO of Google from 2001 to 2011 and as the company's executive chairman from 2011 to 2015. He also served as the executive chairman of parent company Alphabet Inc. from 2015 to 2017, and Technical Advisor at Alphabet from 2017 to 2020. In October 2024, he was 52nd richest according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index with an estimated net worth of US$33.8 billion.
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.
Brook Byers is a senior partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and the brother of Stanford University Professor Tom Byers and Atlanta, Georgia engineering entrepreneur Ken Byers.
Reid Garrett Hoffman is an American internet entrepreneur, venture capitalist, podcaster, and author. Hoffman is the co-founder and executive chairman of LinkedIn, a business-oriented social network used primarily for professional networking. He is also chairman of venture capital firm Village Global and a co-founder of Inflection AI.
Mary Meeker is an American venture capitalist and former Wall Street securities analyst. Her primary work is on Internet and new technologies. She is the founder and general partner at BOND, a San Francisco–based venture capital firm. She previously served as partner at Kleiner Perkins.
The iFund is a US$200 million capital fund. Developers may enter into equity deals for the creation of applications, services, and components for Apple Inc.'s iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad platform. It is being offered and managed by venture capital company Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers (KPCB).
John P. Morgridge is an American businessman who was the CEO and chairman of the board of Cisco Systems.
Alan E. Salzman is an American venture capitalist and managing partner. He is the co-founder, CEO and Managing Partner of VantagePoint Capital Partners, a venture capital firm in the U.S. and an investor in clean technology companies.
James W. Breyer is an American venture capitalist, founder and chief executive officer of Breyer Capital, an investment and venture philanthropy firm, and a former managing partner at Accel Partners, a venture capital firm. Breyer has invested in over 40 companies that have gone public or completed a merger, with some of these investments, including Facebook, earning over 100 times cost and many others over 25 times cost. On the Forbes 2021 list of the 400 richest Americans, he was ranked #389, with a net worth of US$2.9 billion.
Mike McCue is an American technology entrepreneur who founded or co-founded Paper Software, Tellme Networks, and Flipboard.
Ellen Kangru Pao is an American investor and former interim CEO of social media company Reddit.
Kris Duggan is an Australian-born entrepreneur, advisor, investor, who co-founded and was the founding CEO of Badgeville and BetterWorks.
Remind is a private mobile messaging platform that aims to help teachers, parents, students, and administrators in K–12 schools communicate with everyone simultaneously. The platform has over 20 million monthly active users across the United States. As of September 2016, Remind is used in more than 50% of the public schools in the U.S.
Looker Data Sciences, Inc. is an American computer software company headquartered in Santa Cruz, California. It was acquired by Google in 2019 and is now part of the Google Cloud Platform. Looker markets a data exploration and discovery business intelligence platform.
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.
Women in venture capital or VC are investors who provide venture capital funding to startups. Women make up a small fraction of the venture capital private equity workforce. A widely used source for tracking the number of women in venture capital is the Midas List which has been published by Forbes since 2001. Research from Women in VC, a global community of women venture investors, shows that the percentage of female VC partners is just shy of 5 percent.
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The Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability is a school at Stanford University focusing on climate change and sustainability. The school also researches many domains of fossil fuel extraction and development. It opened on September 1, 2022, as Stanford's first new school since the School of Humanities and Sciences in 1948. It is considered one of the largest climate change–related schools in the United States.
The careful reader will notice that I was not present for several scenes in the latter part of the book. To reconstruct these episodes, I relied on the taped recollections of as many of the participants as possible. I am deeply indebted to several people – especially Robert Carr, Bill Campbell, Randy Komisar, and John Doerr – who gave freely of their time to describe these scenes.
Mr. Schlein and all the other digital partners felt that way, except me. I saw it differently.