The miserable lack of diversity in Silicon Valley is so exhaustively documented by now that we’ve nearly run out of ways to point it out. It’s most conspicuous at the top echelons, where the money is invested and recouped—and longtime VC John Doerr just made the problem glaringly obvious.
Ellen Pao's blockbuster lawsuit against venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers has been described as "exposing Silicon Valley secrets" and putting the usually secretive world of tech-industry VCs "under a microscope."
Actor and Celebrity Rehab alum Gary Busey turns 65 today. Producer Robert Evans turns 79. Comedian Richard Lewis is turning 62. Wendy Kopp, the founder of Teach for America, is turning 42. Top Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr is 57. Web entrepreneur Scott Heiferman is 37. Colin Hay of Men at Work is 56.…
At yesterday's Web 2.0 Summit, Kleiner Perkins whiz John Doerr — a man so successful he can get away with wearing the same three ties for ten years — told attendees that Barack Obama should skip over Googlers Eric Schmidt and Vint Cerf, and instead hire Kleiner Perkins partner and Sun co-founder Bill Joy as his…
Kleiner Perkins venture capitalist John Doerr is the guy everyone vaguely remembers as being important a decade ago but can't recall anything he's funded recently besides Friendster. Even so, he's full of advice for entrepreneurs — so full of advice that his 10 tips for startups spilled over to 11. The 11th tip:…
The company that funded Netscape, Google and Genentech is now focusing on electric cars, solar power and biofuels. New York Times contributor Jon Gertner has been meeting with Kleiner partners since last year. His 8,000-word feature in Sunday's paper goes deep on details of a few KPCB investments such as Ausra. But it…
Kleiner Perkins partner John Doerr, ever the indulgent father, has stopped showering tears on his 17-year-old daughter Mary, and switched to cash instead. Mary Doerr's nonprofit, Inconvienient Youth, is a Ning-based social network that's supposed to make Al Gore's global warming presentation more "teen-friendly," …
In the latest issue of Fortune, a feature about venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins pointed out that the company has yet to make any investments in Web 2.0. The firm which was an early investor in Google has not been so bullish on the likes of Facebook. (The investment in Friendster couldn't have helped.) Instead,…
Speaking to young graduates, including eight new Amazon.com hires, at Carnegie Mellon University's commencement ceremonies on Sunday, Jeff Bezos admitted that he's a nerd who does "a mean interpretation of Captain Picard," but is not a sexless monk. That classification was suggested by Amazon board member John Doerr…
After reading our take on VC blogger Fred Wilson's advice that entrepreneurs need to learn how to "ask for the order," Persai cofounder Ted Dziuba commented: "Methinks Fred Wilson doth blog too much." We disagree, if only because Wilson is such a fruitful source. But at a venture capital conference in San Francisco…
LiveJournal founder Brad Fitzpatrick is a prankster, as evidenced by his Halloween costume last year, when the new Googler dressed up as Facebook to mock his coworkers' fears of the social network. I'm told that in Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good, Sarah Lacy's new book about Web 2.0, there's an anecdote about…
The Castilleja School, a posh private prep school for girls in Palo Alto with an annual tuition of $29,305, received a $1 million from the Benificus foundation, which lists John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins as president and his wife, Ann Howland Doerr, as vice president and secretary. The gift was part of the school's…
John Doerr has closed a half-billion dollars in capital for the new Kleiner Perkins cleantech growth fund, with buddy Al Gore kicking in some dough from his Generation Investment deal. [CNet] (Photo by AP/Paul Sakuma)
Former U.S. vice president Al Gore will chair a new $683 million Climate Solutions Fund from Generation Investment Management. The money will be used to seed public and private companies in long-term investments in carbon markets, renewable energy and cleaner fossil fuel use. Generation includes Gore's BFF John…
John Doerr and Al Gore have been taking their pitch for a new $400 million environment-friendly venture fund to prospective limited partners, and have already hired a veteran investment manager from Goldman Sachs to run it. This fund, which would invest in late-stage — that is, larger — clean energy and carbon…
At Apple's iPhone SDK announcement today, Steve Jobs had "one more thing..." to reveal. Venture capitalist John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins came onstage to announce a $100,000,000 "iFund" to help "young developers with funding." This is a huge amount of money for developers, but no details on how it will be invested or…
Forbes has released its Midas List of top venture capitalists. New York-based investors make up 2 percent of the list, and that has the writers at Silicon Alley Insider confused. But since it's the same confusion that led Henry Blodget, the disgraced tech-stock analyst, to found the tech blog in the first place, one…
Anyone remember "Gore and Doerr"? That was Silicon Valley's dream presidential ticket in the late '90s, long before the Supreme Court nixed Al Gore's presidential career and John Doerr, the Kleiner Perkins VC, torpedoed his own golden reputation by missing out on all the hot Internet companies of this millennium.…
Can you believe that last week's Web 2.0 Summit was the fourth such conference? Its humble beginnings were barely in evidence, as venture capitalists, corporate biz-dev types, and M&A scouts seemed to outnumber the startup founders they were trying to hunt down. Friday afternoon was a return to the old school,…
WEB 2.0 SUMMIT — Kleiner Perkins partner John Doerr is on stage, getting interviewed by conference organizer John Battelle. His explanation for why he invested in Google? Larry and Sergey were "really nerdy" and had no social lives. There's something to that. Does that mean Doerr will start selling his…
