L. John Doerr (born June 29, 1951) is an American venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in Menlo Park, California, in Silicon Valley. 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.[3] As of March 2013, Forbes ranked Doerr as the 527th richest person in the world, with a net worth of US $2.7 billion.[1]

Early life

Doerr was born in St. Louis, Missouri. One of five siblings, Doerr graduated from Chaminade College Preparatory School in St. Louis. He obtained a bachelor of science and master's degrees in electrical engineering from Rice University and an MBA from Harvard University in 1976.[citation needed]

Career

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.[citation needed]

He joined Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in 1980 and since then, has directed venture capital funding to some of the most successful technology companies in the world including Compaq, Netscape, Symantec, Sun Microsystems, drugstore.com, Amazon.com, Intuit, Macromedia, and Google.[4]

Doerr has backed some of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs, including Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt of Google; Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com; Scott Cook and Bill Campbell of Intuit; and Mark Pincus of Zynga.

Venture funding

He currently serves on the boards of Google, Amyris Biotech,and Zynga. Doerr led Kleiner Perkins's $150M investment in Twitter.[5][6]

Doerr co-founded and serves on the board of the New Schools Venture Fund, an education reform and charter public schools fund. And on 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 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 and is currently listed on Forbes magazine's exclusive "Midas List" and is widely regarded as one of the top technology venture capitalists in the world.[citation needed]

Forbes magazine estimates his net worth to be well over $1 billion. Doerr is a high profile supporter of the Democratic Party in Silicon Valley. Through the TechNet (lobbying organization) he helped found, he has devoted much time and money towards impacting legislation beneficial to the technology industry.[citation needed]

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.[7]

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 another iFund members announced an increase in iFund's value by another $100 million, making iFund the worlds biggest investment pool in cell phone application industry.[8]

He had also funded the initial investments in Bloom Energy Inc.

Doerr mentored Ellen Pao when she first joined Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and was her biggest defender and advocate at the firm.[9]

Economic Recovery Advisory Board

In February, 2009, Doerr was appointed as a member to 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.[10]

Personal life

Doerr is married to Ann Howland Doerr. They live in Woodside, California with their children.[2]

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 life time.[11][12]

Recognition

Awards

In 1997, Doerr was named a Distinguished Alumnus of Rice University for his accomplishments in business.[13]

In 2009, Doerr was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.[14][15][16]

In 2010, Doerr was inducted into the California Hall of Fame.

Politics

In April 2013, a lobbying group called FWD.us (aimed at lobbying for immigration reform and improvements to education) was launched, with John Doerr listed as one of the founders.[17]

References

  1. ^ a b "The Midas List Top Tech Investors". Forbes. June 12, 2014. Retrieved 2014-06-12. 
  2. ^ a b http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/24/tcdisrupt-doerr-rose/
  3. ^ "Los Angeles Times article Who's Who on new economic advisory board". Los Angeles Times. February 6, 2009. Retrieved February 5, 2009. 
  4. ^ Kaplan, Jerry (orig.: 1994; paperback: 1996). Startup : a Silicon Valley adventure. Bridgewater, NJ: Penguin Books. pp. 301–302. ISBN 0-7351-0141-8. ISBN 0-395-71133-9 (hc.); ISBN 0 14 025731 4 (pbk.). Retrieved June 13, 2010. 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.  Check date values in: |date= (help)
  5. ^ "Kleiner Perkins investment in Twitter". Retrieved July 11, 2012. 
  6. ^ Hagan, Joe (October 2, 2011). "Tweet Science". New York Magazine. Retrieved October 9, 2011. 
  7. ^ "John Doerr sees salvation and profit in greentech". TED. 
  8. ^ John Doerr: The Next Big Thing. TechCrunch (2010-04-05). Retrieved on 2013-07-18.
  9. ^ http://recode.net/2015/03/23/a-whos-who-of-the-kleiner-perkins-ellen-pao-trial/
  10. ^ John Doerr sees salvation and profit in greentech | Video on. Ted.com. Retrieved on 2013-07-18.
  11. ^ "The Giving Pledge - Pledge List". The Giving Pledge. Retrieved 29 April 2015. 
  12. ^ "John Doerr - Tech Philanthropists". Inside Philanthropy. Retrieved 29 April 2015. 
  13. ^ "Association of Rice Alumni". Rice Alumni. Retrieved 29 April 2015. 
  14. ^ "American Academy Announces 2009 Class of Fellows and Foreign Honorary Members". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. April 20, 2009. Retrieved May 1, 2009. 
  15. ^ "[American Academy of Arts & Sciences] NEWLY ELECTED MEMBERS, APRIL 2009" (PDF). American Academy of Arts & Sciences. p. 3. Retrieved May 1, 2009.  (see also the 4th entry on page 10 of the AAAS New members list for April 2009 sorted by field)
  16. ^ "Rice Professor Naomi Halas, alums John Doerr and Karen Davis elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences". Rice University. April 23, 2009. Retrieved April 25, 2013. 
  17. ^ "Our supporters". FWD.us. Retrieved 2013-04-17. 

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