John Doerr

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. As of October 2015, Forbes ranked Doerr as the 135th richest person in the world, with a net worth of US $4.1 billion.

Doerr was born in St. Louis, Missouri. One of five siblings, Doerr graduated from Chaminade College Preparatory School in St. Louis. He obtained a B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from Rice University and an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1976.

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.

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.

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; and Scott Cook and Bill Campbell of Intuit.

Venture funding

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 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.

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.

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

In 2013 he invested in DreamBox 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.

Doerr mentored Ellen Pao when she first joined Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Before changing his mind in 2012, he was known for challenging those who gave her negative performance reviews.

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.

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

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.

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

In 2009, Doerr was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

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

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. Doerr is a supporter of the Democratic Party and has hosted fundraisers for them on several occasions.