John Doerr has become an icon in Silicon Valley for making some of the most prescient and profitable investments in leading technology companies over the past several decades. As a partner at the renowned VC firm Kleiner Perkins, Doerr has funded and mentored founders of revolutionary companies like Google, Amazon, Slack, Robinhood, and more. His ability to spot trends and innovations before the market does stems from his deep passion for technology and economic change.
Doerr developed his investor instincts early on as an employee at chipmaker Intel, where he witnessed the potential of the nascent personal computer industry firsthand. This experience shaped Doerr’s vision of finding and investing in technology-driven startups that could transform massive markets.
Notable Doerr Investments That Reshaped Industries
Some of Doerr’s early home-run investments were in Compaq, Netscape, and Symantec during the 1990s. Yet his track record of spotting companies that would dominate the internet age was cemented with early funding in Google and Amazon.
Doerr led Kleiner Perkins’ investment in Google in 1999 when it was still a fledgling search engine startup battling other options like Yahoo, Excite, and AltaVista. Doerr had the foresight to see that Google’s PageRank algorithm for relevance and its stripped-down, lightning fast interface would make it the undisputed search king. He mentored founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and heavily guided Google’s early business strategy and product direction. Beyond just the financial return, which was massive when Google went public in 2004, Doerr helped ensure Google dominated online search and maintained its early lead despite competitive threats from Microsoft and elsewhere.
Similarly, Doerr was blown away early on by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ vision for an “everything store” selling endless products online enhanced by world-class distribution logistics. He led Amazon’s $8 million Series A investment in 1995 - its largest early funding influx which gave it a crucial lifeline to survive dot-com burst. Though skeptical venture capitalists at the time didn’t think an online bookseller could ever turn profits, Doerr saw early how Bezos was building an adaptive empire selling far more than just books. Amazon tapped into Doerr as one of its most trusted advisors during its critical early years.
Beyond his smash hit early funding in Google and Amazon, Doerr had the business instincts and people judgment to invest in other pioneering companies before almost any other VCs saw their potential. These include:
- Netscape: Backed the company that made the first commercial web browser, setting off the internet boom.
- Intuit: Funded the makers of Quicken and TurboTax, helping launch fintech innovation.
- Sun Microsystems: Doerr’s first investment, Sun created key hardware infrastructure that powered the web.
- Zappos: Spotted how the online shoe retailer’s focus on customer service would let it dominate.
- Twitter: Recognized how its real-time communication would change media and culture.
Doerr’s Commitment to Sustainability and Healthcare Investments
In recent years, Doerr has focused investments around tackling climate change and advancing healthcare solutions enabled by technology. He co-founded sustainable energy accelerator Breakthrough Energy Ventures, raising over $3 billion to fund extremely ambitious companies in areas like grid-scale energy storage, low-carbon materials, and carbon removal. Doerr is also investing heavily in next-gen healthcare startups leveraging breakthroughs in life sciences, genomics, and machine learning to provide improved diagnostics and care.
Generous Supporter of Education and Public Policy
Beyond his prolific investment career spanning over four decades now, Doerr has been a leading supporter of educational causes designed to develop both technology talent and effective leaders in public policy roles. He co-founded the New Schools Venture Fund to advance charter schools and education reform. Doerr also created the Doerr Institute for New Leaders at Rice University focused on accelerating leadership skills.
A Visionary Investor Guiding the Web 2.0 Era
Given his incredible track record finding many pioneering companies across software, ecommerce, semiconductors, and now sustainability and healthcare, it was fitting for Doerr to play a pivotal role guiding the 2007 Web 2.0 Summit.
- (CC) Brian Solis, www.briansolis.com, bub.blicio.us.
This was an era when social networks like Facebook and Twitter were first making content creation and sharing by users mainstream. Doerr’s decades of experience nurturing revolutionary companies like Google primed him to serve as a visionary keynote speaker at this event centered on the emerging ecosystem of user-generated internet technologies classified as “Web 2.0”. Attendees were eager to soak in Doerr’s perspective on the massive potential of this next phase of the internet’s evolution.
Both his early investments in the initial internet boom and social networks like Twitter combined with Doerr’s innate sense for technology’s transformational impact ensured enthusiasm for his insights. The Web 2.0 Summit marked another milestone where Doerr guided critical dialogue around epochal shifts in technology and digital business.
Now into his fifth decade investing in forward-thinking founders, John Doerr retains his singular influence in Silicon Valley and globally. The extraordinary returns generated from his investments are outweighed by the progress his funded companies have made improving lives and solving intractable challenges around information access, commerce, communication, transportation, and more. Doerr’s mix of vision, mentorship, and unwavering optimism continues lighting the way for emerging technology titans in his role as the unequivocal “superangel” of venture capital.