John Doerr
L. John Doerr (born June 29, 1951 in St. Louis, Missouri) is an American venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in Menlo Park, California, in the Silicon Valley.
Doerr obtained a Bachelor of Science and master's degree in electrical engineering from Rice University and an MBA from Harvard University 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 engineering patents.
He joined Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield, and 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, Amazon.com, and Google, as well as Friendster, Go.com and myCFO.
He currently serves on the boards of public companies Google, Amazon.com, Intuit, Homestore, and Sun, and on the boards of private ventures Zazzle, Good Technology, Miasole, Purkinje, and Spatial Photonics.
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.
Today, Doerr remains one of Silicon Valley's most influential figures. He currently lives in Woodside, California; Forbes magazine estimates his net worth to be well over $1 billion. It was announced on September 9, 2006 that Doerr was to be the Rice University 2007 commencement speaker.[1] 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 and venture capital industries.
John Doerr is one of five children. He is married, with two children, and lives in Woodside, California.
References
- ^ Rice News: Alum Doerr to send off Class of ’07. September 14, 2006.