Eugene Kleiner
Eugene Kleiner (born May 12, 1923 in Vienna , † November 20, 2003 in Los Altos Hills ) was an American engineer and venture capitalist . He was an employee of the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory and a co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and a co-founder of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers .
life and work
In 1938 he fled Vienna with his family and came to New York two years later . He served in the US Army during World War II . In 1947 he married Rose Wassertheil (died 2001), a Polish émigré. Together they had two children, Robert and Lisa.
After his time in the military, he studied mechanical engineering at Brooklyn Polytechnic (now the Polytechnic University of New York ), where he received his bachelor's degree in 1948 . It was followed by a Master -Studies in industrial technology ( English industrial engineering ) at the New York University . After briefly teaching engineering, he joined Western Electric .
In 1956, Kleiner was one of the first to accept an offer from William B. Shockley to join the newly formed Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory . However, he left the research laboratory in 1957 with seven other employees. This group later became known as the Traitorous Eight , and together they founded Fairchild Semiconductor . According to Arthur Rock , Kleiner was instrumental in raising the $ 1.5 million seed capital from Sherman Fairchild . At Fairchild, Kleiner mainly took on administrative tasks. Kleiner later invested money in Intel , a semiconductor company founded in 1968 by Fairchild co-founders Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore .
In 1972, Kleiner founded the company Kleiner Perkins , a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley, together with Tom Perkins (formerly Hewlett-Packard ) . In 1977 Brook Byers and Frank J. Caufield joined the company, which was later renamed Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers . The company was one of the first investors in more than 300 information and biotechnology companies, including Amazon , AOL , Brio Technology , Electronic Arts , Flextronics , Genentech , Google , Hybritech , Intuit , Lotus Development , LSI Logic , Macromedia , Netscape , Quantum , Segway , Sun Microsystems and Tandem Computers .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Eugene Kleiner in the Notable Names Database (English)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Little one, Eugene |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American engineer and venture capitalist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 12, 1923 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Vienna |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 20, 2003 |
| Place of death | Los Altos Hills |