John Doerr
John Doerr is an engineer, acclaimed venture capitalist, and Chairman of Kleiner Perkins, a leading venture capital firm that partners with some of the most ingenious and forward-thinking founders in technology. For over 40 years, Doerr has served entrepreneurs with ingenuity and optimism, helping them build bold teams and disruptive companies. He was an original investor and board member at Google and Amazon, helping to create over a million jobs and the world’s most valuable companies. Together with his wife Ann, Doerr has been an active philanthropist in the climate space, funding both emissions mitigation and conservation efforts for the last two decades. In 2018, he authored Measure What Matters, a handbook for setting and achieving audacious goals.
John Doerr Professional Experience / Academic History
Professional Experience
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Chairman
Academic History
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Master of Business Administration (MBA)
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B.S., Electrical Engineering
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M.E.E., Electrical Engineering
In 1980, Doerr joined Kleiner Perkins and sponsored a series of investments including Compaq, Cypress, Intuit, Netscape, Lotus, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, S3, Sun Microsystems, Amazon.com, Symantec and Google.
He famously led Kleiner Perkins into Google in 1999, investing $12.5 million.
Together with the firm's partners, he has backed many of America’s best entrepreneurial leaders, including Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt, Jeff Bezos, Scott Cook, Bill Campbell, Andy Bechtolsheim, Scott McNealy, Bill Joy, and Vinod Khosla.
He was also an early investor in Amazon, DoorDash, Slack and many more.
Doerr stepped down from his role leading the firm in 2016, ceding day-to-day leadership to fellow investor Ted Schlein.
SILICON VALLEY
A pioneer of Silicon Valley’s clean tech movement, Doerr has invested in zero emission technologies since 2006.
He was one of the pioneers in the venture capital community investing in breakthrough clean technologies, deploying more than a billion dollars towards more efficient solar cells, better batteries, biofuels, lower-carbon cement, alternate proteins and electric vehicles.
He joined Intel in 1974 just as they invented the famous “8080” 8 bit microprocessor.
At Intel, he held various engineering, marketing and management assignments, and was one of their top-ranked sales executives.
PHILANTHROPY
Outside of Kleiner Perkins, Doerr works with social entrepreneurs tackling systemic issues across climate, public health, and education.
In 2022, John and his wife made a $1.1 billion gift to Stanford University to launch a new school focused on sustainability.
He is passionate about encouraging leaders to reimagine the future, from transforming healthcare to advancing applications of machine learning.
He is personally involved in the improvement of K-12 public education, global poverty/health, and public policy.
He led a delegation of entrepreneurs to advocate the passage of California's landmark AB32: Global Warming Solutions Act.