John Doerr's Startup Manual
John Doerr's Startup Manual
The 46-year-old partner at Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers (KPCB) is, by all accounts, the most influential venture capitalist of his generation. Over the last 16 years, he has built an unrivaled record of backing industry-defining start-ups in fields as diverse as computing, (Sun Microsystems, Compaq), software (Lotus, Intuit), biotechnology (Genentech, Millennium) and the Internet (Netscape, Amazon.com). But for all of those past triumphs, Doerr says, “there’s never been a better time than now to start a company. In the past, entrepreneurs started businesses. Today they invent new business models. That’s a big difference, and it creates huge opportunities.”A graduate of Rice University and Harvard Business School, Doerr joined Intel in 1975 as an engineer and project manager. He often points to his years with the semiconductor giant as critical to his ability to empathize with young entrepreneurial teams. Doerr’s Intel record was, in fact, extraordinary. Bored after three years in the factory, he talked his way into the sales force where he quickly became Intel’s top-ranked systems salesman.It was also at Intel where John Doerr first exhibited some of his now-legendary personality traits: his unrelenting drive and competitiveness, his willingness to take huge risks and go beyond standard procedure to achieve success. Once, to close a microprocessor deal, he even threw a lawnmower into a deal.Doerr is also known for his almost superhuman energy. The standard image of John Doerr is that of a rail-thin man in a rumpled blue blazer, with a lick of hair falling across his forehead, rushing to a conference, simultaneously holding a conversation with three people around him and talking on his cell-phone.