Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) is a Sand Hill Road venture capital firm in Silicon Valley. The name comes from the four founding partners: Eugene Kleiner (emeritus), Tom Perkins (emeritus), Frank J. Caufield (emeritus), and Brook Byers. It is one of the most successful VC firms in the world.

The firm was formed in 1972. At that point, the founders of most venture capital (VC) firms had financial backgrounds. Kleiner Perkins's founders were distinguished by their industry experience — Kleiner as a founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and Perkins as one of the leaders of Hewlett-Packard's early computer hardware division.

Like other venture capital firms, the firm does not discourage transactions among companies in which it holds a stake.^{[citation needed]} This is similar to the Japanese keiretsu style of company structure.^{[citation needed]}

1 Investments
2 Partners
3 Think America
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Investments

The company has been an early investor in more than 300 information technology and biotech firms, over the past thirty five years, including: Amazon.com, America Online, Brio Technology, Compaq, Electronic Arts, Flextronics, Genentech, Google, Intuit, Lotus Development, LSI Logic, Macromedia, Netscape, Quantum, Segway, Sun Microsystems, Tandem.^[1] Current private investments as of November 2007 include EEstor, Vertica, and OptiMedica.

KPCB paid $4 million in 1994 for around 25% of Netscape and did well during Netscape's IPO and subsequent $4 billion acquisition by AOL. An investment of $8 million in Cerent was worth around $2 billion when the optical equipment maker was sold to Cisco Systems for $6.9 billion in August of 1999. In 1999 Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital paid $25 million for 20% of Google - today Google's market capitalization is over $222 billion (October 2007). As initial investors in Amazon.com KPCB scored returns of over 55,000% at the December 1999 peak of that stock, although the value of that investment was subsequently reduced by downturns in Amazon.com's stock price.

In March, 2008, KPCB announced the iFund, a $100 million venture capital investment initiative that will fund innovators developing applications, services, and components for Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch platform.

In April 2008, it was reported that KPCB was raising funds for a $400 million growth-stage clean-technology fund.^[2] .

[edit] Partners

Notable members of the firm include partners John Doerr and Brook Byers, as well as high-profile individuals such as Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy (who joined as partner in January 2005), former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell (who joined in July 2005 in the newly-created position of "strategic limited partner"), and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, who joined as partner in November 2007^[3]^[4] as part of a collaboration between KPCB and Gore's firm Generation Investment Management to promote green technology, business and policy solutions.^[5]

[edit] Think America

It has publicized its plan to put as many as 50,000 plug-in hybrids on U.S. roads beginning late next year and could make the famed tech region south of San Francisco a center for these vehicles. The venture will be called Think North America and be based in Menlo Park, California^[6]

It will bring together Kleiner with RockPort Capital Management, a venture capital firm focused on clean technology, and Think Global, a Norwegian electric car maker.^[7]