Wilson Vs. Doerr. Bubble Vs. Boom. East Vs. West. Android Vs. iPhone. Facebook Vs. The Web (VIDEO) With Web 2.0 Summit now over, looking back, in my mind, easily the best panel was the one entitled Point of Control: Finance.
It featured venture capitalists John Doerr (Kleiner Perkins) and Fred Wilson (Union Square Ventures) talking with New York Magazine’s John Heilemann about the state of both investing and the state of the web ecosystem at large. What made it so interesting is that Wilson and Doerr clearly don’t agree on many of the big issues. This was best exemplified during the portion of the talk when the two give their views on where we are now. While Wilson worries that we may be in the midst of the next “bubble”, Doerr thinks of it as a “boom”. They’re both talking about the same thing, they just view it completely different ways. Then they go into starting companies on the east coast versus the west coast, the state of angel investing, iPhone versus Android, Facebook versus the web, Google’s ability to innovate, ideas versus innovation, investing in Twitter, etc.
BizDev 2.0. KPCB: $250M for Social Startups (and Its Own Relevance): Tech News « Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers today tried to reassert itself as a powerhouse and relevant venture capital firm by rounding up Facebook, Zynga and Amazon to announce a $250-million fund for social web startups, called the sFund. This comes on the heels of the VC firm’s $200 million iFund for iOS companies, which has had recent success like the $400 million purchase of portfolio company Ngmoco. John Doerr: The Next Big Thing. This guest post was written by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partners John Doerr, Bing Gordon, Chi-Hua Chien and Ellen Pao.
We covered KP’s increase in the size of the iFund last week, and additional insights from KP’s Matt Murphy on the iPad. This post goes into a lot more detail on KP’s investments in the first iFund, and what opportunities they see for the iPad. It’s hard to imagine that once there was no Internet. Just 15 years ago there was no browser, no web point-and-click. It was 1994, and Steve Jobs had left Apple. Then one day Bill Joy showed me a beta version of Mosaic, the FIRST web browser.
The rest of the 90’s were a ONCE-in-a-lifetime experience. The advent of the iPad feels like deja-vu, like it’s happening all over again. Inventing The Future Newsweek put it best… “Steve has the uncanny ability to cook up gadgets we didn’t know we needed… but suddenly can’t live without.” At Kleiner Perkins we say “If you can’t INVENT the future, the next best thing… is to FUND it.” John Doerr. John Doerr is a general partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
Since joining KPCB in 1980, John and his partners have backed some of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs, including Larry Page, and Eric Schmidt of Google; Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com, Scott Cook and Bill Campbell of Intuit; and Mark Pincus of Zynga. John’s passion is helping entrepreneurs create the “Next Big Thing” in mobile and social networks, greentech innovation, education and economic development.
Ventures sponsored by John have created more than 200,000 new jobs. John serves on boards in the areas of Internet technologies and greentech, including Amyris, Bloom Energy, Coursera, Essence Healthcare, Flipboard, FloDesign Wind Turbines, Google, iControl, mCube, Quantumscape, Renmatix, Upthere and Zynga. He also led KPCB’s investment in Twitter. John’s technology career began in 1974 at Intel, just as the chipmaker was inventing the groundbreaking 8080 microprocessor. Recent Milestones Investments Videos Sources.