Interviews with Digital Media Thought Leaders
Tom Perkins, Co-Founder, Kleiner - Perkins
Podcast Audio | Posted by Phil Leigh on December 4, 2007
If you would like to hear a Co-Founder of Kleiner - Perkins discuss his new autobiography Valley Boy, this interview is for you.
Our guest today is Tom Perkins who is a Co-Founder of Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers. KPCB is perhaps the best known venture capital investor having backed such companies as Amazon.com, AOL (Time-Warner), Compaq (now owned by H-P) Electronic Arts, Flextronics, Genentech, Google, Intuit, LSI Logic, Macromedia (now owned by Adobe), Sun Microsystems, and Tandem (now owned by H-P). As a leading pioneer, the firm may have been the major influence in shaping the Venture Capital industry during the past 35 years.
Outside his family, perhaps the two most important people to influence Tom’s life were David Packard and a high school Physics teacher whose last name was Wilson. Packard was a Co-Founder of Hewlett-Packard and mentored Perkins. He gave Tom the green light to start an outside laser venture while simultaneously performing a demanding full-time job at H-P. Wilson convinced Tom’s parents that he should get a solid college education even though nobody in the Perkins family was yet a college graduate. The Physic teacher also helped Tom get a scholarship to MIT.
Perkins pioneered an investor “bill of rights” that has become a standard within the VC industry and led the way with the concept of incubation. For example, both Tandem and Genentech were originated within Kleiner – Perkins itself.
Our questions probe Tom on a number of points including (1) his method of evaluating unfamiliar technologies, (2) his future expectations for the Internet and the book as a format, (3) his aversion to investing in defense contractors, and (4) his reading interests outside the field of technology.
Phil’s Take. Like Bob Noyce of Intel, Tom Perkins came from moderate beginnings and was an early intellectual standout. His abilities, combined with an MIT and Harvard education, always gave him options to follow multiple paths. But his extraordinary success is probably as much a result of an unrelenting drive to win as it is to intellect because the KPCB record attracted numerous smart competitors.
Categories: Podcast Audio
Tags: Adobe, Amazon.com, AOL, digital media, Electronic Arts, Flextronics, Genentech, Google, Hewlett Packard, kleiner perkins caufield & byers, Macromedia, Netscape, Phil Leigh, Sun Microsystems, Tom Perkins, Valley Boy, Venture Capital
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