John Doerr

John Doerr is an American venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. He also served on the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board during the Obama administration. In 2017, Forbes ranked Doerr as 105th richest person in the United States and the 303rd richest person in the world.

Doerr joined Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in 1980 and has since backed some of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs, including Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt of Google; Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com, and Scott Cook and Bill Campbell of Intuit. 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 Doerr have created more than 300,000 new jobs. John serves on the boards of Amyris, Google, and Zynga, as well as several private technology ventures. He also led KPCB’s investment in Twitter.

Doerr’s technology career began in 1974 at Intel, just as the chipmaker was inventing the groundbreaking 8080 microprocessor. During his Intel years, he held roles in engineering, marketing, management, and sales. He also learned about operating excellence from Intel co-founder Andy Grove — insight that he continues to share with entrepreneurs today. Later, Doerr founded Silicon Compilers, a VLSI CAD software company, and co-founded @Home, the nationwide broadband cable Internet service.

Outside of KPCB, Doerr supports entrepreneurs focused on the environment, public education and alleviating global poverty. These include NewSchools.org, TechNet.org, the Climate Reality Project and ONE.org. John earned B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from Rice University and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. He also holds several patents for computer memory devices. Doerr is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.