L. John Doerr (born June 29, 1951) is an American investor and venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins in Menlo Park, California. In February 2009, Doerr was appointed a member of the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board to provide the President and his administration with advice and counsel in trying to fix America's economic downturn.[1]Forbes ranked Doerr as the 40th richest person in tech in 2017[2] and, as of 1 August, 2023, as the 146th richest person in the world, with a net worth of US$11.9 billion.[3] Doerr is the author of Measure What Matters, a book about goal-setting, and Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now.[4][5]
Doerr joined Intel Corporation in 1974 just as the firm was developing the 80808-bitmicroprocessor. He eventually became one of Intel's most successful salespeople. He also holds several patents for memory devices.[8][9] In 1980, Doerr was offered a job with Kleiner Perkins. Intel president Andrew Grove told him, "John, venture capital, that's not a real job. It's like being a real estate agent."[10]
Doerr co-founded and serves on the board of the New Schools Venture Fund, an education reform and charter public schools fund, and TechNet, a policy network of high-tech CEOs advocating education and litigation reform, and policies for the innovation economy. Doerr co-chaired California's Proposition 39 which lowered the threshold to approved school bonds, and Proposition 71 which created $3 billion in funding for California research into stem cell therapies. He serves on the board of Bono's ONE campaign to fight global poverty, particularly disease in Africa. His success in venture capital has garnered national attention; he has been listed on Forbes magazine's exclusive "Midas List" and is widely regarded as one of the top technology venture capitalists in the world.[12]
Doerr advocates innovation in clean energy technologies to combat climate change, and has written and testified on the topic. In a 2007 TED conference, he cited his daughter's remark, "your generation created this problem, you better fix it", as a call to fight global warming.[13]
In 2008 he announced with Steve Jobs the Kleiner Perkins $100 million iFund, declaring the iPhone "more important than the personal computer" because "it knows who you are" and "where you are." In April 2010, he along with other iFund members announced an increase in iFund's value by another $100 million, making iFund the world's biggest investment pool in the cell phone application industry.[14]
He currently serves on the boards of Google, Watershed, Amyris Biotech, Tradesy, ASAPP, and Zynga. Doerr led Kleiner Perkins's $150 million investment in Twitter in 2012.[15][16][17]
In 2016, Doerr stepped down from his role leading Kleiner Perkins, ceding leadership to Ted Schlein.[3]
Doerr mentored Ellen Pao when she first joined Kleiner Perkins.[21] Before changing his mind in 2012, he was known for challenging those who gave her negative performance reviews.[22]
Doerr serves on the board of the Obama Foundation and ONE.org.[23][24]
Economic Recovery Advisory Board
In February 2009, Doerr was appointed as a member of the USA Economic Recovery Advisory Board by President Barack Obama to provide the President and his administration with advice and counsel in fixing America's economic downturn.[25]
Personal life
Doerr is married to Ann Howland Doerr. They live in Woodside, California, with their two children.[26]
He is also member of the Global Advisory Board of Khan Academy.[35]
On May 4, 2022, Stanford University announced Ann and John Doerr's donation of $1.1 billion to establish the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability.[36][37] The gift is the second largest to an academic institution—the first being Michael Bloomberg's $1.8 billion gift to Johns Hopkins University. It is the largest gift to Stanford in the university's history.[38]
^"John Doerr, MBA 1976". Harvard Business School. January 1, 2008. Retrieved October 4, 2015.
^A US 4096582 A, Paul T. Bailey; L. John Doerr & Robert M. Sandfort, "Field-accessed magnetic bubble mutually exclusive circuits with common elements", issued 1978-06-20
^A US 3879716 A, Paul T. Bailey & L. John Doerr, "Mutually exclusive magnetic bubble propagation circuits with discrete elements", issued 1975-04-22
^John Doerr, 2018, Measuring What Matters. New York, Portfolio/ Penguin. ISBN9780525536222 Quote at p.33.
^Kaplan, Jerry (1996) [first published by Houghton Mifflin Company 1994]. Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure. Bridgewater, New Jersey, U.S.: Penguin Books. pp. 301–02. ISBN0-7351-0141-8. (hc.); (pbk.). The careful reader will notice that I was not present for several scenes in the latter part of the book. To reconstruct these episodes, I relied on the taped recollections of as many of the participants as possible. I am deeply indebted to several people – especially Robert Carr, Bill Campbell, Randy Komisar, and John Doerr – who gave freely of their time to describe these scenes.