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found both. He raised Kleiner’s first “growth”
fund in 2010 on the assumption that if
Kleiner couldn’t catch early-stage stars, at
least it could get them before their ascent was
complete. To run the new billion-dollar fund,
in 2011 he persuaded a longtime friend of the
firm, Morgan Stanley’s Mary Meeker, to move
west and become an investor for the first time
in her career. It was a development that would
partly resuscitate Kleiner—and eventually
lead to its being cleaved in half.
MEEKER WAS ALREADY A LEGEND in Silicon Valley,
despite having spent all of her career as a
New York City–based research analyst. She
came of age in an era when analysts worked
hand in glove with investment bankers,
and her enthusiastic support for companies
like Netscape, Amazon, and Google—all in
Kleiner’s portfolio—helped Morgan Stanley
win the mandate to underwrite their IPOs.
New rules prohibited investment banks from
rewarding analysts on deals, so Doerr’s offer
Cowboy Ventures. Trae Vassallo, key to one of
Kleiner’s biggest successes of the era, thermo-
stat maker Nest, started her own early-stage-
focused firm, called Defy.
The endless outflow created two problems.
Entrepreneurs couldn’t be sure who would
be around at Kleiner to help guide them, and
Doerr didn’t know who would lead the firm
when he retired. It wasn’t a problem unique
to Kleiner, but it was an acute one. “Succes-
sion has always been a challenge with venture
capital firms because they tend to be so tied
to specific, large personalities,” says Spencer
Ante, author of Creative Capital, a history of
the industry. “Some people are better at giving
up control than others.” In Doerr’s case, he
couldn’t seem to alight on the right mix of
promise and stature. “I think the answer lies
in John and his superhero fixation,” says one
ex-Kleiner investor. “If you weren’t already
a superhero coming in, you weren’t going to
become a superhero at Kleiner.”
In need of a new strategy and a high-
wattage personality to match his own, Doerr
“Succes-
sion has
always
been a
challenge
with ven-
ture capi-
tal firms
because
they tend
to be so
tied to
large per-
sonalities.”
Megan Quinn
2012–2015
Quinn joined Kleiner
Perkins from mobile
payment company
Square, where she was
the director of prod-
ucts. At Kleiner she fo-
cused on working with
both the early-stage
and growth units. In
2015 she joined Spark
Capital, where she has
invested in companies
including Rover, Nian-
tic, and Glossier.
Aileen Lee
1999–2012
Lee invested in
e-commerce and retail
companies such as
Rent the Runway, One
Kings Lane, Plum Dis-
trict, and Dollar Shave
Club. She also coined
the term “unicorn,”
which refers to a tech-
nology startup valued
at $1 billion or more.
She later launched
the “seed”-stage firm
Cowboy Ventures.
Ellen Pao
2005–2012
A protégé of John
Doerr, Pao filed a
gender discrimination
lawsuit alleging that
she had been passed
over for promotion. A
jury cleared Kleiner
in 2015 after a public
trial that aired the
firm’s dirty laun-
dry. Pao now runs a
diversity and inclu-
sion nonprofit called
Project Include.
Matt Murphy
1999–2015
Murphy made invest-
ments in companies
like AppDynamics
and SimpliVity. He
led Kleiner’s iFund
initiative, a pool of
capital that backed
concepts related to
Apple’s iPhone. After
leaving Kleiner, he
joined Menlo Ventures
and now invests in A.I.,
software, and robotics
companies.
Tr a e Va s s allo
2002–2014
A design expert,
Vassallo was tasked
with Kleiner’s renew-
able-energy efforts,
which ultimately led
to a major success:
the early-stage
investment in ther-
mostat maker Nest
Labs, which sold to
Google for $3.2 billion.
Vassallo cofounded
Defy, an early-stage
venture capital firm.
LEE: DAVID PAUL M
ORRIS
— GET T Y IM
AGES; PAO: KIM
BERLY W
HITE
—GET T Y IM
AGES; M
URPHY: COURTESY
OF M
ENLO VENTURES; VASSALLO: JE ALEX PHOTO
—GET T Y IM
AGES; QUINN: COURTESY OF SPARK CAPITAL
