John Doerr

John Doerr received degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from Rice University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He worked at Intel before joining Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers as a partner in 1980. At Kleiner Perkins he became one of the most successful venture investors in Silicon Valley history, backing a series of transformative technology companies. His most famous investments include: Netscape Communications (early investor in the company that launched the commercial internet); Amazon (invested $8 million in 1996 for 13% of the company, a stake worth billions at IPO); Google (invested $12.5 million in 1999 for approximately 12% of the company, one of the greatest venture returns in history); and Intuit, Compaq, Sun Microsystems, and others. Doerr is also known for introducing the OKR (Objectives and Key Results) management framework to Silicon Valley. He learned OKRs from Andy Grove at Intel and introduced them to Google's founders in 1999 — a framework that Google has used since its earliest days and that has since been adopted by hundreds of major companies globally. His book "Measure What Matters" (2018) made OKRs famous beyond Silicon Valley. In recent years Doerr has focused heavily on climate change and clean energy, committing $1.1 billion to Stanford's climate school and advocating for large-scale climate investment.