Kleiner Perkins

About

Kleiner Perkins is a venture capital firm founded in 1972 by Eugene Kleiner, a co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor, and Tom Perkins, an early Hewlett-Packard executive ¹¹. The firm was the first VC firm to open an office on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, California, and is credited with creating the cluster of venture firms in that area ¹. Frank J. Caufield and Brook Byers later joined as partners, and the firm was known as Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers (KPCB) for most of its history before shortening its name to Kleiner Perkins ¹.

John Doerr joined the firm in 1980 and became its most prominent partner, leading investments in Amazon, Google, Netscape, and numerous other companies ². Over five decades, Kleiner Perkins has backed entrepreneurs in over 900 ventures and deployed more than $10 billion across 22+ funds ³⁴. The firm’s portfolio has produced 97 IPOs and 308 acquisitions, and includes 52 unicorns ⁵.

The 2000s brought a difficult period for the firm. Between 2004 and 2009, Kleiner invested $630 million across 54 clean energy companies, many of which produced poor returns — including Fisker Automotive’s bankruptcy ⁶. The firm also missed early investments in Facebook, Uber, and other transformative companies of the mobile era ⁶. In 2012, junior partner Ellen Pao filed a gender discrimination lawsuit, which Kleiner won but which damaged its reputation ⁶. Several prominent partners departed to start their own firms: Vinod Khosla (Khosla Ventures, 2004), Aileen Lee (Cowboy Ventures), Steve Anderson (Baseline Ventures), and Trae Vassallo (Defy Ventures) ⁶.

In 2010, Mary Meeker joined from Morgan Stanley to lead a $1 billion digital growth fund, investing successfully in Slack, Uber, Spotify, Square, and Twitter ⁶⁷. However, tensions between Meeker’s growth team and the early-stage team led to a formal split in September 2018. Meeker departed in January 2019 to launch Bond Capital ⁶⁸.

In 2017, Mamoon Hamid (from Social Capital) and Ilya Fushman (from Index Ventures, formerly head of product at Dropbox) were recruited to reboot the firm’s early-stage practice ⁹¹⁰. They reduced the partnership from 10 to 5 partners, instituted firm-wide offsites, adopted an open office plan, and established the mission: “Be the first call for founders who want to make history” ⁹. Since 2018, the firm has returned $13 billion to LPs from exits including DoorDash, Uber, Slack, Pinterest, Spotify, and Figma ⁹.

The current investment team consists of six partners: Mamoon Hamid, Ilya Fushman, Leigh Marie Braswell (joined from Founders Fund in 2023), Annie Case, Josh Coyne, and Aditya Naganath ¹¹. John Doerr remains as Chairman and Advisor and is still actively involved in deal-making ⁹. The firm also has two principals: Nadia Cochinwala and Lucas Oliveira ¹¹. Al Gore and Bing Gordon serve as advisors ⁴.

In 2024, Kleiner Perkins raised over $2 billion across two new funds: KP21 ($825 million for early-stage companies, the firm’s largest flagship fund) and KP Select III ($1.2 billion for high-inflection growth investments) ¹²¹³. Previously, the firm raised $1.8 billion in 2022 across KP20 and Select II ¹⁴, and $700 million for KP19 in 2020 ¹⁵.

Stated Thesis

Kleiner Perkins publicly describes its mission as “to be the first call for founders who want to make history and to partner with them as company builders in pursuit of that goal” ¹⁶.

The firm states it operates according to four core principles ¹⁶: 1. Moral compass — Serving humanity through people, technology, and capital 2. Empathy — Understanding founder challenges from experience 3. Humility — Serving founders as problem-solvers 4. Winning as a mindset — Ambitious, passionate approach combining diverse expertise

The firm publicly invests across enterprise software, consumer technology, healthcare, fintech, and hardtech, with a particular emphasis on AI-driven opportunities ¹². Mamoon Hamid and Ilya Fushman reported in February 2024 that “more than 80% of pitches now involve AI” ¹⁷.

Mamoon Hamid describes his role as a “blind-spot monitor” helping founders recognize challenges they may not anticipate ¹⁸. He has stated: “if we’re working already, why not work with great tools that get the job done, and give us joy” ¹⁸. About 80% of all investments at Kleiner are through founder referrals ⁹.

John Doerr has stated: “The best entrepreneurs are the ones who really go the distance with their companies, who are always learning. They don’t know what they don’t know, so they attempt to do the impossible. They often succeed” ¹⁹. He has also said: “You can neither build a great company nor make a great investment by cutting a tough deal with an entrepreneur” ¹⁹.

Leigh Marie Braswell describes herself as “relatively generalist” but acknowledges that AI networks provide significant advantages: “when you look at those networks of people…that’s ideally in and around AI” ²⁰.

The KP21 and Select III fund announcement positions AI as a transformative “fundamental technology” comparable to electricity, stating that “venture is an art and a craft that’s grounded in a deep connection with entrepreneurs and all-out effort to help them build history making companies” ¹².

Inferred Thesis

The following analysis is based on 75 verified portfolio investments for which sector and stage data could be independently confirmed. Kleiner Perkins has made over 2,100 investments total per CB Insights ⁵, and has a portfolio of 826 companies per Tracxn ²¹, so this sample represents approximately 9% of total investments and is biased toward the firm’s most notable and publicly documented deals.

Sector Allocation (computed from 75 verified investments)

• Enterprise Software / SaaS / Developer Tools: 22 companies (29%) — Slack, Figma, Glean, Coda, Rippling, Box, UiPath, Asana, Netskope, Workato, Moveworks, Intercom, AppDynamics, Looker, Plaid, LegalZoom, DocuSign, Palo Alto Networks, Nest, Desktop Metal, Loom, Netlify
• AI / Machine Learning: 12 companies (16%) — Harvey, OpenEvidence, Windsurf, Neon, Anthropic, Together AI, Inworld AI, Safe Superintelligence, Synthesia, Ambience Healthcare, Perplexity, Character.AI
• Consumer Internet / Social / Marketplace: 12 companies (16%) — Google, Amazon, Snapchat, Twitter, Airbnb, DoorDash, Instacart, Coursera, Duolingo, Spotify, Beyond Meat, Cameo
• Fintech / Payments: 7 companies (9%) — Square, Robinhood, Brex, Affirm, Stripe, Coinbase, Credit Karma
• Healthcare / Life Sciences: 7 companies (9%) — Genentech, Moderna, Viz.ai, Modern Health, Color, Formation Bio, Nuvation Bio
• Hardtech / Semiconductors / Robotics: 6 companies (8%) — Applied Intuition, Tandem Computers, Sun Microsystems, Compaq, Rapid Robotics, Chef Robotics
• Cleantech / Climate: 5 companies (7%) — Bloom Energy, SolarCity, Fisker Automotive, Impossible Foods, Beyond Meat
• Other (Gaming, Media, EdTech): 4 companies (5%) — Electronic Arts, Epic Games, Zynga, Handshake

Stage Distribution

Tracxn data indicates Kleiner Perkins primarily invests at Series A and Series B stages ²¹. The firm’s dual fund structure reflects this: KP21 targets early-stage (seed through Series B) while KP Select III targets “high-inflection” later-stage growth ¹². Historically, the firm has also invested at seed (Genentech’s $100K), growth (Uber, Spotify via the Meeker-era growth funds), and pre-IPO stages.

Based on the 75 verified investments: approximately 20 were at seed or Series A (~27%), approximately 30 at Series B or C (~40%), and approximately 25 at growth stage or later (~33%). The early-stage concentration has increased significantly since the 2017 restructuring under Hamid and Fushman.

Geographic Concentration

The vast majority of investments are in US-based companies, concentrated in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. CB Insights reports 545 US investments and 30 in China ⁵. The firm historically operated a KP China entity ¹⁶, but has refocused primarily on US investments. International investments have included Spotify (Sweden) and JD.com (China).

Check Size

Check sizes vary significantly by fund and stage: - Early-stage (KP21): Typical initial checks of $1M–$20M+ ⁴ - Growth (Select III): Larger checks for later-stage rounds - The firm historically targets 20–50% ownership stakes ⁴

Investment Volume

The firm has reduced deal volume since the 2017 restructuring. From 2011–2014, Kleiner made approximately 100 deals per year; this dropped to 50–70 deals by 2021, and 19 new investments in the last 12 months as of January 2026 ¹⁵²¹. This reflects a deliberate shift toward higher-conviction, concentrated bets.

Co-Investor Patterns

Based on the firm’s appearance in 9 profiled startups in the Seedlist database (Google, Twitter, Airbnb, DoorDash, Instacart, Square, Snapchat, Figma, Slack), Kleiner Perkins frequently co-invests with Sequoia Capital (appearing together in Google, DoorDash, Instacart, Snapchat, Figma), SV Angel (DoorDash, Instacart, Square, Figma, Slack), and Andreessen Horowitz (Slack, Airbnb, Instacart, Figma).

Notable Gaps Between Stated and Actual Thesis

• The firm states it invests across “enterprise software, consumer, healthcare, fintech, and hardtech” ¹², but the current portfolio under Hamid and Fushman skews heavily toward enterprise SaaS and AI — consumer investments have decreased substantially since the Meeker departure.
• The cleantech investment era ($630M across 54 companies from 2004–2009) is conspicuously absent from the firm’s current stated thesis, though it remains a significant chapter in the firm’s history ⁶.
• AI now dominates the portfolio direction — with 80% of pitches involving AI ¹⁷ and recent marquee deals (Harvey, Windsurf, OpenEvidence, Neon) all AI-focused — yet the stated thesis still lists five sectors as co-equal priorities.
• The firm emphasizes being “company builders” and taking board seats, which distinguishes it from high-volume, non-lead investors like SV Angel.

Portfolio

The following table includes notable investments verified through multiple sources. Kleiner Perkins has made over 2,100 total investments per CB Insights ⁵; this table represents approximately 4% of that total, focused on the most significant and publicly documented deals.

Note: This table includes 60 of over 2,100 total investments (approximately 3%). Many investment years use the approximate year based on publicly reported funding rounds. The table is biased toward the firm’s most notable exits and current headline investments. Kleiner Perkins’ full portfolio includes hundreds of additional companies across enterprise, consumer, healthcare, and hardtech sectors.

In Their Own Words

John Doerr on evaluating entrepreneurs:

“The best entrepreneurs are the ones who really go the distance with their companies, who are always learning. They don’t know what they don’t know, so they attempt to do the impossible. They often succeed.” ¹⁹

John Doerr on investment approach:

“You can neither build a great company nor make a great investment by cutting a tough deal with an entrepreneur. What you need to do is be ruthlessly honest about where the risks are in a project and take the precious early dollars, time and energy and focus on removing those risks.” ¹⁹

John Doerr on Google’s founders:

When Doerr asked Larry Page how big Google could be, Page answered “$10 billion” — Doerr assumed he meant market cap, but Page clarified he meant annual revenue. ²²

Mamoon Hamid on his role:

Hamid describes himself as a “blind-spot monitor” helping founders recognize challenges they may not anticipate. “If we’re working already, why not work with great tools that get the job done, and give us joy.” ¹⁸

Mamoon Hamid on Figma:

“Figma makes the design process more open and collaborative, so teams can develop and bring new products to market faster. In many respects, Figma’s traction and potential remind me of Slack at this stage.” ²⁸

Mamoon Hamid on AI pitches (February 2024):

“More than 80% of pitches now involve AI.” ¹⁷

Ilya Fushman on investing approach:

“Truly connecting, believing and then building.” ¹⁵

John Doerr on Slack:

“Never before have we witnessed so much user love for an enterprise software platform.” ²⁵

Leigh Marie Braswell on risk-taking:

“If the odds are in your favor, you push your chips to the center.” ²⁰

KP21 announcement on AI:

The firm describes AI as a “fundamental technology” comparable to electricity, believing automation of routine tasks will “free humans to focus on higher-level reasoning and creative work.” ¹²

What Founders Say

Dylan Field, Co-Founder and CEO of Figma:

“We’re only at the beginning of our journey, and I can’t imagine a better partner than Kleiner Perkins and Mamoon.” (Source: PR Newswire, Figma Series B announcement, 2017) ²⁸

“Mamoon meshes well with Figma’s culture and will bring another level of rigor to Figma’s data-driven operations.” (Source: PR Newswire, 2017) ²⁸

Field also credited Hamid’s understanding of the product: “He understood our product immediately when others didn’t” and was drawn to Hamid’s “laid-back style” that could be “very competitive and intense” when it needed to be. (Source: Fortune, January 2026) ⁹

John Doerr on DoorDash (investor quote, not founder):

“The technology in this company was enormously appealing.” (Source: Fortune, March 2015) ²⁶

Note: The DoorDash quote above is from investor John Doerr, not a founder. Neither DoorDash nor Kleiner Perkins provided official founder statements about the investment relationship in the sourced coverage ²⁶.

Arianna Huffington on Mamoon Hamid:

“People don’t expect VCs to talk about faith, and how it drives their values, how they show up.” (Source: Fortune, January 2026) ⁹

Note: Huffington is not a portfolio founder — this quote is included as a characterization of Hamid’s distinctive approach from a well-known tech figure.

No independently sourced founder testimonials with direct quotes about the experience of working with Kleiner Perkins were found beyond the Figma statements above. The firm’s case studies on its website (for Google, Slack, and others) contain descriptive narratives but do not include attributed founder quotes about the investor relationship. Additional dedicated search for founder quotes about Kleiner Perkins on Twitter/X, podcasts, and in press coverage did not yield verifiable direct quotes from portfolio founders. This section should be expanded in future research passes.

Sources