kleiner-perkins

The John Doerr drinking game

Megan McCarthy · 10/19/07 06:19PM

WEB 2.0 SUMMIT — Kleiner Perkins venture capitalist John Doerr is the last scheduled speaker of the Web 2.0 Summit. He starts in 45 minutes. 5:05 on a Friday? Who stuck him with that slot? Anyway, it's just in time for happy hour, we say. Make his lecture fun by printing out this page and playing along with our John Doerr drinking game. Before you head into the hall and take your seat, fill your flask and bring a box of Kleenex. That and our cheat sheet will help you power through the end of the conference.

iLike a good mustache, don't you?

Owen Thomas · 09/07/07 08:24PM

ATHERTON — I'm told I left the party too early, but once Third Eye Blind started playing, Thursday night's iLike bash was pretty much over for me. Don't get me wrong — I like Third Eye Blind. It's right in tune with my utterly bland and more than slightly gay musical tendencies. But this is exactly why I will never, ever use a service like iLike, which makes a Facebook app that allows you to reveal your musical taste, or lack thereof, to your friends by posting songs, and find people with similar tastes by seeing who's going to concerts. Here's the thing: I know my taste in music is egregiously bad. I don't want to advertise the fact to the world, and if anything, I want to meet people who specifically dislike the music I listen to. That's all right, though — what I really wanted to listen to was the buzz in the room.

Kleiner searches for a little Google magic

Megan McCarthy · 09/05/07 03:09PM

VC blogger Paul Kedrosky points out that famed venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers has revamped its website to highlight a search box squarely on its front page. This, of course, a mere eight years after it invested in Google. Kedrosky notes that there are no results returned for "business plan" — good luck searching your way into Kleiner's portfolio — but we noticed something else that struck us as amusing. While searching for mentions of Kleiner partner John Doerr's infamous, tear-drenched appearance at this year's TED conference, the result was topped off with a sponsored ad for Ted, United Airlines' low-cost carrier. Well, that's one way to boost the value of Kleiner's Google holdings.

An offer Facebook developers can't refuse

Owen Thomas · 07/10/07 01:32PM

Bay Partners, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, is cutting small checks to startups developing apps on Facebook's F8 platform, VentureBeat reports. Sure, Bay is opportunistically trying to ride on top of the frenzy for apps written specifically for Facebook's user base of 29 million. But Bay's initiative, called AppFactory, is small potatoes compared to what we think Facebook backer Jim Breyer, managing partner at venture capital firm Accel Partners, might be up to.

Who owns that $130 million yacht?

Owen Thomas · 07/09/07 10:18AM

Last Friday, CNBC ran a video clip about the Maltese Falcon, a $130 million clipper yacht owned by one of the most powerful men in Silicon Valley. But the business cable channel got his name wrong. Tom Perkins, cofounder of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and former HP board member, owns the Falcon, not, as CNBC.com had it, "Tony Perkins," the considerably less wealthy founder of Red Herring. I'm not surprised Tony hasn't rushed to get a correction. As any ex-Herring employee can tell you, he's never hastened to correct anyone who mistakenly believed he had a connection to Kleiner Perkins.

Scoop: Kleiner Perkins boots Russ Siegelman

ndouglas · 04/25/06 12:55PM

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers kicked out partner Russ Siegelman, according to a trusted source. The former Microsoft employee, who once reported directly to Bill Gates, won't be part of KPCB's next fund. Was the bigshot VC firm sick of seeing its property Friendster languish under Siegelman's partnership? Or was he just bumped out to make room for another hotshot?

Friendster buys more friends

ndouglas · 02/02/06 12:43PM

Friendster picked up yet another round of funding from Kleiner Perkins, adding to the pile of cash that KP, Benchmark Capital, and Battery Ventures have sunk into the dying social site. No one funding Friendster wants to admit it, but Myspace and Facebook have demolished Friendster's chances of ever turning a profit. And if some conglomerate were foolish enough to buy it? At this point, there'd be so many investors to pay off that the founders will never see a dime.