Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers

Encyclopedia : K : KL : KLE : Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers

Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers is a major Sand Hill Road venture capital firm in Silicon Valley.

The name comes from the four senior partners: Eugene Kleiner (emeritus), Tom Perkins (emeritus), Frank Caufield (emeritus), and Brook Byers.

Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers (KPCB) was formed in 1972. At that point, the founders of most venture capital (VC) firms had financial backgrounds. Kleiner Perkins's founders were distinguished by their industry experience -- Kleiner as a founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and Perkins as one of the leaders of Hewlett-Packard's early computer division.

KPCB is one of Silicon Valley's best-known VC firms. The company was an early investor in more than 300 information technology and biotech firms, including

Amazon.com, America Online, Brio Technology, Compaq, Electronic Arts, Flextronics
Genentech, Google, Hybritech, Intuit, Lotus Development, LSI Logic, Macromedia
Netscape, Quantum, Segway, Sun Microsystems, Tandem

KPCB paid $4 million in 1994 for around 25% of Netscape and did well during Netscape's IPO and subsequent $4 billion acquisition by AOL. An investment of $8 million in Cerent was worth around $2 billion when the optical equipment maker was sold to Cisco Systems for $7.2 billion in 1999. In 1999 Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital paid $25 million for 20% of Google - today Google's market capitalization is over $115 billion (June 2006). As initial investors in Amazon.com KPCB scored returns of over 55,000% at the December 1999 peak of that stock.

One peculiarity (amongst western companies) is that it encourages transactions among companies in which it holds a stake. This is similar to the Japanese keiretsu style of company structure.

General Partners include:

In January 2005, Bill Joy was named a partner.

In July 2005, former Secretary of State Colin Powell joined the company as strategic limited partner, a newly created position.

External links

[Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers]

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