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John Doerr

Early investor in Google and Amazon, Kleiner Perkins

Search every verified John Doerr interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. John Doerr, chair of Kleiner Perkins and author of Measure What Matters, appeared on a podcast in November 2021 to discuss his investment history and current focus on climate change. He described Kleiner Perkins' early investment in Google in 1999 and noted that the firm invested $1 billion in clean technology companies starting in 2006, stating that most of those ventures failed but that the investment is now worth $3 billion. He also said that the world emits 59 gigatons of greenhouse gases annually and argued that this figure must reach zero by 2050 to avoid catastrophic climate crisis, attributing that target to scientific consensus.

Recent appearances

Notable quotes

“We invested a billion dollars starting in 2006 in a hundred different clean tech companies. And most of them failed. I've got a lot of scar tissue. We had our share of failures. And failures come with the territory in the innovation business. But we stood by these entrepreneurs, Tim. And that billion dollars today is worth three billion.”

“We're dumping 59 gigatons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere every year as if it's some kind of free and open sewer. And that number has got to go to zero by 2050, we're told by the science, if we're going to avoid catastrophic, irreversible climate crisis.”

“I'm a red-blooded American capitalist and I think we need to hold our political leaders accountable for creating the environment that private enterprise can responsibly innovate in this field. We can't lose leadership in this field to China. We have some political leaders who say we should stop building data centers until we get this under control. And I can assure you that's a recipe to forfeit leadership in the fie”

“I would make sure every American had comprehensive real-time digital health record and I would change the payments to physicians and hospitals and others wherever possible to tie it to improved health rather than just more health. I would turn the pharmacy pricing and distribution system on its head in ways that we've described so that the system tries to get the right drug to the right person at the right time the m”

“When Oz took over, he called me up and he said, 'John, would you do a course in OKRs so that we can renew the commitment of our organization to delivering results?' I dropped everything to do that and they are using them to great advantage today.”

“We've made progress but we're not on track yet to solve this problem. So I feel the plan is more important than ever before. We've refined many of the key results and importantly we've taken into account three disruptive forces. The first of those forces is the soaring demand for electrical power. No one anticipated that when we did the first version of the plan. The second disruptive force is geopolitics. Look at Ir”

Other executives at Kleiner Perkins

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