1) John Doerr, an American venture capitalist, was born on Friday, June 29, 1951 in St. Louis, Missouri.
2) While speaking to a class of business students, John Doerr presented his philosophy on what makes a great entrepreneur. According to John: “The best ones are missionaries, not mercenaries. Mercenaries have a lot of drive, they are opportunistic and always pitching their latest deal, whereas missionaries are more passionate and strategic. Mercenaries are sprinting and often have in their organizations an aristocracy of founders, whereas the missionaries are in it for the long run, obsessing on customers, not competition. They try to build a meritocracy – a loud, noisy place where the best ideas can get on the table.”
3) John Doerr has so far invested in many successful ventures. However, this man has also invested and backed many of America’s leading entrepreneurs. The list of these entrepreneurs notably includes Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Amazon.com creator Jeff Bezos, INTU’s Scott Cook, Bill Campbell and Andy Bechtolsheim, Scott McNealy, Bill Joy, Vinod Khosla from Sun Microsystems.
4) John Doerr has a remarkable academic background. He is a graduate of Chaminade College Preparatory, St. Louis. After this, he obtained his Bachelor’s degree as well as a Master’s degree in electrical engineering from Rice University. In the year 1976, he got his MBA degree from the prestigious Harvard University.
5) John Doerr was not only able to excel at the university but he did so at one of his earliest jobs as well. In 1974, John Doerr was employed at Intel Corporation. Through his constant efforts and hard work, he was eventually ranked as the top and most successful salesperson at Intel.
6) John Doerr’s Kleiner Perkins contributed $100 million to iFund in 2008. iFund is $200 million capital fund which seeks to develop applications for iPhones, an Apple product. According to John Doerr, the iPhone is “more important than the personal computer” because “it knows who you are” and “where you are.” Another $100 million were contributed to iFund in 2010 making it the largest investment in cell phone application development.
7) John Doerr is an environmentalist and is an activist helping to preserve the environment against climatic change. He backs the utilization of clean energy for this purpose.
8) John Doerr is married to Ann Howland Doerr. Ann is also a graduate of Rice University. She holds a Bachelor and Master’s degree in electrical engineering. John resides with his wife and two kids, Mary and Esther, in Woodside, California.
9) Once during President Obama’s dinner with Silicon Valley capitalists at the White House, it was made official that there will be 12 guests of honor at the dinner. However when the pictures were released, there were 14 guests and not 12. The two additions to the list included John Doerr’s wife Ann as one of them.
10) John Doerr’s wife, Ann Howland Doerr, is one of the top political donors in the state of California during 2001-2011. She ranks at no. 20. She has widely contributed towards organizations that are concerned with environmental education and preservation. So far, her total contribution accounts to $3,137,425.
11) John Doerr’s daughter Mary Doerr is certainly following the footsteps of her father. Mary has started a not-for-profit initiative named as “Inconvenient Youth”. The initiative works towards making the environment a much safer place. It deals with solving arising climatic problems. The platform invites suggestions and discussions from the youth. Mary utilizes social media to create awareness about this initiative and conducts training sessions and educational conferences in this regard.
12) Zygna’s Mark Pinus should certainly be thankful to John Doerr’s daughter Mary Doerr. Why is that? It is because Mary is the reason behind John’s investment in Zygna Games Network Inc. that was started by Mark Pinus. When Mark Pinus met John Doerr to pitch for Zygna, his daughter was playing a Zygna game at that time which she was really enjoying. Looking at her daughter’s reaction, John decided to make an investment in Zygna though he usually makes an investment for startup ventures. Today 33 million people daily play Zygna games with nearly 215 million users monthly.
13) John Doerr is also a part of “The Giving Pledge”. The giving pledge is all about donating at least half of your wealth towards the prosperity of the community. Until today, John Doerr ranks at no. 8 on the list of people giving the most wealth in charity.
14) John Doerr and other partners at Kleiner Perkins recently came under fire as an employee, Ellen Pao, filed a lawsuit against the firm and its partners for sexual harassment and gender discrimination at work. The partners including John Doerr have denied the allegations and have said that the allegations are without any concrete evidence.
15) In an interesting poll conducted online which asked people: “Which PE or VC executive deserves a reality TV show?” John Doerr was a clear winner getting the maximum percentage of votes, which was 37.3%. Marc Leder of Sun Capital closely followed him with almost 31.3% votes.
16) John Doerr also went through some failures during his life. One of his earliest jobs was at a restaurant as a burger chef in which he failed miserably. Later on in his life, his venture Silicon compilers (chip design venture) also failed and was eventually acquired by Mentor Graphics.
17) John Doerr sure does know how to give advice. While speaking at Stanford Graduate School of Business, he advised the students to maintain an active network. He stressed the importance of keeping business cards and advised to be compassionate to mothers and call them on a daily basis even just for a few minutes. He also stressed the importance of taking the first job based on learning opportunities rather than on how much money you can make out of it.
18) John Doerr is a good friend of 67th US Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton.
19) John Doerr is a supporter of the fact that USA lags far behind when it comes to green technology and gives the USA’s effort, in this regard, a C grade.
20) During 2011, John Doerr hosted a dinner for President Obama and other leaders of Silicon Valley. It was said that the guests invited for dinner own companies that are collectively worth $1 trillion.
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