
What the hell happened to Kleiner Perkins? - ajbatac
http://venturebeat.com/2008/07/16/what-the-hell-happened-to-kleiner-perkins/
======
hugh
Makes sense to me. Internet companies are getting by on ever-decreasing
amounts of funding, while huge firms like KP have an ever-increasing amount of
money they need to invest. Internet companies and KP aren't interested in
talking about the same sorts of money any more. It makes sense that their
attention should be shifted to big expensive projects like biotech and fuel
cells. Whether that will pay off for them remains to be seen, but from a
technology point of view I hope that it will.

~~~
prospero
To me, this seemed like the major logical disconnect in the article. There's
obviously still money in web companies, but the "next Google" is much more
likely to be acquired by the current Google than ever realizing that
potential, which means the next big Google-sized investment is pretty much
guaranteed to be anything _but_ a web company.

The people acting like KP is insulting their mother by ignoring Web 2.0
companies are playing around with a lot less money (I'd guess by at least an
order of magnitude), and the author is doing a disservice to the readers by
conflating them.

------
boucher
"Amost a decade later, still without [another IPO], the number of skeptics are
growing."

This is bad writing. To claim that Google's IPO was KP's last great deal, and
that they haven't done anything for a decade since is ludicrous. Google's IPO
was in 2004. It's been 4 years. For all we know, KP has invested in the next
Google, and 5 years from now, they too will IPO, coming in under this
imaginary decade long deadline.

------
Alex3917
The author of this piece is going to feel pretty stupid when congress passes a
cap-and-trade bill next year and KP rakes in a few billion overnight.

------
dbreunig
Moving $1oo million to iPhone apps in addition to other mobile tech
investments (which the article doesn't mention) _is_ an internet play.

~~~
breck
Agreed. The real article(this is a link to a blog review of it), says:

 _Web surfing on cell phones - now, that's different. That's why Kleiner
recently created a $100 million "iFund" for backing startups building products
for Apple's iPhone and other mobile devices.

"Mobile is an enormously important new opportunity," says Doerr. "We think
it's the next computing platform and will rival the personal computer." _

Which is great, because everything I do is for the mobile.

~~~
jmatt
Ya I think it's common courtesy to link to the actual article instead of some
blog.

[http://money.cnn.com/2008/07/08/technology/Kleiner_bets_the_...](http://money.cnn.com/2008/07/08/technology/Kleiner_bets_the_farm_Lashinsky.fortune/index.htm)

------
Allocator2008
This is sad. Back in school we had to read "The Goal", about how a new manager
is able to turn around a dying manufacturing plant and save it from closure,
by focusing on "the goal", namely profit.

Sorry darlings but saving the planet is not "the goal". Profit, and only
profit is. KP is going to have to learn this the hard way evidently.

~~~
nostrademons
I always thought Drucker had a better philosophy: "A company's primary
responsibility is to serve its customers. Profit is not the primary goal, but
rather an essential condition for the company's continued existence."

You can find plenty of examples of companies that have crashed and burned
because they believed profit and only profit was the goal, eg. Enron.

~~~
parker
That may be the best quote I've read in awhile. I've convinced that profit is
a function of creating happiness, both with your customers and within your
company.

Thanks for sharing that.

