John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins is a Silicon Valley legend. He made some of the most successful investments in the history of venture capital. Some of the big ones include; Google, Amazon, Intuit, and Sun Microsystems. John did an interesting session at Web 2.0 Conference.
As smart as he is, he really had no idea that Google would be as big as it has become.
Do you worry that Google is trying to do too much? No, there is enormous opportunity in search, ads, and applications. They spend 70% of their time on improving search, 20% on ads, and 10% on new stuff. I was worried about competition so I thought we should get massive ditribution of search tool bars. Sergey said no...that is not the way we are going to be competitive. We are going to hire 1,000 of the best engineers. That is how we will remain competitive.
So, what do you worry about? Keeping the Google culture. Staying competitive.
Why didn't you invest in Facebook? Because of loyalty. We had already invested in Friendster, and we don't invest in competing companies.
How is that going? Well, Friendster is the 13th largest site. Did we miss something? Yes, but we are loyal. Entrepreneurs know that when we invest, we will not invest in a competitor next year.
Where else are you investing? We are looking for new companies. We are a quality VC, not quantity. We have backed 20 high quality startups in the past couple years. We haven't missed Web 2.0. We are investing on the edge...things that are not yet obvious and popular. Search is of course the killer app, but personalized applications will be big. There is a lot to be done in network connectivity...local and wide area.
What is your view on the 700 Mhz spectrum? This is the beach front property auction. This is the last spectrum available for a long long time. We want to bid and win some of this. This is a great opportunity to build an open network, maybe the last opportunity we will have.
Who else can win this with $5 Billion as table stakes? It is not just a question of open or closed, it is a question of money. We will know by February who will win...the incumbents or the innovators. There will be winners and losers. There always are when innovation happens.
How do you work with Washington? It was an interesting process. The incumbent wireless operators have lobbyists for every congressman. Our arguments and logic had to be better. We had to find policy leaders who would support openess, competitiveness, and innovation. We support those people and we don't support those that don't.
What about "Green" energy? Yes, we are really high on "green" everything. There has been no innovation in energy for a long long time. Better bio-fuels are critically important, and van make a lot of money. Everyone cares about being green, but we need entrepreneurs to innovate. This is a huge problem. Bigger than the Apollo project to put a man on the moon. It will be expensive, but we must do it. It will take a lot of capital. But that isn't all we have going on at KP.
Is anyone at KP looking at open source hardware? It isn't a trend I haven't thought about. We haven't made any investments there.
What is the 5 year horizon for green energy? This is the biggest problem we have ever seen. But never underestimate the power of a small group of entrepreneurs. I don't know how long it will take.
Who are you supporting for president? I am looking for a candidate. No one has a good plan. Al Gore winning the Nobel Prize will help focus attention on the environmental issues.
What about nuclear? There is a lot of government policy involved. The technology can and should be done. But, none of us are going to change until clean and green is cheaper than dirty and wasteful. We need to tax and penalize polluters and provide incentives for alternatives.
What is the scenario where Google doesn't need to bid on the 700 Mhz spectrum? Google doesn't need to be involved if the networks will be open. Google needs to be involved to ensure that the networks are open. This is really important to lots of high tech companies. This isn't just Google against Verizon.
What is the governments role? The total federal investment in renewable energy is less than half a billion. Exxon/Mobil makes $1 Billion every day. We need to invest more in energy research. You know how much they invest in R&D? Less than 1%.
