Kleiner Perkins has been through the wringer since the go-go dot-com days of the late 1990s. After making a bundle on Google, the storied venture firm raised too much money from investors and grew too ambitious in scope before dramatically retrenching a few years ago — but not before being hit with one of the highest-profile lawsuits in venture industry. (It won the case, which […]
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
RelayRides Rebrands as Turo, Raises $47 Million Led by Kleiner
RelayRides, the six-year-old, San Francisco-based peer-to-peer car rental service, has just rebranded itself as Turo. The company is also announcing $47 million in Series C funding led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The combined announcement is meant to grab attention. Turo doesn’t disclose the number of people using its platform or the number of […]
Ellen Pao Portrays Lawsuit as Very Last Resort
Yesterday, in Ellen Pao’s first appearance on the stand in her gender discrimination case Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, where she once worked as a junior partner, she testified that filing suit against the firm was the culmination of many discussions with various of the firm’s senior executives over a five-year period during which she […]
Ray Lane Under Oath
Ray Lane, an emeritus partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, came across as a good guy yesterday during his testimony in the trial of former partner Ellen Pao, who is suing Kleiner for gender discrimination. But he didn’t do Kleiner any favors, at times seeming to blame himself for mistakes and, at others, undermining […]
Kleiner’s Mike Abbott on (Probably) Not Starting Another Company
Three years ago, Mike Abbott joined Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in the plum role of general partner. Yet one senses the longtime operator and entrepreneur — whose many past roles include as Twitter’s VP of Engineering; as SVP at Palm; and as cofounder of the data virtualization startup Composite Software, acquired by Cisco last year […]
A Young VC Resurfaces with His Year-Old Startup: Spruce
Every month, a few startups that enable patients to consult with doctors without visiting their offices seem to emerge from nowhere. It’s no wonder. According to the research firm IHS, revenue from these so-called telemedicine companies could hit $1.9 billion in 2018, up from $240 million last year. That shift owes largely to the Affordable Care Act, which […]
StrictlyVC: May 7, 2014
Hello, and happy Wednesday morning, everyone! For an easier-to-read version of today’s newsletter (we’ve been having some formatting issues with a new email service provider we’re been trying out) click here. —– Top News in the A.M. Wow. In 2013, the USPTO granted nine patents for every patent application that was rejected and then abandoned by its […]
Mike Abbott of Kleiner Perkins on Snapchat, Box, and the Inherent Danger of High Valuations
Mike Abbott has only been a general partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers for two-and-half years, but he’s a grizzled veteran of the startup industry nonetheless. Abbott previously served as Twitter’s VP of Engineering, for example, and as an SVP at Palm. In 2002, he also founded the data virtualization startup Composite Software, which […]
Kleiner Perkins’ Trae Vassallo Reboots
Trae Vassallo’s early investment in Nest Labs, maker of Internet-connected devices like thermostats and smoke alarms, has placed her in the ranks of today’s top venture capitalists. But Vassallo, along with a handful of other longtime Kleiner Perkins general partners, was recently cut from the firm’s investment committee in a sweeping reorganization first reported by Fortune. Perhaps […]
For Nest Investor Shasta Ventures, Persistence Pays
Google’s plans to acquire the smart home appliance maker Nest Labs for $3.2 billion in cash should translate into a tidy return for the half dozen firms that invested $80 million in the three-year-old company. Kleiner Perkins may have the most reason to kick up its heels, having led Nest’s Series A round in early […]