Chairman of Kleiner Perkins, John Doerr, shares stories of investing in Google and the need for a CEO, the urgent action required for the climate crisis, balancing work and family, the opportunity of AI and sustainability, the invention of Amazon Prime, the Google CEO search, and how the iPhone nearly killed Apple.
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insights INSIGHT
OKRs for Climate Action
John Doerr advocates using measurable, time-bound OKRs to tackle big challenges like the climate crisis.
His book "Speed & Scale" outlines tangible goals and key results to drive urgent climate action.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Silicon Valley Start with $55
John moved to Silicon Valley with no job, $55, and got a summer internship at Intel writing benchmarks.
He reconnected with his then-girlfriend Anne at Intel, and they've now been together for 50 years.
volunteer_activism ADVICE
CEO as Sales Leader
Selling is a mission-oriented, consultative process focused on solving customer problems.
CEOs should embrace sales leadership as a crucial role in enterprise solutions companies.
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After Kleiner Perkins chairman John Doerr first invested in Google — $12.8 million for 13 percent of the company — he told co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin that they needed to hire a CEO to help them build the business. After they took meetings with a variety of successful tech execs, they came back to Doerr and told him “We’ve got some good news and some bad news.” The good news was that they agreed on the need for a CEO; the bad news, Doerr recalls, is that they believed there was only one person qualified for the role: The then-CEO of Pixar and interim CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs.
In this encore presentation of the 100th episode of Grit, John and Joubin discuss the urgent need to act on the climate crisis, getting turned down by Kleiner Perkins, CEOs as sales leaders, the microprocessor revolution, balancing between work and family, the opportunity of AI and sustainability, what makes Jeff Bezos special, Bing Gordon and the invention of Amazon Prime, the Google CEO search, how the iPhone nearly killed Apple, Steve Jobs’ greatest gift, Bill Gates’ philanthropy, and how Doerr divides his time.
Grit