Lynn Goldsmith/Corbis

Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
Location Menlo Park, CA
Age 55
HBS MBA 1976

The superlative name in high-tech venture capital, Doerr is the investor behind many of the companies synonymous with the Internet age: Netscape, Amazon.com, Sun Microsystems, and Google, in which Doerr held an initial 10% stake. A dot-com boom darling, he faded briefly when the sector swooned but is now driving the next generation of tech investing, placing big bets on alternative energy and anti-bioterrorism ventures. Democrat-come-lately Doerr—who refers to Colin Powell, a part-time KPCB partner, as his “e-mail pal”—has in the past few years turned venture capital into political capital, contributing heavily to the campaigns of Al Gore (20) and California gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides. The high-octane maverick—who, as a young salesman at Intel, once threw in a free lawnmower to convince a client to buy a microprocessor—recently put his considerable clout (and hefty wallet) behind a controversial private initiative to fund stem-cell research. Says Dan Primack, editor of the PE Week Wire, “Doerr doesn’t just invest—he tries to shape the ecosystem.”

Google hits 231,000 for “John Doerr”; 1.74 billion for “Google”