Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers is a major Sand Hill Road venture capital firm in Silicon Valley.

The name comes from the four senior partners: Eugene Kleiner (emeritus), Tom Perkins (emeritus), Frank Caufield (emeritus), and Brook Byers.

Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers (KPCB) was formed in 1972. At that point, the founders of most venture capital (VC) firms had financial backgrounds. Kleiner Perkins's founders were distinguished by their industry experience -- Kleiner as a founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and Perkins as one of the leaders of Hewlett-Packard's early computer division.

KPCB is one of Silicon Valley's best-known VC firms. The company was an early investor in more than 300 information technology and biotech firms, including

• Amazon.com, America Online, Brio Technology, Compaq, Electronic Arts, Flextronics
• Genentech, Google, Hybritech, Intuit, Lotus Development, LSI Logic, Macromedia
• Netscape, Quantum, Segway, Sun Microsystems, Tandem

KPCB paid $4 million in 1994 for around 25% of Netscape and did well during Netscape's IPO and subsequent $4 billion acquisition by AOL. An investment of $8 million in Cerent was worth around $2 billion when the optical equipment maker was sold to Cisco Systems for $7.2 billion in 1999. In 1999 Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital paid $25 million for 20% of Google - today Google's market capitalization is over $115 billion (June 2006). As initial investors in Amazon.com KPCB scored returns of over 55,000% at the December 1999 peak of that stock.

One peculiarity (amongst western companies) is that it encourages transactions among companies in which it holds a stake. This is similar to the Japanese keiretsu style of company structure.

General Partners include:

• Vinod Khosla
• John Doerr
• Brook Byers

In January 2005, Bill Joy was named a partner.

In July 2005, former Secretary of State Colin Powell joined the company as strategic limited partner, a newly created position.

External links

• Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

Entrepreneurs | Venture capital firms | Companies based in the Silicon Valley | Financial services companies of the United States