Guest: John Doerr, chairman of Kleiner Perkins
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.
In this episode, we cover:
Links:
#190 Co-Founder Cost Plus Drugs, Mark Cuban: Mavs to Meds
#189 Co-Founder Watershed, Taylor Francis: Worthy Missions
#188 CEO and Co-Founder Synthesia, Victor Riparbelli w/ Josh Coyne: Gorilla in the Room
#187 President & COO of AG1, Kat Cole: Wings to Supplements
#186 COO Asana, Anne Raimondi: Recovering Perfectionist
#185 CEO and Founder Netskope, Sanjay Beri: The Trenches
#184 Former CEO and Co-Founder Sun, Scott McNealy: In the Piñata
#183 CEO and Co-Founder Harness, Jyoti Bansal: Three-Layered Cake
#182 CEO and Co-Founder Cribl, Clint Sharp: Finding Traction
#181 CEO Transcarent, Glen Tullman: Problem Solving
#180 CEO and Co-Founder Verkada, Filip Kaliszan: Outlier
#179 CEO and Co-Founder Zapier, Wade Foster: Missouri’s Connector
#178 Author of “Radical Candor,” Kim Scott: Uncommon Sense
#177 President and Co-Founder Anthropic, Daniela Amodei: AI Hurricane
#176 CEO MongoDB, Dev Ittycheria: Edge
#175 CEO Snowflake, Frank Slootman: Amped
#174 CEO and Co-Founder Ginkgo Bioworks, Jason Kelly: Life Finds a Way
#173 Author of “The Qualified Sales Leader,” John McMahon: The Five-Time CRO
#172 Professor at UPenn & Author, Angela Duckworth: Grit
#171 Founder and Former CEO Drift, David Cancel: Never Trapped
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
The Commercial Edge: Unleash the Power of People
The emPOWERed Half Hour
Aligned Money Show
Gorse Culture PODcast : The H.R. Detective Agency!
HCI Leadership Revolution
The Ramsey Show
Planet Money