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Eugene Kleiner (12 May 1923 – 20 November 2003) was an
Austrian-American Austrian Americans (, ) are Americans of Austrian descent, chiefly German-speaking Catholics and Jews. According to the 2000 U.S. census, there were 735,128 Americans of full or partial Austrian descent, accounting for 0.3% of the population. The ...
engineer and venture capitalist. He is considered a pioneer of
Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo Cou ...
. He was one of the original founders of
Kleiner Perkins Kleiner Perkins, formerly Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), is an American venture capital firm which specializes in investing in incubation, early stage and growth companies. Since its founding in 1972, the firm has backed entrepreneurs ...
, the Silicon Valley
venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which h ...
firm which later became
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Kleiner Perkins, formerly Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), is an American venture capital firm which specializes in investing in incubation, early stage and growth companies. Since its founding in 1972, the firm has backed entrepreneurs ...
. The company was an early investor in more than 300 information technology and biotech firms, including Amazon.com,
AOL AOL (stylized as Aol., formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo! Inc. ...
,
Brio Technology Brio Technology was a San Francisco Bay area software company cofounded in 1984 by Yorgen Edholm and Katherine Glassey. The company is best known for their business intelligence software systems, starting with DataPivot on the Apple Macintosh. Brio ...
,
Electronic Arts Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California. Founded in May 1982 by Apple employee Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer game industry and promoted the ...
, Flextronics,
Genentech Genentech, Inc., is an American biotechnology corporation headquartered in South San Francisco, California. It became an independent subsidiary of Roche in 2009. Genentech Research and Early Development operates as an independent center within ...
,
Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
, Hybritech,
Intuit Intuit Inc. is an American business software company that specializes in financial software. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and the CEO is Sasan Goodarzi. Intuit's products include the tax preparation application ...
,
Lotus Development Lotus Software (called Lotus Development Corporation before its acquisition by IBM) was an American software company based in Massachusetts; it was "offloaded" to India's HCL Technologies in 2018. Lotus is most commonly known for the Lotus 1- ...
,
LSI Logic LSI Logic Corporation, an American company founded in Milpitas, California, was a pioneer in the ASIC and EDA industries. It evolved over time to design and sell semiconductors and software that accelerated storage and networking in data cente ...
,
Macromedia Macromedia, Inc., was an American graphics, multimedia, and web development software company (1992–2005) headquartered in San Francisco, California, that made products such as Flash and Dreamweaver. It was purchased by its rival Adobe System ...
,
Netscape Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was on ...
,
Quantum In physics, a quantum (plural quanta) is the minimum amount of any physical entity ( physical property) involved in an interaction. The fundamental notion that a physical property can be "quantized" is referred to as "the hypothesis of quantizat ...
,
Segway The Segway is a two-wheeled, self-balancing personal transporter invented by Dean Kamen and brought to market in 2001 as the Segway HT, subsequently as the Segway PT, and manufactured by Segway Inc. ''HT'' is an initialism for "human transp ...
,
Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, t ...
and
Tandem Computers Tandem Computers, Inc. was the dominant manufacturer of fault-tolerant computer systems for ATM networks, banks, stock exchanges, telephone switching centers, and other similar commercial transaction processing applications requiring maximum up ...
.


Early life and education

Kleiner was born on May 12, 1923, in
Vienna, Austria en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...
. In 1938, he fled
Nazi persecution of Jews The history of the Jews in Germany goes back at least to the year 321, and continued through the Early Middle Ages (5th to 10th centuries CE) and High Middle Ages (''circa'' 1000–1299 CE) when Jewish immigrants founded the Ashkenazi Jewish ...
with his family, arriving in New York two years later. He served in the U.S. Army, then earned a
Bachelor's degree A bachelor's degree (from Middle Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate academic degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to si ...
in
mechanical engineering Mechanical engineering is the study of physical machines that may involve force and movement. It is an engineering branch that combines engineering physics and mathematics principles with materials science, to design, analyze, manufacture, ...
from the
Polytechnic University of New York The New York University Tandon School of Engineering (commonly referred to as Tandon) is the engineering and applied sciences school of New York University. Tandon is the second oldest private engineering and technology school in the United Sta ...
in 1948 and a
Master's degree A master's degree (from Latin ) is an academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice.
in
industrial engineering Industrial engineering is an engineering profession that is concerned with the optimization of complex processes, systems, or organizations by developing, improving and implementing integrated systems of people, money, knowledge, information an ...
from
New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, th ...
.


Career

After briefly teaching engineering, he joined
Western Electric The Western Electric Company was an American electrical engineering and manufacturing company officially founded in 1869. A wholly owned subsidiary of American Telephone & Telegraph for most of its lifespan, it served as the primary equipment ma ...
, the manufacturing arm of
AT&T Corporation AT&T Corporation, originally the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is the subsidiary of AT&T Inc. that provides voice, video, data, and Internet telecommunications and professional services to businesses, consumers, and government agen ...
. In 1956, he was among the first to accept an offer from
William Shockley William Bradford Shockley Jr. (February 13, 1910 – August 12, 1989) was an American physicist and inventor. He was the manager of a research group at Bell Labs that included John Bardeen and Walter Brattain. The three scientists were jointl ...
to come to
California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...
to help form what became
Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory was a pioneering semiconductor developer founded by William Shockley, and funded by Beckman Instruments, Inc., in 1955. It was the first high technology company in what came to be known as Silicon Valley to w ...
. In 1957, he and seven colleagues (the "Fairchild eight", whom Shockley dubbed the " traitorous eight") left the laboratory to found
Fairchild Semiconductor Fairchild Semiconductor International, Inc. was an American semiconductor company based in San Jose, California. Founded in 1957 as a division of Fairchild Camera and Instrument, it became a pioneer in the manufacturing of transistors and of int ...
, which most historians mark as the first major
spin-off Spin-off may refer to: *Spin-off (media), a media work derived from an existing work *Corporate spin-off, a type of corporate action that forms a new company or entity * Government spin-off, civilian goods which are the result of military or gov ...
of what later was called Silicon Valley. According to fellow venture capitalist
Arthur Rock Arthur Rock (born August 19, 1926) is an American businessman and investor. Based in Silicon Valley, California, he was an early investor in major firms including Intel, Apple, Scientific Data Systems and Teledyne. Early life Rock was born and ...
, Kleiner led the eight, obtaining a $1.5 million investment from
Sherman Fairchild Sherman Mills Fairchild (April 7, 1896 – March 28, 1971) was an American businessman and investor. He founded over 70 companies, including Fairchild Aircraft ( Fairchild Aviation Corporation), Fairchild Industries, and Fairchild Camera and Ins ...
and taking over the new firm's administrative duties. Kleiner later invested his own money in
Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 ser ...
, a semiconductor firm founded in 1968 by fellow Fairchild founders
Robert Noyce Robert Norton Noyce (December 12, 1927 – June 3, 1990), nicknamed "the Mayor of Silicon Valley", was an American physicist and entrepreneur who co-founded Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957 and Intel Corporation in 1968. He is also credited wit ...
and
Gordon Moore Gordon Earle Moore (born January 3, 1929) is an American businessman, engineer, and the co-founder and chairman emeritus of Intel Corporation. He is also the original proponent of Moore's law. As of March 2021, Moore's net worth is repor ...
. In 1972, he joined
Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...
veteran Tom Perkins to found Kleiner Perkins, the venture capital firm now headquartered on
Sand Hill Road Sand Hill Road, often shortened to just "Sand Hill" or "SHR", is an arterial road in western Silicon Valley, California, running through Palo Alto, Menlo Park, and Woodside, notable for its concentration of venture capital companies. The road ...
. In 1977, the company added
Brook Byers Brook Byers (born August 2, 1945, Belleville, IL (Scott Air Force Base)) is a senior partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and the brother of Stanford University Professor Tom Byers and Atlanta, Georgia engineering entrepreneur Ken Byers. ...
and Frank J. Caufield as named partners. He retired from day-to-day responsibilities in the early 1980s.


Personal life

In 1947, he married Rose Wassertheil (d. 2001), a Polish Jewish émigrée. They had two children, Robert and Lisa. He died on November 20, 2003, in Los Altos Hills, California.


Kleiner's laws

* Make sure the dog wants to eat the dog food. No matter how ground-breaking a new technology, how large a potential market, make certain customers actually want it. * Build one business at a time. Most business plans are overly ambitious. Concentrate on being successful in one endeavor first. * Risk up front, out early. * The time to take the tarts is when they're being passed. * The problem with most companies is they don't know what business they're in. * Even turkeys can fly in a high wind. In times of strong economies, even bad companies can look good. * It's easier to get a piece of an existing market than to create a new one. * It's difficult to see the picture when you're inside the frame. * After learning some of the tricks of the trade, some people think they know the trade. * Venture capitalists will stop at nothing to copy success. * Invest in people, not just products. * When the money is available, take it. * There is a time when panic is the appropriate response.
from TED.com
* The more difficult the decision, the less it matters what you choose.


Notes and references


External links


The Fairchild Chronicles
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kleiner, Eugene 1923 births 2003 deaths Austrian emigrants to the United States Austrian Jews American computer businesspeople 20th-century American engineers American investors American people of Austrian-Jewish descent Businesspeople from the San Francisco Bay Area Jewish engineers Polytechnic Institute of New York University alumni Private equity and venture capital investors American financial company founders Kleiner Perkins people Scientists at Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory