Mr. Perkins has a BSEE from MIT and an MBA from Harvard. He was an early pioneer in lasers and his company, University Laboratories, successfully merged into Spectra Physics in the 1960s.

During that period he was the first General Manager of the Hewlett-Packard Computer Division and played an important role in building the business.

With Eugene Kleiner in the early 1970s, he founded the Menlo Park venture capital partnership which has been active ever since. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers has assisted a long list of enterprises and is synonymous with Silicon Valley and American high tech enterprise in general. He is a director of Iolon, News Corporation and the Hewlett-Packard Company.