Computer History Museum

Perkins, Thomas J. oral history

Thomas J. Perkins co-founded the legendary Silicon Valley venture capital firm of Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers (KPCB) with Eugene Kleiner in 1973 after a decade-long career at Hewlett-Packard. Together with his KPCB partners, Perkins led one of the most successful long-term venture investing strategies in the history of Silicon Valley. Two of the earliest venture investments that Perkins led—Tandem Computers and Genentech—went on to be game-changing developers of technology in the earliest days of system and high-performance computing. A number of oral histories of Perkins are available on the Internet, including a long interview done by the University of California at Berkeley. This three-hour oral history conducted in 2011 focuses on Perkins’ upbringing, education, mentors, early professional experience at Hewlett-Packard and transition to venture investing. It also covers his investment philosophy and a number of personal stories of entrepreneurs with whom he had particularly close business relationships.

Item Details

Date
2011-07-22 (Made)
Type
Document
Catalogue number
102714336
Organization
Computer History Museum (Publisher)
People
Thomas J. Perkins (Interviewee)
Eric Dennis (Videographer)
John C. Hollar (Interviewer)
Category
Transcript
Credit line
Gift of Computer History Museum
Extent
23 p.
Place of publication
USA/CA/San Francisco
Language
English
Acquisition number
X6219.2012
Subject
Hewlett-Packard, Kleiner Perkins, Venture Capital, Tandem Computer, HP
Archive collection
Oral history collection
Archive hierarchy
CHM Oral History Collection