It was the summer of 2017, and as word spread that Mamoon Hamid was joining venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, some people wondered if it was a joke, or \u201cfake news.\u201d And they didn\u2019t hold back.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI got calls from friends in the venture business, other GPs [general partners], asking: \u2018Are you sure this is happening? Is this real?\u2019\u201d Hamid recounts. \u201cPeople kept asking: \u2018What are you doing?\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
One concerned friend even asked Hamid if he\u2019d already signed anything (he had).\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hamid had helped build one of Silicon Valley\u2019s buzziest new VC firms, Social Capital, leading a string of wins including investments in Box (one of 2015\u2019s biggest IPOs) and Slack (at the time valued at $5.1 billion). Kleiner Perkins on the other hand, was widely viewed as an institution in decline, a bit like the largest gold-plated ship of a 19th-century fleet\u2014grand for where it had been, but not for where it was heading.<\/p>\n
By all accounts, Hamid\u2014measured and soft-spoken, inclined to listen before speaking\u2014was doing something irrational, especially in Silicon Valley, where many people would rather start something new than fix something broken. Venture capital firms don\u2019t turn around, generally speaking. Typically when their golden era fades, the founders retire, and they wind down the firm. VC turnaround stories are all but unheard-of.<\/p>\n
But Kleiner Perkins was not just any firm to Hamid. The firm had been the inspiration that led him to a career in venture capital, and John Doerr, the legendary Kleiner rainmaker who made early bets on Google, Amazon, and Netscape, had been his role model.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Social Capital, the firm Hamid helped start in 2011, had its own issues. Chamath Palihapitiya, Hamid\u2019s cofounder, was reportedly growing disenchanted with the traditional venture investing model, leading to friction with limited partners (Social Capital has since become a private office).<\/p>\n
Still, says one VC insider, it would have much been easier for Hamid to start his own fund than embark on a fix-it job. Hamid told his wife, Aaliya, a doctor, to give him 18 months to prove himself.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Eight years later, signs of the Hamid era at Kleiner are everywhere, from the physical layout of the office to the firm\u2019s narrowed focus. For the first time since Hamid took the helm, Kleiner opened its doors to a journalist, giving Fortune<\/em> a rare opportunity to sit in on partner investment meetings and interview the founders and limited partners (LPs) that work with the firm. Kleiner\u2019s investor team has both longtime stalwarts and new blood\u2014including former Dropbox exec Ilya Fushman; its roster of portfolio companies includes some of the hottest AI names; and, according to many inside and outside the firm, the team\u2019s operational metabolism has been dialed-up.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhat came across to me about KP was this combination of having this great brand, but having a lot of the energy and the hunger of being a startup firm\u2014nothing was taken for granted,\u201d says Parker Conrad, cofounder and CEO of Rippling, which Kleiner backed in 2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n As is the case with many turnarounds, Kleiner hasn\u2019t tried to turn back the clock and create a replica of its former self, but instead has evolved to find its footing in a new landscape. It now competes for deals with a broad array of financial heavyweights, from Wall Street banks to sovereign wealth funds. The new Kleiner is smaller and more focused than its previous incarnation\u2014more boutique than mega. Now, as the AI boom inflates funding rounds and valuations to nosebleed levels, and raises the stakes for the VCs betting on startups, Hamid has the chance to show whether the firm he\u2019s rebuilding can be truly competitive and define Silicon Valley\u2019s next big chapter.<\/p>\n Roughly a decade ago, Kleiner Perkins seemed to be at the end of a narrative arc that began 46 years earlier.<\/p>\n The year that Tom Perkins and Eugene Kleiner started their namesake VC firm\u20141972\u2014was one that minted many classics. The Godfather <\/em>premiered, David Bowie dropped The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust,<\/em> and Atari launched Pong,<\/em> the first blockbuster video game.\u00a0<\/p>\n Kleiner Perkins quickly made its own mark. Perkins picked the firm\u2019s first big winner, investing $100,000 in Genentech, which would ultimately proffer a reported 42x return. Other hits followed, including Tandem Computers, along with new partners, with Frank Caufield and Brook Byers joining in 1977. But it was the addition of John Doerr, an engineer and marketing manager from chipmaker Intel, that transformed Kleiner into a global business superstar. Doerr was known as intellectually boundless and possessed a kind of charisma that was rooted in sincerity. He emerged as the firm\u2019s dotcom rainmaker, backing Amazon, Google, Sun Microsystems, Compaq, and Netscape, among others. Sebastian Mallaby, in his VC tome, The Power Law,<\/em> writes there was a common understanding that Kleiner\u2019s portfolio accounted for \u201cas much as a third of the market value created from the internet.\u201d<\/p>\n Steve Jennings and Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n As the new millennium began, Doerr, then running the firm, began to shift Kleiner\u2019s focus to cleantech investments, which he vowed would be \u201cbigger than the internet.\u201d There were a few winners like Bloom Energy (Kleiner owned 15% at its 2018 IPO) and SolarCity (acquired by Tesla in 2016 for $2.6 billion). But there were also some epic losses, including the troubled Fisker Automotive, which filed for bankruptcy in 2013, and MiaSol\u00e9, a solar startup reportedly once valued at $1 billion that sold to a Chinese company for a cratered $30 million. <\/p>\n Internal tension about direction and leadership succession festered within the firm. Vinod Khosla, a hard-charger known for backing Juniper Networks\u2014a $3 million investment that famously returned $7 billion for Kleiner\u2014eventually left to set up his own shop. And a gender discrimination lawsuit filed by Ellen Pao, a junior partner, tarnished the firm\u2019s reputation even though Kleiner ultimately won the case.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s no mystery then, why limited partners in the mid-2010s saw Kleiner as unsteady at best, grim at worst. The brand had retained some of its power, buying time, but patience also wore thin. One longtime institutional LP told Fortune<\/em> that, around 2015, it was considering moving on from the storied firm.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI looked at KP and said, \u2018Great brand, but where are the returns?\u2019 And it\u2019s been dilutive to our<\/em> returns for a long period of time,\u201d the LP says. \u201cAt some point, you have to make hard decisions. We went in and had those conversations. This is a world where people don\u2019t really walk away from these venture firms. So, they said, \u2018Give us one more cycle. We\u2019re making this right. We\u2019re going to make sure this gets stewarded into the next generation.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Ted Schlein, a Kleiner partner and an advisor who\u2019s been at the firm since 1996 and who himself was hired by firm cofounder Brook Byers, describes the challenges of operating a venture firm that succeeds over the long term: You need to get into the right deals and have the right team in place to chase those deals, all while not killing each other, he says.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a collection of people that have to make good decisions together over and over, over and over again,\u201d Schlein says. \u201cAnd that\u2019s hard. You have to get the right group. I always describe it this way: You need a group of partners where everyone cares about what each of the others has to say about a given topic.\u201d<\/p>\n Schlein had begun courting Hamid for the top job while he was still at Social Capital. For months, they met quietly at the bucolic Allied Arts Guild in Menlo Park, mostly just talking. Schlein had known of Hamid since his early days at U.S. Venture Partners, where he worked for Schlein\u2019s father, and was struck by the contradictions Hamid embodied: competitive, yet kind; ambitious, but with a light touch.<\/p>\n Those characteristics were likely part of Hamid\u2019s makeup early on. He grew up first in Germany, then in Pakistan until he was 13. His family fell on hard times when his father\u2019s salary transitioned from German deutsche marks to Pakistani rupees.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s one moment I remember \u2026\u00a0One day at dinner, there\u2019s just not enough food on the table,\u201d Hamid says. \u201cI felt that, in my life, I want to control my own destiny.\u201d<\/p>\n Hamid, now 47, recounts it now in a way that\u2019s thoughtful and matter-of-fact. His family ultimately recovered and Hamid eventually went to the U.S., studying engineering at Purdue before attending Harvard Business School. Harvard was the only business school he applied to for one reason\u2014it was where Doerr had gone. At 24, Hamid believed that venture capital, for all its chaos, was a path to autonomy, where a successful track record became a permanent credential. And in 2003, he was fixated on Kleiner Perkins.<\/p>\n \u201cI would study the bios of John Doerr and Vinod Khosla, who was still at Kleiner at the time,\u201d Hamid recalls. \u201cAnd I thought, \u2018Okay, they\u2019re both electrical engineers; they both worked at semiconductor companies; and they both went to business school \u2026\u00a0I applied to one business school, so it was high-stakes, and you had to write about an individual. And my essay was that I wanted to work at Kleiner Perkins, and emulate the career of John Doerr.\u201d<\/p>\n Kleiner Perkins<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n In his first few weeks at Kleiner, Hamid committed to meeting everyone in the firm\u2014from receptionists to executives\u2014focusing on learning from both current and former employees to understand the firm\u2019s history and challenges. During this time, he also began looking at deals and potential hires. Hamid had an eye toward bringing on another partner who\u2019d be his counterpart, sounding board, and sometime foil. And there was really only one person he\u2019d been eyeing from the moment he joined Kleiner: Ilya Fushman, the former head of product at Dropbox who was then at Index Ventures.\u00a0<\/p>\n Fushman and Hamid had been tangentially circling each other for a long time. They\u2019d been serving on the Slack board together. And, in a massively unlikely twist of fate, they had been indirectly connected years earlier, thousands of miles away from Silicon Valley. Fushman went to grade school in Germany with Hamid\u2019s sister, and the two knew of each other vaguely. Neither is inclined to talk about this connection as dramatic or fated, but it highlights an essential truth\u2014that the two share unconventional immigrant stories: Born in the Soviet Union, Fushman spent his early years in the Russian city of Kazan, among the last cities before Siberia. Raised by a family of Jewish academics who ultimately immigrated to the U.S., Fushman followed in their footsteps to a point, getting a PhD in physics from Stanford before joining Dropbox, back when its staff numbered 50 people.\u00a0<\/p>\n Fushman admits to initially being bemused when he heard Hamid was leaving Social Capital to join Kleiner, a \u201chistoric brand\u201d with an \u201cunclear, uncertain future.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n But as he talked to Hamid, Fushman started to feel the pull himself. \u201cThere aren\u2019t that many iconic tech turnarounds; there are perhaps a few,\u201d says Fushman. \u201cBut I thought: \u2018If we do this, it would be pretty amazing.\u2019 That\u2019s worth dedicating yourself to, and it\u2019s worth leaving a great firm for.\u201d<\/p>\n Both Hamid and Fushman are earnest without being saccharine, and each will tell you plainly if they think something is nonsense\u2014and their respect for one another is so clear it almost goes without saying: Hamid brings a (strangely) simultaneously ruthless and gentle approach to building companies, while Fushman, a blunt, straight-talking academic, is all precision and thoroughness. (Winston Weinberg, CEO of legal AI unicorn Harvey, told Fortune<\/em> that Fushman is consistently the board member he can rely on to know decks inside and out.)<\/p>\n Hamid, a religious Muslim, also exudes a spirituality that stands in contrast to many of his peers. It\u2019s not direct, but it is subtext in how he thinks and the quiet role he plays in a venture landscape that\u2019s increasingly loud, politicized, and crass.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cPeople don\u2019t expect VCs to talk about faith, and how it drives their values, how they show up in the world, and the way they treat people,\u201d says Arianna Huffington, who\u2019s working with Hamid at her current company, Thrive Global. \u201cYou know how a lot of VCs and tech leaders think that, because we live in frenetic times, they need to match the frenetic pace of the times? It\u2019s actually the opposite\u2014the more frenetic the times, the more exponential the change, the more important it is to actually find that centered place in ourselves. And that is Mamoon.\u201d<\/p>\n Hamid and Fushman quickly sought to reboot the Kleiner culture, instituting firm-wide offsites for the first time (including the front desk); <\/strong>nixing cubicles in favor of an open office plan that promoted collaboration; and introducing a mission: \u201cBe the first call for founders who want to make history, and partner with them as company builders in pursuit of that goal.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n There were some bumps early on. Mary Meeker, the well-respected Wall Street analyst who had become a late-stage rainmaker at Kleiner by backing Facebook and Uber, reportedly bristled at the newcomers\u2019 approach and soon left to start her own firm, Bond Capital.<\/p>\n Hamid and Fushman replenished the ranks with new blood, even as the firm has made a point to stay small (there are currently five partners at Kleiner versus the 10 there were right before Hamid joined).\u00a0<\/p>\n The most consequential hire in recent years: Leigh Marie Braswell\u2014a math whiz kid from rural Alabama whose career started at Scale AI, when its staff numbered fewer than 10 people\u2014who joined Kleiner from Founders Fund in 2023. Braswell thinks the ways Kleiner has stayed small have been uniquely helpful in winning AI deals.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you think about partnering with the very best founders in AI right now, it\u2019s frequently a competitive situation,\u201d she says. \u201cWhat do they prioritize? It\u2019s one of the hardest parts of the job, being really honest with yourself about what these founders actually want. It\u2019s a combination of a good relationship with an individual and the individual\u2019s firm \u2026 and that\u2019s something that doesn\u2019t scale.\u201d<\/p>\n Two of Kleiner\u2019s recent AI exits\u2014Windsurf and Neon\u2014are linked to Braswell, who\u2019s been whispered about across the industry as a star in the making. Ultimately, however, it was Hamid\u2019s first deal at Kleiner that, years later, would cement the firm\u2019s turnaround.\u00a0 <\/p>\n Dylan Field met Hamid when he was still at Social Capital\u2014and though he wasn\u2019t sure if Hamid was interested in investing in his startup, he sensed a connection.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cHe understood our product immediately when others didn\u2019t,\u201d Field, the cofounder and CEO of Figma, says, over the phone. \u201cEveryone that encountered it didn\u2019t get it. Mamoon treated it like it was the most obvious thing.\u201d<\/p>\n MICHAEL NAGLE\u2014Bloomberg\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n Field, drawn to Hamid\u2019s \u201claid-back style\u201d that could be \u201cvery competitive and intense\u201d when it needed to be, stayed in touch as Hamid transitioned to Kleiner. In his first deal at Kleiner, Hamid led Figma\u2019s $25 million Series B. And last year, Figma went public at a $19.3 billion valuation, in one of the highest-profile IPOs of the year. Even as Figma\u2019s stock has taken a hit, at the current price the multiple from the initial investment is roughly 90x, and is right up there with Kleiner\u2019s best-ever returns, including Amazon, Google, and Juniper, the firm says. Not including Figma\u2014or any of the firm\u2019s other promising AI-era investments like Vlad Tenev\u2019s Harmonic, Ilya Sutskever\u2019s Safe Superintelligence, Synthesia, Glean, Anthropic, and Applied Intuition\u2014Kleiner has now returned $13 billion to its LPs since 2018.\u00a0<\/p>\n These returns have come from the exits of companies like AppDynamics, Beyond Meat, DoorDash, Nest, Peloton, Pinterest, Slack, Spotify, Twilio, Uber, and UiPath. In some cases, these are investments the current team made, like Robinhood, or deals that the team shepherded through, like Square. The firm is also now invested in some of the AI era\u2019s brightest stars, from AI medicine startup OpenEvidence, valued at $12 billion, to legal AI company Harvey, valued at $8 billion. (Doerr remains chairman of Kleiner, and still helps close deals with Hamid and the team\u2014the most recent example: Doerr was in the room when OpenEvidence presented for the Series B round that Kleiner went on to lead.)\u00a0<\/p>\n The firm has raised more than $6 billion in capital across several funds in the Hamid-Fushman era, and is currently raising more capital, a source familiar with the matter says. (Kleiner declined comment.) The rumored new round is expected to be slightly larger than Kleiner\u2019s last round in 2024, which included the $825 million KP21 fund focused on early-stage investments and the $1.2 billion KP Select III, aimed at \u201chigh inflection deals\u201d (basically, follow-ons and deals with startups Kleiner has built relationships with).\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s a hard thing, to define what changed from the inside, but speaking to a long stretch of Kleiner watchers and employees, one thing is clear: The culture of the firm did change, in a way that\u2019s hard to quantify but real. The firm-wide offsites and agreed-upon mission certainly helped, but Hamid and Fushman aren\u2019t afraid to have a little fun\u2014as evidenced by the \u201980s movie theme they created for the KP Select III fund: Kleiner Perkins, they said, was going back to the future.\u00a0<\/p>\n Whereas a rigid framework of subgroups and rules once restricted the investments that Kleiner partners could make, the small team of partners now has access to any of the funds. Investing decisions are conviction-based, with a sponsoring partner presenting before the other partners (all physically present in the same room), but there is no voting.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe have more latitude for healthy debate,\u201d says Josh Coyne, a partner at Kleiner since 2017, hired right around the time Hamid showed up (and still there). \u201cI think there was more hierarchy in the earlier days, and that\u2019s shifted quite a bit.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n One person who\u2019s been directly linked to Kleiner for a long time thinks the key thing that Fushman and Hamid fixed is speed\u2014VC has become increasingly fast-paced, with founders expecting rapid decision-making. In 2018, Hamid and Fushman instituted a new scout fund precisely to solve this problem, hastening the decision process at Kleiner from weeks to days in one fell swoop. The firm also narrowed its focus: After Meeker left, Hamid felt strongly that Kleiner needed to return to its early-stage origins, both for near-term agility and long-term performance.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cKleiner definitely got beat up a little bit\u2014that they weren\u2019t as nimble as they should have been,\u201d the person notes. \u201cAnd maybe they weren\u2019t. You\u2019ve got to keep up with your founders \u2026\u00a0I see Ilya and Mamoon understanding that speed.\u201d<\/p>\n Kleiner Perkins<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n Can a (comparatively) small firm compete with giants?\u00a0<\/p>\n As has always been the case in the venture business, the connection between the founder and the investing partner is key. And by staying lean and focused, Hamid is betting on predictability and quality control.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019d rather stay small than have more people who dilute the brand out there,\u201d he says on the topic of expanding the firm\u2019s ranks. The firm\u2019s partners are \u201cmeeting with founders, and they\u2019re providing an impression of what Kleiner Perkins is. And if that\u2019s not the right impression, we\u2019d rather not have it.\u201d<\/p>\n The institutional LP representative who\u2019s long watched Kleiner, and once threatened to leave altogether, believes that the firm is moving in the right direction, in part on the back of Hamid\u2019s undeniable success. The question isn\u2019t if Hamid is one of the great investors of his generation, but where he fits in that paradigm.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s gonna be in the pantheon,\u201d the LP says. \u201cYou can be a demigod, or you can be a god. He\u2019s on Mount Olympus, but the question is: Where?\u201d<\/p>\n Though that is, in the end, the biggest challenge Kleiner faces from here: That it can\u2019t just be Hamid, that in a changing venture landscape, rife with megacap firms and commoditized capital, there is little margin for error. To stay competitive, Kleiner will need every partner plugged into the pipeline of game-changing startups and visionary founders.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI think you just have to be paranoid,\u201d Hamid says. \u201cNever be satisfied, because then laziness creeps in. The day I tell myself, \u2018We\u2019re on the right track,\u2019 is where I lose the discipline.\u201d<\/p>\n Kleiner is operating with less capital and a smaller margin for error than its larger rivals. But with that risk comes more returns-based upside. And Kleiner needs winners to be not only the VC firm of the past, but of the future.\u00a0<\/p>\n In other words, Hamid needs to do what he did eight years ago, and continue to stun his peers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n #Arrow #Button #Icon<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Independently and immediately,… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17583,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[3816,3817,2416,3818,11263,2199,1571],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17582"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17582\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Hits and misses<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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<\/div>\u2018I want to control my destiny\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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<\/div>\nCulture shift<\/strong><\/h2>\n
The returns<\/strong><\/h2>\n
![\"Dylan](\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/img-assets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/GettyImages-2227186746-e1754070633108.jpg?format=webp&w=1440&q=100\"\/)
<\/div>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/img-assets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Kleiner-Perkins-Alumni-e1769840299962.jpg?format=webp&w=1440&q=100\"\/)
<\/div>\nBack to the future<\/strong><\/h2>\n