Founded in 1972, Kleiner grew over two decades into one of the world's largest, most powerful, and most successful venture capital firms. In the 1990s, under the direction of partner John Doerr, Kleiner was an early investor in almost all of the huge Internet success stories, including Netscape, AOL, Amazon, and Google. By the end of the decade, the firm's reputation had become so gold-plated that an investment from Kleiner was worth vastly more than the actual money the firm put up: It was a sign that a company was one of the select few Silicon Valley startups that was marked for future world domination.

In the early 2000s, however, Kleiner lost its edge.

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Need some Chris Yeh commentary for wise feedback.

I will never for the life of me understand why Kleiner Perkins invested in Facebook, Groupon, and Zynga so late.

Why not just admit KPCB missed them, and look for early stage companies instead?

I think it goes back to Keval's point about WANT vs. NEED products. http://pandawhale.com/convo/2971/my-thoughts-on-future-of-the-web-httpallthingsdcom20120626the-new-new-web-ask-not-who-needs-it-ask-who-wants-it

These guys always been focused on the NEED products and getting in the new concept of WANT products it difficult paradigm shift.

Fascinating point.

I'm going to think about that deeply.