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Back to the future

We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve raised Kleiner Perkins’ 18th venture fund: $600 million to focus on early stage investing. This marks 47 years for our firm, and with a fresh team and strategy, we’re incredibly excited for the next 47 years.

Venture capital has evolved dramatically over the past decades. As we deliberated our strategy and studied our history, the answer was clear: we’re going “back to the future” returning to Kleiner’s roots. We believe that venture is a non-scalable, boutique craft. It requires incredibly dedicated practitioners with diverse and complementary backgrounds that span technology, operating, and investing. Above all, in an increasingly fragmented market, venture requires focus.

We’ll focus on early stage investing, where we can partner with incredible founders and help them build the foundations of their business. It’s at these stages where we as technologists, operators, and seasoned investors, can create the most impact for our founders, our limited partners, and ultimately advance how we all live and work.

Our work and personal lives are intimately intertwined and evolving exponentially, and our investments will focus on improving both:

  • Work is increasingly digital, distributed, and complex — we need better tools to do our jobs and free up time for personal health, self fulfillment, and improvement.
  • All businesses are looking more and more like tech companies, and will need new infrastructure. From developer tools to vertical-specific applications, we expect software to power all areas of business.
  • Work is becoming knowledge based and this transition is driving fundamental economic and urban shifts. For some, these changes are a blessing; but others will need help keeping up.
  • Our lives are being digitized as well — the way we live, eat, plan families, and move are different than even five years ago, and everything is increasingly tech-enabled.
  • This digital world will require new foundations of both hardware and software, and an increasing focus on security and identity.

We can’t wait to see what entrepreneurs will build on existing platforms and technology foundations yet to come.

Our most important focus is our mission — to be the first call for entrepreneurs who want to change the world and make history. Having built companies, operated at small and large scale, and invested in a great number of ventures, we have deep empathy for the entrepreneurial journey. We approach our work with deep humility and empathy. Most importantly, we know that winning is a mindset — empowering entrepreneurs to win is our purpose.

KP 18 marks the beginning of a new chapter for Kleiner Perkins. We want to thank our investors who share our vision of the future; our companies who provide us with so much inspiration and energy; and everyone at Kleiner Perkins for their hard work. We’re so excited about what lies ahead because as Marty McFly would say, " …if you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything."

Article originally published on January 31, 2019.