He Who Lured Net Firms With Talk of Wealth Regrets He Did

By Joseph Menn

Dec. 18, 2000 12 AM PT

SAN FRANCISCO — John Doerr, the preeminent Silicon Valley venture capitalist behind Amazon.com, Netscape, Compaq Computer and Sun Microsystems, wants to take something back.

As the “dot-com” failures pile up, Doerr said in an interview last week that he stands by his 1995 statement, issued after Netscape’s stunning initial public stock sale, that the Internet “may be under-hyped.”

But he also said he wishes he’d never uttered in the mid-1990s that the Internet was leading to the “largest legal creation of wealth in history.”

Often repeated by Doerr, the comment has appeared in seemingly every book about Silicon Valley.

“It’s still going to be true, but I regret having said it,” said Doerr of the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in Menlo Park.

His original comments contributed to the allure of easy money that drew hordes of newly minted MBAs with half-baked business plans to Silicon Valley, many of them soon funded by venture firms.

Doerr said the lure of Internet wealth drew both “mercenaries and missionaries,” who believe in the power of an idea beyond its capacity for enriching them.

As many dot-com companies flounder, “I don’t want to be in trouble with a mercenary,” he said. “I want to be in trouble with someone else.”