So You Want to Be a Venture Capitalist?

May 10 2000

Any business person with a shred of ambition in Silicon Valley would want to be a venture capitalist. VCs are the money at the heart of the Internet boom, after all. And anyone who wants to be a venture capitalist would surely kill to work for John Doerr at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers , the most famous of the Silicon Valley money men. The announcement today that Tom Jermoluk is joining that firm as a partner shows just how hard it is to get such a gig.

Tom Jermoluk is the former CEO, and more recently, former chairman of ExciteAtHome. Before that, he was CEO at Silicon Graphics . Through those jobs he became close to Jim Clark, founder of SGI and Netscape, and Doerr, who helped fund and merge AtHome and Excite.

"Basically, I've been working with Kleiner Perkins for a long time," says Jermoluk. "I've had a lot of casual conversations with John Doerr, who would always say to me, 'T.J., if and when you're ready for a change, come on over to work with us.' "

Not just anyone could get such an invite. Jermoluk is probably one of the best-connected men in the Valley, and it is the confluence of his decades as an executive, an investor and a good networker that got him such a job.

Jermoluk has been struggling mightily with one task since May of last year - to solidify ExciteAtHome's position with its cable partners. "There were some pretty wild talks going on," he says. "It's a funny circumstance to be in where everybody thinks of ExciteAtHome as incredibly strategic for them."

Once that task was nearly done, it became clear to Jermoluk that he was ready to step aside, though he will continue to be involved on ExciteAtHome's board. "During the ATT thing, it became fairly obvious to me that this was not going to be my job for the long term," he says. "As I worked on the AT&T deal more and more, I handed the day-to-day duties over to [ExciteAtHome CEO] George Bell. I didn't know that I was going to leave, but that was one probable outcome."

Jermoluk has been active in promoting companies for a while. He has used the ExciteAtHome offices several times to incubate some of his new companies, and he has worked with legendary investors Doerr and Clark on most of these.

Jermoluk has invested in and sits on the board of startups SmartPipes, Shutterfly, MyCFO and Kibu. Out of those, SmartPipes is the only technology or telecommunications company, but Jermoluk says telecom and networking companies will be his focus at Kleiner Perkins, where he joins networking specialists Vinod Khosla and Kevin Compton.

So what does Jermoluk bring to Kleiner Perkins? His smarts, his brand name and contacts. "John Doerr and T.J. bring a whole lot of credibility, of course. But they are also sharp individuals," says Ray Bell, CEO of SmartPipes. "Best of all, he is their Rolodex. I get to talk to the CEO of major carriers who don't know my name."

Many people wonder what would drive men like Jermoluk, Clark and Doerr to continue working with startups when they have already made a fortune. "It's clearly not about the money; we've all made enough money," says Jermoluk. "The week after the deal [with AT&T] was signed, Jim Clark and I spent a week in Fiji diving off his boat. We spent more time online or talking about our companies than diving. It's about the adrenaline. It's about building something from nothing."

Jermoluk says the fact that Kleiner Perkins has been involved in his dealings already is no mistake. "John [Doerr] is a smart guy. Since he made investments in my companies, I can bring these companies along with me to KP with no conflict of interest. He definitely made this possible."