Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble

by Dan Lyons

Stock market manias are heaven for venture capitalists. Eugene Kleiner, a co-founder of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the legendary VC firm where Doerr works, once said: “Even turkeys can fly in a strong wind.” Kleiner Perkins was founded in 1972 and is one of the oldest, most respected VC firms in Silicon Valley. Kleiner’s maxim about flying turkeys is one of ten “Kleiner’s Laws,” a set of rules that people all over Silicon Valley still live by. Pump money into sales and marketing, generate enough hype, and you can sell almost anything if the market gets frothy enough. “I love bubbles,” Tom Perkins, another co-founder of Kleiner Perkins, once declared. “We made a lot of money in bubbles.”