The Profile: The crypto CEO who’s become Enemy No. 1 & the VC firm that regained its spark
This edition of The Profile features Brian Armstrong, Mamoon Hamid, Eileen Gu, and others.
Good morning, friends!
In April 2019, I published a longform Fortune magazine feature titled, “How the Kleiner Empire Fell.”
The premise? “Once the very embodiment of Silicon Valley venture capital, the storied firm has suffered a two-decade losing streak. It missed the era’s hottest companies, took a disastrous detour into renewable energy, and failed to groom its next-generation leadership. Can it ever regain the old Kleiner magic?”
After numerous pivots in strategy over the years, Kleiner never quite found its footing. The firm’s early-stage unit repeatedly missed promising young companies like Uber, Pinterest, Robinhood, Slack, and Airbnb — only to have Mary Meeker’s growth team invest later at much higher prices.
I spoke with more than 20 employees, LPs, entrepreneurs, and other industry observers about what went wrong — and whether the firm could ever revive what once made it great.
At the time, Mamoon Hamid had left Social Capital to join Kleiner Perkins and head up early-stage investing. When the legendary John Doerr became chairman, he handed the reins of the firm over to Hamid.
Below is an excerpt from my story:
The inability to get in on a hot startup’s ground floor, only to subsequently pay a far richer price, was all too common for the once-storied firm.
Kleiner had sat out on another generation of technology investments, the crop of so-called Web 2.0 companies, including Facebook in the 2000s. Now, in the 2010s, it was failing again to make early-stage investments—the traditional meat of venture capital investing—in the most sought-after startups of the day.
But this time its whiffs came with a perverse twist: Kleiner was succeeding wildly with a new strategy centered around Meeker, who ran a separate fund within the firm focused on more mature private companies that required capital to grow as opposed to merely establish themselves.
“Growth” investing, with its more developed companies, should be somewhat safer than “venture” investing and would also earn commensurately lower returns. Yet Meeker’s investment team outperformed the venture group overseen by longtime Kleiner leader John Doerr and a rotating ensemble of lesser-known investors who joined and left him over the years.
Meeker, not the venture capital investing unit, was landing stakes in the era’s most promising companies, including Slack, DocuSign, Spotify, and Uber, breeding resentment over tension points as old as the investing business: Who gets the credit and, more important, who gets paid.
Worse, a class system developed inside Kleiner, evident to the outside world as well, notably among entrepreneurs mulling accepting Kleiner’s money: Team Meeker was a top-tier operation while the venture unit was B-list at best. Says Ilya Strebulaev, a Stanford finance professor who studies venture capital: “Twenty years ago, Kleiner Perkins was at the pinnacle of venture capital. These days it’s just one of many firms trying to compete.”
What happened next is another age-old tale in the business world, of how a once-proud stalwart found itself on the edge of irrelevance. It’s about just how much succession planning matters and the ramifications of not adequately grooming the right successors. And it’s a reminder that something as elusive as identifying early-stage winners from the pack of wannabes doesn’t get easier, even after more than four decades of practice.
Well, Fortune has now published the sequel to that story, and it appears Hamid and his team have largely reignited the firm’s spark. In his first deal at Kleiner, Hamid led Figma’s $25 million Series B, and the company later went public at a $19.3 billion valuation. As the new article notes, Kleiner has returned $13 billion to its LPs since 2018.
But what may truly restore the firm’s luster is its AI-era portfolio. Kleiner has invested in Harmonic, Safe Superintelligence, Synthesia, Glean, Anthropic, and Applied Intuition.
I love a good reinvention story, and this is a strong one.
If you have some time this weekend, you might start with “How the Kleiner Empire Fell” and then follow it up with ‘Silicon Valley legend Kleiner Perkins was written off. Then an unlikely VC showed up.’
— Polina
PROFILES.
— The crypto CEO who’s become Enemy No. 1 [**HIGHLY RECOMMEND**]
— The VC firm that regained its spark
— The Olympic freestyle skiing star
— The Trump family’s crypto empire
— The startups bringing male contraceptives to market
PEOPLE TO KNOW.
The crypto CEO who’s become Enemy No. 1: Brian Armstrong’s bid to turn Coinbase into a “bank replacement” has ignited an unusually public turf war with Wall Street, culminating in Jamie Dimon bluntly calling him “full of s—” at Davos. At stake is whether crypto exchanges should be allowed to pay yields on stablecoins — returns banks fear could drain trillions from traditional deposits. As Armstrong leverages political muscle to stall legislation he dislikes, the fight has shifted from “crypto vs. banks” to Coinbase vs. the financial establishment. And for now, Armstrong appears to be holding enough power in Washington to stop the rules entirely. (WSJ; complimentary link)
“It is Coinbase who is seen as the one who has to say yea or nay to this legislation. That is a truly shocking state of affairs.”
The VC firm that regained its spark: Silicon Valley once treated Kleiner Perkins like a legendary ship taking on water — until Mamoon Hamid made the “irrational” move in 2017 to try to rebuild it from the inside. Teaming up with Ilya Fushman, he shrank and refocused the firm, rewired the culture for speed, and quietly stacked modern-era wins — most notably a massive return from Figma’s IPO — while loading up on AI’s hottest names. The piece argues Kleiner’s comeback is a conviction-driven model built to compete in a world of megafunds, sovereign wealth, and inflated AI rounds. Now the bet is whether Hamid’s discipline can keep producing generational winners, not just one. (FORTUNE)
“You’ve got to keep up with your founders … I see Ilya and Mamoon understanding that speed.”
The Olympic freestyle skiing star: Eileen Gu enters the next Olympics not just as a dominant freestyle skier but as a global celebrity navigating politics, identity, and immense pressure. A once-in-a-generation athlete who balances elite sport, academia, and fashion, she has faced backlash for representing China, mental-health struggles, and relentless public scrutiny. Her story is about reclaiming agency in a world eager to project meaning onto her. (TIME)
The space companies who want to take us back to the moon: After 54 years, NASA is sending Artemis II around the Moon — an Apollo 8–style “slingshot” test meant to prove the Space Launch System rocket and Orion before landing attempts later this decade. The story frames it as a potential morale-reset moment, echoing Apollo 8’s Christmas Eve broadcast that helped “save 1968.” But the real bottleneck is the lunar lander: SpaceX’s Starship plan is enormous, complex, and behind schedule, prompting talk of opening competition to Blue Origin and Lockheed Martin. In the background is a new space-race clock — pressure to move fast as China targets its own crewed Moon landing by 2030. (TIME)
COMPANIES TO WATCH.
The Trump family’s crypto empire: Eric Trump’s American Bitcoin reflects how the Trump family is rapidly expanding into crypto through partnerships, brand leverage, and asset-light deals. The company surged to an $8.5 billion valuation before being hit by market volatility and scrutiny over political conflicts of interest. Its trajectory highlights both the industrialization of Bitcoin and the risks of building a crypto empire at the intersection of capital and politics. (FORTUNE)
“The Bitcoin for America Act will position our country to lead—not follow—as the world navigates the future of sound money and digital innovation.”
The startups bringing male contraceptives to market: A wave of startups — including YourChoice Therapeutics, Contraline, and NEXT Life Sciences — is racing to commercialize the first widely viable male contraceptives, from hormone-free pills to reversible implants. Early clinical results are promising, but the biggest obstacle is capital, with founders struggling to raise the hundreds of millions needed to reach market. Despite a potential multibillion-dollar industry, big pharma and investors remain hesitant, leaving startups to shoulder the risk of building an entirely new category. The battle to bring male birth control to market is becoming a test of biotech innovation, investor psychology, and cultural change. (Bloomberg; alternate link)
“There is interest, but everyone’s hesitant to be the lead investor.”
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