#543: Legendary Investor John Doerr on Picking Winners — From Google in 1999 to Solving the Climate Crisis Now
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I always have them in my bag when I'm zipping around. Right now, athletic greens is giving my audience a special offer on top of their all in one formula, which is a free vitamin D supplement and five free travel packs with your first subscription purchase. Many of us are deficient in vitamin D. I found that true for myself, which is usually produced in our bodies from sun exposure. So adding a vitamin D supplement to your daily routine is a great option for additional immune support. Support your immunity, gut health and energy by visiting athleticgreens.com tim. You'll receive up to a year's supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your subscription. Again, that's athleticgreens.com Tim. This episode is brought to you by all form. If you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you've probably heard me talk about Helix sleep and their mattresses, which I've been using since 2017. 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So there's something for everyone. You can also start small and kind of build on top of it if you wanted to get a smaller couch and then build out on it, which is actually, in a way, what I did, because I can turn my l sectional couch into a normal straight couch and then with a separate otoman, in a matter of about 60 seconds. It's pretty rad. So I mentioned I have all of these different things in this room. I used the natural leg finish, which is their lightest color. And I dig it. I mean, I've been using these things hours and hours and hours every single day. So I am using what I am sharing with you guys. And if getting a sofa without trying it in store sounds risky, you don't need to worry. All form sofas are delivered directly to your home with fast, free shipping. And you get 100 days to decide if you want to keep it. That's more than three months. And if you don't love it, they'll pick it up for free and give you a full refund. Your sofa frame also has a forever warranty that's literally forever. So check it out. Take a look. They've got all sorts of cool stuff to choose from. I was skeptical, and it actually worked. It worked much better than I could have imagined. And I'm very, very happy. So to find your perfect sofa, check out allform.com tim. That's allform.com tim. Allform is offering 20% off all orders to you, my dear listeners@allform.com. Tim. Make sure to use the code Tim at checkout. That's allform.com tim. And use code Tim at checkout. Optimal, minimal. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I answer your personal question? No. Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs, this is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show. My guest today is John Dor. D-O-E-R-R. You can find him on Twitter at John Dor. John is an engineer, venture capitalist, and the chair of Kleiner Perkins, as well as the author of the number one New York Times bestseller measure what matters. He has just written his new book, speed and Scale. Subtitle an action plan for solving our climate cris now this is something that has really been on my mind, and I'm thrilled to have him on. Dorr was an original investor and board member at Google and Amazon, helping to create more than half a million jobs. A pioneer of Silicon Valley's clean tech movement, Dor has invested in zero emission technology since 2006. He's passionate about encouraging leaders to reimagine the future from transforming healthcare to advancing applications of machine learning. Outside of Conor Perkins, Dore works with social entrepreneurs who are tackling systemic issues across climate, public health, and education. You can learn more about speedandscale@speedandscale.com. I recommend everyone take a look. John, welcome to the show.
Thank you very much. I'm thrilled to be here.
I am very excited to explore many, many facets of your life and certainly current interests. And I wanted to start with perhaps the first visit or your relocation to Silicon Valley. How and why, I suppose why most important, did you end up in Silicon Valley initially?
I came to Silicon Valley in the summer of some graduate studies I was doing in Boston. And I came there with no job, no place to live, and no girlfriend. My beloved Anne had dumped me and fled herself to Silicon Valley because I was persistent is the way I'd put it. And so she found herself a great summer job at intel. I didn't know where she was working, and I too was looking for Anne and looking for a summer job. So I rented a $55 a month garage apartment in the hills above Stanford and set out to cold call my way into some kind of summer opportunity. And this was just at the same time. Tim, you'll remember this, that intel invented the eight bit microprocessor, the 80 80, which was the engine that Ms DoS ran on, and Microsoft basic and so forth. And lo and behold, I got myself an internship at intel. And the first day that I showed up for work, guess whose office was down the hall from mine? Well, Anne Holland. She was not pleased to see me, but took the better part of the summer to put the relationship together, back together, I'll say. And now we've been married 43 years.
So that is a huge win and certainly persistence rewarded. There are some other factors that seem to also contribute to another big win, and that is landing at intel and also getting to know Andy Grove. For those who don't know, could you describe Andy Grove and perhaps your first impressions?
Andy Grove is a hungarian emigrate. He came to the US with literally nothing, enrolled in City college in New York, spoke broken english, studied semiconductor physics, taught that at UC Berkeley, has always been an educator. And he worked at Fairchild semiconductor, the godfather, if you will, or the progenitor of the Silicon Valley semiconductor industry. When Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore left Fairchild, the so called traitorous eight, the fair children resigned to form intel. Andy Grove was the first executive that they hired. Initially, he ran operations. Ultimately he ran the entire company. But he's arguably thought to be the best manager and leader of his, or maybe any other generation. That very first summer that I was at Intel, I got to attend Andy Grove's courses on intel. He called them IOPEC for intel organization, philosophy and economics. And a particular lesson that he taught was how to get people to set goals, to get them focused and aligned and committed and tracking their progress. Andy called these Imbos intel management by objectives. I call them OKRs for objectives and key results. But to make a long story short, in the semiconductor business, tens of thousands of people have got to get lines, a millionth of a meter, one micron right, where nothing works at all. So discipline, precision, accountability, stretching to do amazing things, that was all a deep part of the intel culture and this system. I took this idea of okRs. When I left intel, everywhere I went, I was the Johnny Appleseed of the good gospel of Andy Grove. And so I had the chance to introduce it to small companies and large companies to startups like the Gates foundation when it was getting started,
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