market news and articles @ firstadopter.com

-view themselves as company builders than financiers
-3 generations of partners
-Al Gore is “a nerd, a techie”, gives great investment insight, not a door-opener for them
-475 investments in 33 years, $100B annual revenue, 400K jobs, 173 IPOs, 166 M&As, $500B+ market cap
-mercenary vs. missionary culture, both work, but he prefers the latter
-3 sectors: digital/IT, life sciences, and greentech
-renewable sources only 6% of U.S energy, most of it wind
-almost 1/2 of U.S. energy is wasted in heat, inefficient engine, or transmission lines
-top 30 greentech companies, only 4 are American. 1 battery, 1 wind, 2 solar
-Zynga is the fastest growing company he has ever seen
-3000 business plans came in for the iFund
-iTunes on 150M desktops
-iPhone is outselling iPod in its 2.5 year launch period by a factor of 12
-Appstore is outselling iTunes in its 2.5 year launch period by factor of 20
-super verticals: advertising, commerce, real-time content creation, communication, and location based services

Career Advice
-prioritize learning. opportunity to learn and grow vs. compensation
-development strong foundation of experiences: commercial, financial, sales, management
-learning great management processes from the best: Amazon, Cisco, Intel, GE, Google
-there will come a time where you swing for the fences, where you own and run your own business

You will be judged on your
-ability to listen actively, think critically
-and above all, communicate: speaking on your feet, debating the merits of issues, whether large or small groups
-art of confronting problems, not people
-don’t forego learning how to recruit, to sell, to hire and fire, inspire, manage, develop, and motivate with tough love
-extra points for humor, very powerful social and business weapon

Ideas are easy, execution is everything, teams win
-takes a team to win
-the ways you as leaders are going to inspire teams, is by your ability to think and speak on your feet and rally others to go after that cause

-always network. develop and sustain personal, lifelong networks. face-to-face
-network one person 10 minutes a day
-integrity is a binary state
-great books: Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure, Monk and the Riddle, Good to Great, Banker to the Poor, World is Flat, Hot Flat and Crowded, An Inconvenient Truth, Our Choice

-very long on solar, looking at solar-thermal, wind, geo-thermal
-you want diversity of ideas and perspectives. 1/3 of their partners are not Caucasians

Winning traits in entrepreneurs
-huge idea and can motivate a large group of people to pursue it
-great judgement above and beyond their experience
-great leaders, inspire others to the mission/vision
-always learning, attempt to do the impossible

-any individual partner can veto an investment
-work in teams than other venture firms
-multiple partners are involved in every single venture
-returns have been lousy since 2000. overall a loser. VC industry needs to shrink
-priority at Kleiner. help entrepreneurs build really successful significant companies who are going to make a difference

-Android is second dominant platform. 10-20M devices end of 2009. open source OS. fragmentation of the eco-system by hardware OEMs, different keyboard/hardware
-30-35% of book sales are through the Kindle, when digital version is available

-Kleiner values: 1. family first 2. partners 3. portfolio (CEOs, the clients, serve them every day) 4. new ventures 5. public/community service