Tom Perkins
Encyclopedia
Thomas James Perkins is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 businessman, capitalist
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...

, and was one of the founders of leading venture capital
Venture capital
Venture capital is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, high risk, growth startup companies. The venture capital fund makes money by owning equity in the companies it invests in, which usually have a novel technology or business model in high technology industries, such as...

 firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

Biography

Perkins received a B.S. in EECS
EECS
EECS may refer to:* Electrical Engineering & Computer Science* European Energy Certificate System...

 (course 6) from MIT
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...

 in 1953. He earned an MBA from Harvard in 1957. While attending MIT, Perkins joined the Delta Upsilon
Delta Upsilon
Delta Upsilon is the sixth oldest international, all-male, college Greek-letter organization, and is the oldest non-secret fraternity in North America...

 Fraternity.

Career

In 1963, he was invited by Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard to become the administrative head of the research department at Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including...

. He was the first general manager of HP's computer divisions, credited with helping shepherd HP's entry into the minicomputer business. During the 1960s, he also started University Laboratories, which was later merged into Spectra-Physics.

In 1973, with Eugene Kleiner
Eugene Kleiner
Eugene Kleiner was one of the original founders of Kleiner Perkins, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm which later became Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers....

, he founded Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, one of the first Sand Hill Road
Sand Hill Road
Sand Hill Road is a road in Menlo Park, California, notable for its concentration of venture capital companies. Its significance as a symbol of private equity in the United States may be compared to that of Wall Street in the stock market...

 venture capital firms. Later, Frank Caufield and Brook Byers
Brook Byers
Brook Byers is a senior partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and the brother of Stanford University Professor Tom Byers and Atlanta, Georgia engineering entrepreneur ....

 joined the firm, eventually becoming named partners. Perkins served as a director of Applied Materials
Applied Materials
Applied Materials, Inc. is a capital equipment producer serving the semiconductor, TFT LCD display, Glass, WEB and solar manufacturing industries....

, Compaq
Compaq
Compaq Computer Corporation is a personal computer company founded in 1982. Once the largest supplier of personal computing systems in the world, Compaq existed as an independent corporation until 2002, when it was acquired for US$25 billion by Hewlett-Packard....

, Corning Glass, Genentech
Genentech
Genentech Inc., or Genetic Engineering Technology, Inc., is a biotechnology corporation, founded in 1976 by venture capitalist Robert A. Swanson and biochemist Dr. Herbert Boyer. Trailing the founding of Cetus by five years, it was an important step in the evolution of the biotechnology industry...

, Hewlett-Packard, and Philips Electronics
Philips
Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. , more commonly known as Philips, is a multinational Dutch electronics company....

. He served as the only chairman of Tandem Computers
Tandem Computers
Tandem Computers, Inc. was the dominant manufacturer of fault-tolerant computer systems for ATM networks, banks, stock exchanges, telephone switching centers, and other similar commercial transaction processing applications requiring maximum uptime and zero data loss. The company was founded in...

, from its founding in 1974 until its 1997 merger with Compaq. Perkins was also chairman of Genentech from 1976 until 1990 when it merged with Roche Holding Ltd.

During the HP/Compaq merger fight in 2001, Perkins was a member of the Compaq board and an outspoken supporter of the merger. He joined the HP Board of Directors in the merger, retired, and officially rejoined the HP board days before Carly Fiorina
Carly Fiorina
Carly Fiorina is an American business executive and a former Republican candidate for the United States Senate representing California. Fiorina served as chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard from 1999 to 2005 and previously was an executive at AT&T and its equipment and technology spinoff,...

 was fired from her posts as chairman and chief executive officer of HP.

Controversial resignation from HP Board

Perkins resigned from HP's board on May 18, 2006, over the actions taken by the board's chair, Patricia C. Dunn
Patricia C. Dunn
Patricia Cecile Dunn , aka Patricia Cecile Dunn-Jahnke, is the former non-executive chairman of the board of Hewlett-Packard , a position she held from February 2005 until September 22, 2006, when she resigned her position. On October 4, 2006 Bill Lockyer, the California attorney general, charged...

, to ferret out the board-level source of media leaks using methods Perkins considered unethical and possibly illegal. HP gave no cause in the SEC-required 8-K filing, and according to Perkins refused to amend the filing to indicate his reasons for resigning. In response, Perkins disclosed his reasons publicly, triggering an SEC investigation and significant media interest into HP's leak-finding activities.

Perkins's residential phone records were obtained through a method known as pretexting. AT&T confirmed that someone pretended to be Perkins, using his phone number and his Social Security Number
Social Security number
In the United States, a Social Security number is a nine-digit number issued to U.S. citizens, permanent residents, and temporary residents under section 205 of the Social Security Act, codified as . The number is issued to an individual by the Social Security Administration, an independent...

. HP confirmed that the investigative firm they hired used pretexting to obtain information on the call records of the directors. HP's investigation found that Dr. George Keyworth II was the source of several leaks. At the May 18, 2006 board meeting, Dr. Keyworth admitted to leaking information but refused to resign after the board passed a resolution calling for his resignation. HP's board decided on August 31, 2006 to not renominate Dr. Keyworth for another term as director.

The SEC and the State of California have both begun inquiries into the methods used by HP to investigate its directors.

News Corp. board

As of 2007 Perkins sits on the board of directors of Rupert Murdoch
Rupert Murdoch
Keith Rupert Murdoch, AC, KSG is an Australian-American business magnate. He is the founder and Chairman and CEO of , the world's second-largest media conglomerate....

's News Corporation
News Corporation
News Corporation or News Corp. is an American multinational media conglomerate. It is the world's second-largest media conglomerate as of 2011 in terms of revenue, and the world's third largest in entertainment as of 2009, although the BBC remains the world's largest broadcaster...

, where he serves with Viet D. Dinh
Viet D. Dinh
Viet D. Dinh is a lawyer and a conservative legal scholar who served as an Assistant Attorney General of the United States from 2001 to 2003, under the presidency of George W. Bush. Born in Saigon, in the former South Vietnam, he was the chief architect of the USA PATRIOT Act.-Early life:Dinh was...

. Dinh represented Perkins in the HP board affair. In July, 2011, Dinh and fellow News Corp. board member Joel Klein
Joel Klein
Joel Irwin Klein was Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, the largest public school system in the United States, serving more than 1.1 million students in more than 1,600 schools...

 took over the investigation of the News of the World phone hacking affair
News of the World phone hacking affair
The News International phone-hacking scandal is an ongoing controversy involving mainly the News of the World but also other British tabloid newspapers published by News International, a subsidiary of News Corporation. Employees of the newspaper were accused of engaging in phone hacking, police...

 and related Corporation issues. One business commentator, noting Perkins' prior experience with phone-hacking in the HP scandal, speculated that Perkins "may be [was the] best hope" as News Corp. sought to work out of its phone-hacking scandal.

Personal life

Perkins has two children, with his first wife, the late Gerd Thune-Ellefsen. After she died in 1994, he married romance novelist Danielle Steel
Danielle Steel
Danielle Fernandes Dominique Schuelein-Steel , better known as Danielle Steel, is an American romantic novelist and author of mainstream dramas....

 in March 1998; her book The Klone and I (ISBN 0-385-32392-1) was about their friendship. They separated in August 1999 and were later amicably divorced.

In 1996, Perkins was convicted in France of involuntary manslaughter arising from a yacht-racing collision, forcing him to pay $10,000 fine.

In July 2006, he formally launched his 289-foot sailing yacht named The Maltese Falcon
The Maltese Falcon (yacht)
The Maltese Falcon built by Perini Navi is a clipper sailing luxury yacht, commissioned and formerly owned by American venture capitalist Tom Perkins. It is one of the largest privately-owned sailing yachts in the world at , similar to Royal Huisman's Athena and Lürssen's Eos...

, at the time the world's largest privately owned sailing yacht. The yacht was listed for sale in 2006 on Yachtworld.com, the asking price being
Euro
The euro is the official currency of the eurozone: 17 of the 27 member states of the European Union. It is also the currency used by the Institutions of the European Union. The eurozone consists of Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg,...

99,000,000 with engine hours listed at 1,890 hours. Perkins sold the yacht for £60million in July 2009.

He has houses in Belvedere
Belvedere, California
Belvedere is an affluent city in Marin County, California, United States. Belvedere is located northeast of Sausalito, at an elevation of 36 feet...

, Marin County
Marin County, California
Marin County is a county located in the North San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. As of 2010, the population was 252,409. The county seat is San Rafael and the largest employer is the county government. Marin County is well...

, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

, and spends about two months a year at Plumpton Place
Plumpton Place
Plumpton Place is a Grade 2 listed Elizabethan manor house in Plumpton, East Sussex, England. The house is on the English Heritage register.Plumpton Place sits close to Plumpton to the east of the church and Plumpton Agricultural College...

, his Elizabethan mansion in East Sussex, England, which once belonged to the Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin were an English rock band, active in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. Formed in 1968, they consisted of guitarist Jimmy Page, singer Robert Plant, bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones, and drummer John Bonham...

 guitarist Jimmy Page
Jimmy Page
James Patrick "Jimmy" Page, OBE is an English multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and record producer. He began his career as a studio session guitarist in London and was subsequently a member of The Yardbirds from 1966 to 1968, after which he founded the English rock band Led Zeppelin.Jimmy Page...

.

Perkins was featured in the documentary film Something Ventured which premiered in 2011.

Books

In 1984, Perkins wrote and published a first hand account on the World Class collection of his pre-WWII classic car collection, titled Classic SUPERCHARGED Sports Cars (ISBN 0-9612268-0-3). This is a personal account of the handling and "simultaneously exciting and exasperating" characteristics of his collection of supercharged Bugattis, Mercedes, Alfas, one Squire, and his Dusenberg Type SJ.

In January 2006, Perkins published his first romance novel, Sex and the Single Zillionaire, (ISBN 0-06-085167-8) which he dedicated to Steel. The plot of the book is based on a reality TV idea which was pitched to Perkins, where he would date a series of women and choose one to marry. He claims that "no 'ghost' did the writing." Proceeds from the book will be donated to Harvard University.

In November 2007, Perkins published a memoir, Valley Boy: The Education of Tom Perkins. (ISBN 1-59-240313-1) Perkins discussed the book, his time at HP, and his sailboat with Leslie Stahl on 60 Minutes
60 Minutes
60 Minutes is an American television news magazine, which has run on CBS since 1968. The program was created by producer Don Hewitt who set it apart by using a unique style of reporter-centered investigation....

in September 2007.

An account of Perkins' building of The Maltese FalconMine's Bigger: The Extraordinary Tale of the World's Greatest Sailboat and the Silicon Valley Tycoon Who Built It by Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...

's David A. Kaplan
David A. Kaplan
David A. Kaplan is an American writer and journalist. He works for Fortune magazine, after a 20-year career at Newsweek, where he wrote dozens of cover stories and edited the annual Newsweek-Kaplan College Guide...

 – was published in 2007. The book in 2008 won the Gerald Loeb Award
Gerald Loeb Award
The Gerald Loeb Award, also referred to as the Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism, is a recognition of excellence in journalism, especially in the fields of business, finance and the economy. The award was established in 1957 by Gerald Loeb, a founding partner of...

for best business book of the year.
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