Mary Meeker is leaving Kleiner Perkins and starting a new investment fund along with three other partners. Joining Meeker in her new fund are Kleiner Perkins other investors Mood Rowghani and Noah Knauf, as well as Juliet de Baubigny, a partner.
As her latest stint as venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins, Meeker has led the company’s investments in more mature start-ups and yielded several successful bets by putting money into Facebook, Twitter, Spotify and Snap when the companies were further along.
She is popularly known as the Queen of the Internet for her coverage of internet stocks, since 2010. She also delivers an annual internet trends report considered as one of the most prestigious and thorough in the technology industry. She also remains one of the few women to earn a general partner title at Kleiner Perkins. The business industry is generally known to not award women with the highest roles in VC. In 2014, she was listed as the 77th most powerful woman in the world by Forbes.
Her exit from Kleiner Perkins, will undoubtedly be a huge blow to the venture capitalist firm, given the fact that Meeker is by far the most senior woman in venture capital and has a high stature in the business community.
It seems Kleiner Perkins is changing its tactics in the business consulting industry. In 2016, legendary investor John Doerr stepped down as managing partner, replaced by Ted Schlein. The departures of Meeker, Rowghani and Knauf’s add further support to the claim.
Talking about Meeker at the time of her hiring, Schlein said, “There is only one Mary Meeker,” He now says he is “not naive” about what it will be like to lose Meeker. Kleiner Perkins will have to move on without its most famous name.
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