NewsKleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Arielle Zuckerberg, TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2015
Sep 23, 2015 08:36 AM EDT
Arielle Zuckerberg will join Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byer on October 19 as an associate partner. The other two newly hired were Muzzammil Zaveri from Tencent and Swati Mylavarapu from Square.
John Doerr, KPCB's general partner, announced on the TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco 2015 the arrival of the three. He described the venture capital industry is getting more competitive and there's a need to partner with a younger generation of leaders. Doerr said this would diversify the organization. "I made it really clear even at Kleiner Perkins, where I'm deeply committed to diversity, we have done more and should do more to get to a 50/50 world where everyone can make a difference. We can be better," Doerr said during the interview.
According to the Business Insider, Kleiner is a venture capital firm that is backed by Google and Amazon. But lately, the company has gained negative impression over the lawsuit filed by Ellen Pao over gender discrimination.
Unlike other investment firms, it seems KPCB had ventured late on tech startups as well. Kleiner had just endowed funds on Snapchat which has been earlier backed by other firms.
At this time, Kleiner's aim is to reclaim its status by focusing on emerging technologies. So they launched KPCG Edge in June with $4M funds to support young entrepreneurs. In line with that, Kleiner also hired young professionals; Ruby Lee and Anjney Midha who are both 23 years old and Roneil Rumburg who's 22.
Accordingly, hiring Arielle would secure the company's reputation. Mark Zuckerberg's youngest sister is scheduled to start on October 19. She will handle the early stage of startups for KPCB's growth fund.
As read on her LinkedIn profile, Zuckerberg is a senior product manager at Humin. It is an app that remembers phone contacts. Prior to that, she's also been a product manager of Wildfire, a division of Google.
Kleiner's purpose is to serve entrepreneurs. Thus, adding younger generation to bring new ideas will reflect the future of business.