John Doerr

Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr made his name and fortune with early investments in pioneering tech firms such as Sun Microsystems, Netscape and Google that went from scrappy start-ups to industry leaders. Now, Doerr and his firm, Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, are placing big bets on an emerging sector he calls "green technology," which he believes could one day be at least as big as information technology or biotechnology.

John Doerr, the preeminent Silicon Valley venture capitalist behind Amazon.com, Netscape, Compaq Computer and Sun Microsystems, wants to take something back. As the "dot-com" failures pile up, Doerr said in an interview last week that he stands by his 1995 statement, issued after Netscape's stunning initial public stock sale, that the Internet "may be under-hyped."