• by Thom Forbes  @tforbes, June 10, 2016

Thomas Perkins, a venture capitalist whose firm was an early backer of Silicon Valley disrupters such as Netscape, America Online, Sun Microsystems, Amazon and Google, died yesterday in Marin County, Calif. He was 84.

Perkins was born in White Plains, N.Y., in 1932 and graduated from MIT and Harvard Business School. He eventually went to work for Hewlett-Packard in the 1960s and became the first general manager of its computer division. In 1972, he founded Menlo Park, Calif.-based Kleiner Perkins with engineer Eugene Kleiner. He left the firm nearly 30 years ago.

“Opening with $8 million and later joined by Frank Caufield and Brook Byers as partners, the firm invested in tech companies over the next two decades, leading to the Silicon Valley boom that ushered in the Internet Age,” writesBloomberg Technology’s David Henry. 

“Perkins and his partners popularized a model of investment that involved putting small amounts of money into promising young start-ups in return for a stake in the companies, giving them advice and counsel to spur their growth,” writes Pui-Wing Tam for the New York Times.

“The firm’s success transformed Silicon Valley and the technology and biotechnology industries, leading to a proliferation of venture firms in the region and creating an ecosystem of investment in start-ups that today remains unrivaled in any other part of the world,” Tam continues.

"He was there at the start of the biotech industry and the computer revolution. Tom was our partner and friend, and we will miss him," Frank Caufield and Brook Byers, co-founders of Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, said in a statement.

“He was an early supporter of the biotechnology industry, serving as chairman at Genentech Inc. for 15 years, and was on the board of Tandem Computers Inc., Hewlett-Packard and Compaq Computer Corp.,” Bloomberg’s Henry reports.

“Known as a colorful and dynamic personality, Perkins married romance novelist Danielle Steel, his second wife, in March 1998. After the brief marriage, Perkins himself wrote a novel: Sex and the Single Zillionaire, published in 2006,” reports Reuters’ Heather Somerville. 

It was not as successful as many of his other endeavors from either a literary or sales perspective.

“In 2006, Perkins famously quit the Hewlett-Packard board in protest of the company's secret spying on board members' phone records. His accusations cost chairwoman Patricia Dunn her job and led to criminal charges against her, which were later dropped,” reports Marisa Kendall for the San Jose Mercury News. 

Though not quite a zillionaire, Perkins was also notably outspoken — and unabashed — about the wealth he accumulated.

“Perhaps nothing captures Perkins' outsized ambition more than the Maltese Falcon, a $130-million square-rigged yacht that was the subject of the 2007 book Mine's Biggerby David Kaplan,” writes Jon Swartz for USA Today. “Designed to be the ‘perfect yacht’ that could even sail itself, the Falcon crystallized Perkins' quest for perfection via high-stakes risk, a characteristic that was on display during his tech investing heyday.” 

Wrote Kaplan: “He wasn't only a financier and talent scout for start-up companies — nor just a confidant to dozens of CEOs and market-movers on Wall Street and beyond. Tom Perkins was a behind-the-scenes powerbroker, negotiator, and at times a deus ex machina in countless deals.”

“Two years ago, his predilection for speaking his mind stirred up a different kind of controversy,” writes Richard Waters in Financial Times. “In a letter to the Wall Street Journal, he claimed that America’s rich were being subjected to a form of class warfare that bore comparison to Kristallnacht and the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany.” Waters adds that the letter “was widely condemned in Silicon Valley,” including by Kleiner Perkins.

“Perkins later told Bloomberg's Emily Chang that he sent the Journal the letter because of a San Francisco Chronicle article that poked fun at his ex-wife, the romance novelist Danielle Steel,” reports Noah Kulwin for Recode. “That same year, Perkins suggested in another interview that the votes of the 1 percent should count more because they pay more in taxes.”

“Despite his controversies, Mr. Perkins left a lasting impression on investors and entrepreneurs who met him,” Jessica Floum writes on SFGate.

“It was this strange combination of sage and the enthusiasm of a child,” Allegis Capital managing partner Bob Ackerman tells Floum. “It was this wide-eyed enthusiasm for new ideas, new things and new challenges, and then behind that a lot of wisdom based on experience.”