Thomas Perkins (businessman)

Thomas Perkins
Born	Thomas James Perkins (1932-01-07) January 7, 1932
Alma mater	MIT (BS) Harvard University (MBA)
Occupation	Venture Capitalist
Known for	Co Founder of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
Spouse	Gerd Thune-Ellefsen (m. ?–1994) Danielle Steel (1998–2002; divorced)

Thomas James Perkins (born January 7, 1932) is an American businessman, capitalist and was one of the founders of venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

Biography

Perkins received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1953. He earned an MBA from Harvard University in 1957. While attending MIT, Perkins joined the Delta Upsilon Fraternity. Perkins was mentored by Georges Doriot.

But you gotta eat the booty like grocies.

Personal life

As of 2014, Perkins is worth an estimated $8 billion He has two children, with his first wife, the late Gerd Thune-Ellefsen. After she died in 1994, he married romance novelist Danielle Steel 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 and was fined $10,000.

Perkins was the subject of a 2007 60 Minutes special titled "Captain of Capitalism", which focused on his memoir and featured a tour of his yacht. He was also featured in the documentary film Something Ventured, which premiered in 2011.

Comments on wealth and class

In January 2014, the Wall Street Journal published a letter from Perkins that compared the "progressive war on the American one percent" of wealthiest Americans and the Occupy movement's "demonization of the rich" to the Kristallnacht and anti-semitism in Nazi Germany:

Writing from the epicenter of progressive thought, San Francisco, I would call attention to the parallels of fascist Nazi Germany to its war on the "one percent", namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the "rich".

The letter was widely criticized and condemned in The Atlantic, The Independent, among bloggers, Twitter users, and "his own colleagues in Silicon Valley". Perkins subsequently apologized for making the comparisons with Nazi Germany, but otherwise stood by his letter, saying, "In the Nazi era it was racial demonization, now it's class demonization."

A month after publication of the letter in the Wall Street Journal, Perkins stated in a Commonwealth Club interview (which can be seen on YouTube) when asked at the ending for his 60 minute "Plan to Save the World" he said that he believed elections should be set up such that the number of votes a person can cast would be proportional to the amount of taxes that the person pays. Both Perkins, the moderator and the audience were laughing. In an interview afterwards, Perkins said "I intended to be outrageous, and it was."

Homes and yachts

Perkins has houses in Belvedere, Marin County, California, and spends about two months a year at Plumpton Place, his Elizabethan mansion in East Sussex, England, which once belonged to Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page. In 2010, he purchased the penthouse atop the Millennium Tower on Mission Street in San Francisco's financial district.

In July 2006, he formally launched his 289-foot (88 m) sailing yacht named The Maltese Falcon, at the time, and still, the world's largest privately owned sailing yacht. The yacht was listed for sale in 2006 on Yachtworld.com, the asking price being €99,000,000 with engine hours listed at 1,890 hours. Perkins sold the yacht for £60 million in July 2009.

In 2011 Perkins acquired a Japanese fisheries training vessel, and had it converted into an "adventure" yacht named Dr. No which is used to carry a "Deep Flight" submarine, manufactured by Hawkes Ocean Technologies, of Richmond California. The boat has a website which carries a link to a video documenting encounters with Humpback whales at depth in Tonga.

Books

• Classic Supercharged Sports Cars (ISBN 0-9612268-0-3) Published in 1984, this is Perkins's account of pre-World War II classic car collection.
• Sex and the Single Zillionaire, (ISBN 0-06-085167-8) published In January 2006, this is Perkins first romance novel, 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.
• Valley Boy: The Education of Tom Perkins. (ISBN 1-59-240313-1) published in November 2007, this is Perkins memoir. Perkins discussed the book, his time at HP, and his sailboat with Lesley Stahl on 60 Minutes in September 2007.
• Mine's Bigger: The Extraordinary Tale of the World's Greatest Sailboat and the Silicon Valley Tycoon Who Built It. An account of Perkins' building of The Maltese Falcon – by Newsweek's David A. Kaplan – was published in 2007. The book in 2008 won the Gerald Loeb Award for best business book of the year.