Gore earns his keep in Silicon Valley beyond simply attending the annual holiday party. He’s made himself available to a number of technology companies that got startup help from Kleiner Perkins. Andrew Fisher, chairman of Shazam Entertainment Ltd., a mobile music app maker backed by Kleiner Perkins, said Gore flew to London two years ago and agreed to be interviewed on stage in front of about 200 company employees and business partners.
Gore’s preparation was first rate and it was clear that “he’s tremendously well-versed” in Kleiner Perkins’s investments, Fisher said. At the presentation, “he talked about his work around the environment, leadership in small companies, decision making, sitting on the board of Apple. People were fascinated with his insight.”
Gore paid a similar visit last year to a recycling plant in Vancouver run by Harvest Power Inc., one of Kleiner Perkins’s clean-tech companies.
Shopkick Visit
Eric Feng, former Hulu LLC chief technology officer and ex- Kleiner Perkins employee, described Gore as an energized and active participant in investment decisions who is “very well- respected among the partners.” He’s regularly asked for feedback on investments and is considered “a very valuable resource,” Feng said.
Shopkick Inc. Chief Executive Officer and co-founder Cyriac Roeding met Gore about two years ago at Kleiner Perkins. As a guru on climate change, Roeding figured Gore was unlikely to have much interest in Shopkick’s technology, which helps retailers target customers with discounts.
“I took a photo with him because I thought I’d never see him again,” Roeding says.
He was wrong. In February 2012, Gore joined Roeding at the Village Pub in Silicon Valley -- the same place where Mark Zuckerberg was famously courted by Accel Partners’ Jim Breyer -- for an intimate event with about 35 executives from top retailers like Macy’s Inc., Crate & Barrel and Target Corp. In a fireside chat, Gore answered every question Roeding threw his way and showed a deep knowledge of Shopkick’s market.
Internet Invention
“I had not planned on talking about Shopkick, but he just kept coming back to it,” Roeding says. “He talked about how the future of the physical world is converging with the digital world.”