In the world of venture capital, turnaround stories are practically unheard of. And for once-storied firm Kleiner Perkins, it seemed to many that its best days were behind it.
Under legendary investor John Doerr in the late ’90s and early 2000s, Kleiner Perkins amassed a portfolio so significant that it accounted for roughly one-third of the market value created from the internet. Early bets on Google (subsidiary of Alphabet, No. 7) and Amazon (No. 2) established that reputation. Later bets Airbnb (No. 382), Spotify (No. 246 on the Fortune 500 Europe), Twitter, and Square (now Block, No. 179) solidified it.
But a few big startup flops and some internal turmoil began to fray the firm. Vinod Khosla, who had been a partner at Kleiner Perkins and incubated internet-router pioneer Juniper Networks there, left to start his own fund. Later, in the 2010s, a high-profile gender-discrimination lawsuit tainted Kleiner Perkins for would-be partners and founders.
So when a fast-rising VC star at Social Capital, Mamoon Hamid, announced he’d be taking the helm of Kleiner Perkins nearly nine years ago, he wasn’t surprised when friends told him he was crazy.
Today, signs of his impact are all over Silicon Valley. For the first time since Hamid joined in 2017, the firm opened its doors to a reporter, Fortune’s Allie Garfinkle, to see inside its turnaround.
“What came across to me about KP was this combination of having this great brand, but having a lot of the energy and the hunger of being a startup firm—nothing was taken for granted,” Rippling founder Parker Conrad told Garfinkle about the change in tone under its new leader.
For the inside scoop on how Kleiner Perkins and Hamid are pulling off a comeback, check out Allie’s feature here.
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