Independently and immediately, a flood of people reached the same conclusion: This had to be a mistake. Recommended Video It was the summer of 2017, and as word spread that Mamoon Hamid was joining venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, some people wondered if it was a joke, or fake news. And they didnt hold back. I got calls from friends in the venture business, other GPs general partners, asking: Are you sure this is happening? Is this real? Hamid recounts. People kept asking: What are you doing? One concerned friend even asked Hamid if hed already signed anything (he had). Hamid had helped build one of Silicon Valleys buzziest new VC firms, Social Capital, leading a string of wins including investments in Box (one of 2015s biggest IPOs) and Slack (at the time valued at 5.1 billion). Kleiner Perkins on the other hand, was widely viewed as an institution in decline, a bit like the largest gold-plated ship of a 19th-century fleetgrand for where it had been, but not for where it was heading. By all accounts, Hamidmeasured and soft-spoken, inclined to listen before speakingwas doing something irrational, especially in Silicon Valley, where many people would rather start something new than fix something broken. Venture capital firms dont turn around, generally speaking. Typically when their golden era fades, the founders retire, and they wind down the firm. VC turnaround stories are all but unheard-of. But Kleiner Perkins was not just any firm to Hamid. The firm had been the insp
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