Mamoon Hamid is reportedly heading from Social Capital to Kleiner Perkins
Mamoon Hamid, a longtime partner at U.S. Venture Partners who went on to cofound Social Capital with Chamath Palihapitiya in 2011, is reportedly moving on to Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
According to Axios, Hamid will focus on early-stage tech investments, with a focus on enterprise software. A formal announcement is reportedly forthcoming.
We’ve reached out to Hamid, whose auto-responder states that he is currently on paternity leave. But Palihapitiya calls it a “a great opportunity for Mamoon” and says “we’re happy for him and Kleiner Perkins.”
He adds that Social Capital is “building a platform where people with potential can come, build a track record, do great and then try new things.”
The move is interesting for a wide variety of reasons, including, obviously, that Hamid isn’t simply a managing director with Social Capital. It isn’t every day that a venture firm cofounder breaks off to join someone else’s firm.
As Axios notes, too, this isn’t the first time that Social Capital’s world is colliding with that of Kleiner Perkins, either. Palihapitiya has said that in December 2014, Kleiner’s most famous investor, John Doerr, asked Palihapitiya if he might be interested in joining Kleiner to lead it. Palihapitiya told Fortune that Doerr said, “I want to talk about Kleiner 3.0.”
Palihapitiya declined, and Doerr stepped back from the day-to-day management of Kleiner last year, taking on the role instead of firm chairman.
The firm doesn’t seem to be faring much better at grooming a younger generation of VCs in the wake of that move. In the last week alone, general partner Mike Abbott announced that he was leaving to jump back in to the world of startups. It was also revealed that a seed-stage initiative involving three young investors is being shut down and that all three are leaving the firm. Several weeks ago, another investor with Kleiner, Arielle Zuckerberg, also left Kleiner; she has told friends that she wants to travel for now.
Kleiner is now managed by Ted Schlein, a managing director who joined the firm nearly 21 years ago, following a decade at Symantec, where he was a vice president. Other than Doerr, Schlein is the most senior member of the firm. Other VCs who have remained with the firm over time include Wen Hsieh, who joined Kleiner in 2006 and focuses on both opportunities in the U.S. and China; Beth Seidenberg, who joined Kleiner in 2005 and focused on life sciences and digital health investing; and famed former investment banker Mary Meeker, who was heavily recruited by Doerr and who joined the firm in 2010. She leads Kleiner’s growth team.
Kleiner’s newest departures are the second wave, following a string of high-profile departures in the years before and after former investor Ellen Pao unsuccessfully sued the firm for gender discrimination. Among those investors to leave during that period: Trae Vassallo, who has since cofounded Defy Ventures; Aileen Lee, who founded Cowboy Ventures; Megan Quinn, now a general partner with Spark Capital; Chi-Hua Chien, who has since cofounded Goodwater Capital; and Matt Murphy, who is now a managing director with Menlo Ventures, among others.
Indeed, assuming Axios’s report is correct, Hamid’s first order of business will likely be to begin grooming — and figuring out a way to keep — young talent.
Kleiner’s future seemingly depends on it more than ever.
Meanwhile, at Social Capital, Palihapitiya notes that while Hamid is leaving, the firm has more recently brought aboard a number of investors, including Marc Mezvinsky, Tony Bates, Phil Deutch, and he says it’s pushing even harder to “manage to our values, constantly improve our performance, and continue to bring in the best, credentialed talent possible.”
This is “our unequivocal ambition,” he adds.
Photo courtesy of SaaStr.
