Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers has included a prominent new accomplice in its push to revive its venture practice. The most up-to-date face to join Kleiner Perkins is Ilya Fushman, who joins as a general partner in its venture group. Fushman had beforehand contributed at Index Ventures, where he has worked with investments including Intercom, KeepTruckin, Optimizely, and Slack beginning in 2015. Preceding Index, Fushman was an official at Dropbox in business advancement and product.
“I’ve had a spreadsheet for a long time of all the people I’d love to work with, and Ilya is always on the top of that list,” says Hamid, who got to know Fushman through their mutual investments in Intercom and Slack. “It comes down to the type of people that Kleiner Perkins wants to work with, and Ilya embodies a lot of the attributes that our team values.” Says Mamoon Hamid, who joined the firm a year ago with a mission of invigorating its venture practice. The previous fellow benefactor of his own wander firm, Social Capital, Hamid had joined Kleiner with the guarantee to get other prominent financial specialists and re-establish some shine to the brand.
At Kleiner Perkins, Fushman will continue to invest in enterprise software companies and adjacent areas such as financial tech, focusing on early-stage investments. “I think there’s a blending happening between the enterprise side and the consumer side of the world,” Fushman says. The opportunity to work with Hamid on Kleiner Perkins’ rebuild was an opportunity he couldn’t pass up as a “builder,” he said in an interview, while praising his former firm Index for its cross-Atlantic success.
“I think the reality is, go out into the world outside of San Francisco or Silicon Valley, and if you ask, ‘have you heard of VC or can you name a VC firm,’ Kleiner will come back as one of the few names that people recognize,” says Fushman. “It’s a huge part of the appeal to take the brand and foundation and build on top of it. There’s a lot of opportunity to improve it further and make it a lot more fresh and new and friendly.”
