57. What Makes John Doerr Think He Can Save the Planet?

**Steve Levitt** (0:05)
My guest today, John Doerr, is a living legend in the world of venture capital. Time and again, he's been one of the first to identify and invest in some of the most successful companies of all time, including Amazon and Google. In addition, he's New York Times' number one bestseller called Measure What Matters, popularized the management approach known as Objectives and Key Results, or OKRs.
Either of those alone would make him an interesting guest, but the truth is that neither of those are actually the reason that I'm so eager to sit down and talk with him today.

**John Doerr** (0:38)
This transition, Steve, to a clean energy economy is not going to be some kind of party.
They're going to be winners and losers, and it's going to be a bumpy and uneven transition. But the alternative is too discouraging to contemplate.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:56)
Welcome to People I Mostly Admire with Steve Levitt, winner of Adweek's Best Interview Podcast of 2021

**Steve Levitt** (1:06)
The real reason I want to talk to John Doerr is that in his new book entitled Speed and Scale, he's put together a plan that lays out exactly what needs to be done if the world is to read zero net greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 It isn't exhortation or moralizing, it's a pragmatic roadmap. All these governments are pledging to become carbon neutral, but they don't explain how they'll do it. John Doerr actually has a plan.
So you've written a book called Speed and Scale, which lays out a comprehensive plan to tackle climate change. And I want to get into the details of the plan later, but just to start, what's your outlook on the climate crisis?

**John Doerr** (1:50)
I think my favorite quote from the whole book comes from the philanthropist and activist, Lorene Powell Jobs. It says, the climate crisis should be looked at as one of the greatest opportunities that's ever been presented to humankind.

**Steve Levitt** (2:07)
And what about the costs of transitioning to a decarbonized world?

**John Doerr** (2:11)
The IEA estimates the cost of this transition is going to be $4 trillion a year. That entails replacing everything, all of our internal combustion engine vehicles, the whole oil and gas industries, that's all the solar panels, that's all the wind.
And I think, Steve, you note the estimates from economists of the all in social costs of a polluting carbon-fossil fuel-based economy, the premature deaths, the disruption. You've got to ask, how much longer are we going to endure this devastation before we realize that it's cheaper to save the planet than it is to ruin it?

**Steve Levitt** (2:53)
Yeah, the $4 trillion actually sounds pretty cheap. If the world GDP is $100 trillion, and you're saying, look, the cost is only 4%. If everybody just paid 4% per year, of their wealth, we could solve this.
It sounds simple compared to actually doing it. How do you think we should finance it? What's your opinion of, say, a billionaires' tax? Do you think that's a sensible way to be thinking about how to finance these things?

**John Doerr** (3:20)
Well, I will gladly pay more to solve this problem. I won't speak for all billionaires.
We can't afford not to do it. We're spending those monies right now on subsidies for fossil fuels. That's, as John Kerry says, insane. We're funding our own death.

**Steve Levitt** (3:38)
So you've been with the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins for over 40 years. In a typical year, roughly how many entrepreneurs looking for funding would reach out to Kleiner Perkins, and how many would get the chance to make a presentation, and how many would you eventually fund?

**John Doerr** (3:55)
So in a typical year, we'd receive 3,000 proposals.
We'd screen those 3,000 down to some 300, who we would have first meetings with. In a typical year, we'd make 60, I'd guess, investment decisions.

**Steve Levitt** (4:11)
60 out of 3,000. So that is a serious competition. And given the early stages of these investments, a lot of them go bust. What share of investments of those 60 would return? Essentially nothing in the end.

**John Doerr** (4:24)
I would guess that a fourth of the portfolio are complete write-offs, but of the remaining 75%, about half of those, maybe two-thirds, are acquired by a larger company. And I'd say a fourth of the investments that we make overall are not only successful, but go on to be independent public companies.

**Steve Levitt** (4:47)
You fund 60 ventures a year for the last 20 years. It's over 1,000 ventures.
I'm guessing that you haven't funded many that were the 18th firm into the market. Would I be accurate in that conjecture?