It was a couple of weeks ago that I heard that venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers was going to bring on a big name and there would be a fuss about it. I was about to take bets that it was Al Gore, someone who hangs out with a few of the KPCB folks, namely John Doerr.
The news reports about this event when it was finally announced made little sense to me. The clip below, from Silicon Beat, is an example. Here’s what we are told. Powell is going to help entrepreneurs. He’s going to lecture owners of businesses that he has invested in. First of all what makes a career military man an expert in entrepreneurship? As for lecturing people he invests with, why does he need KPCB for that? < read the entire essay bly clicking here>

SiliconBeat: Colin Powell to join Silicon Valley’s Kleiner Perkins
That’s right, General Powell, the former U.S. secretary of state, is joining Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the well-known Silicon Valley venture capital firm, as a “strategic limited partner.”

Here’s a link to our full Mercury News story about tech-savvy Powell, who owns a Treo, a Motorola Razr and three different computers [JCD: that makes him tech-savvy?]. But Powell, who resigned as secretary of state last November, will not relocate to Silicon Valley from his office in Virginia. Instead, Kleiner Perkins has created a new kind of position for him, to draw on Powell’s considerable global experience to help mentor entrepreneurs.

“I wanted to be on the leading edge of technology developments in American and in the world, which will not only benefit America, but all of human kind,” Powell said in an interview.

To be clear, as a “limited partner,” Powell is an investor in the fund – and so is not part of the core team of Kleiner Perkins’ full partners who manage the firm’s activities day-to-day. In that way, Powell is similar to scores of other individual and institutional investors in Kleiner. However, his role extends beyond just investing, which is why the two sides agreed on the additional title “strategic,” Powell said in the interview.

Powell, 68, said he will give talks to entrepreneurs and employees at the start-ups that Kleiner has backed. He also will advise entrepreneurs on how to lead the kinds of large global companies that Kleiner’s start-ups hope to become. He will make regular trips to California, both as part of his existing lecture circuit and to assist Kleiner Perkins, he said.

What a crock. Read the real story here.