Tom Perkins
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Born in 1932, Thomas James Perkins was one of the founders of leading venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers.
He received an S.B. in electrical engineering from MIT, and later earned an MBA from Harvard.
In 1963, he was invited by Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard to head the research department at Hewlett-Packard. He was the first general manager of HP's computer divisions, credited with helping shepherd HP's entry into the minicomputer business. During the 1960s, he also started University Laboratories, which was later merged into Spectra-Physics.
In 1972, with Eugene Kleiner, he co-founded Kleiner Perkins, one of the firm Sand Hill Road venture capital firms. He served as a director of Applied Materials, Compaq, Corning Glass, Genentech, Hewlett-Packard, and Philips Electronics. He served as the only chairman of Tandem Computers, from its founding in 1974 until its 1997 merger with Compaq.
Perkins had two children with his first wife, the former Gerd Thune-Ellefsen. After she died, he married romance novelist Danielle Steel in March 1998; her book The Klone and I was about their friendship. They separated in August 1999 and were later "amicably" divorced.