Doerr shares four heartfelt stories at commencement

Doerr shares four heartfelt stories at commencement

BY JESSICA STARK
Rice News staff

In his commencement address to Rice University’s 94th graduating class May 12, venture capitalist John Doerr told four stories. But they weren’t stories of brokering business deals, career successes or capital investitures, as one may have anticipated from a man who provided venture capital to such prominent businesses as Google, Amazon.com, Sun Microsystems and Genentech.

The stories Doerr told to the recipients of 1,448 degrees from Rice were stories about love.

TOMMY LAVERGNE

Top: John Doerr gives the commencement address. Bottom: President Leebron welcomes students, families and guests.

Doerr said that when he met with Rice students earlier this year to ask what he should talk about today, they responded, “Talk to us about life and love.” Doerr honored that request with four simple love stories about parents keeping family first, one true love, loving children unconditionally and writing your own story.

“You can remember how when you were young you looked up to your parents as heroes. I did. I do,” he said, and addressed his parents and mother-in-law seated in the audience.

“Graduates, in the years ahead, your lives are going to get hectic at times. Yes, like today, your accomplishments are going to continue to make your parents proud. But nothing will make them prouder than talking to you. Call your mom once a week.”

Doerr, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, began his second story talking about his greatest accomplishment.  For a man hailed by the chairman and CEO of Cisco Systems as “the single best venture capitalist in the world,” one would have thought that story would have been of innovation or discovery. In a way, it was.

“My most important accomplishment was only mentioned briefly in my introduction. But it’s one that dwarfs all the others. It happened right here at Rice,” he said. “I found my one true love.”

TOMMY LAVERGNE

Top: From left, President David Leebron, Rice Board of Trustees member J.D. Bucky Allshouse and commencement speaker John Doerr march in the academic procession. Bottom: Graduate Morris Almond visits  with fellow members of Martel College before commencement.

Doerr, who has a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in electrical engineering from Rice, recalled what he was like as a student: a skinny, nerdy, electrical engineer. Getting a date was going to take a little help. That help was given by Doerr’s teacher and friend at Rice, the late  Ken Kennedy, when Kennedy pointed out engineering student Ann Howland. Kennedy encouraged Doerr to talk to her, but to no avail. So Kennedy asked Howland to seek Doerr’s help.

“I may have been shy, but I wasn’t stupid, so we walked through this quadrangle,” Doerr said. “She taught me that I was loveable and loved. She settled that question for me forever. Ann moved me beyond myself so I could love others,” Doerr said.

They will celebrate their 29th wedding anniversary this year.

“This leads me to the third love story, the love of kids,” he said, talking about his two daughters. “I learned to be sure that your kids know first and foremost that they are loved unconditionally.”

Borrowing another lesson from Kennedy, Doerr told the importance of teaching children to be confident in who they are.

TOMMY LAVERGNE

Top: Graduate Scott Lonergan waits before the ceremony. Bottom:  The Rev. William Lawson, pastor emeritus of Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church, gives the invocation.

“It’s easy to lose track of life’s priorities. I realized I wasn’t living family first,” Doerr said, noting that after you miss one dinner, it becomes easier to miss more. At that realization, he made changes. “Being home in the evenings has become one of my top priorities. Not just being home, but being present. Sometimes that means not getting everything done at work.”

To the graduates, he suggested employing a simple test in their careers: “I ask myself, ‘Is this really worth missing a night at home? I get home for dinner almost every night.'”

He learned he could accept failing as a venture capitalist, but he could not fail his family. “If I fail as a parent, I lose love and lives that can never be regained.”

Like the other stories, the last he told, has no ending.

“You are writing the fourth story from this moment onward. Don’t wait 34 years to ask the important questions. Start today. Most important, ask who is your true love and what kind of parent do you want to be? You are making your story.”

For Doerr that means traveling less for business and more for family vacations. It means being an involved parent and a caring friend. It means staying on a family-first path, and not getting lost in ambition and accomplishment.

Yet on that, Doerr placed a caveat: “Ignore the pundits, including me. Meaning comes from what you do with and for others.”