An interview with John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers was the final substantive element of the programme at the recent Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. I was clearly flagging, as my notes at the time do him no justice at all.

In my retrospective I was a little more forthcoming;

“’Semantic’ has arrived; the Metaweb/ Radar Networks/ Powerset pow wow with Tim O’Reilly (pictured) on the final afternoon was great, and was just beginning to go places when they ran out of time. More debate and analysis would have been nice, with (a lot) less demo. This was followed up by John Doerr recognising the whole space as a compelling investment opportunity, echoing trends that Brad Feld highlighted in his recent podcast with me. I found Danny Hillis’ explicit distancing of himself from the Semantic Web odd (Shelley just found it funny…); I’ll admit that I’ve done a little of the same, but more to demonstrate that there is plenty that the Semantic Web’s building blocks (RDF, GRDDL, etc) can do right now, without needing to await the arrival of The Semantic Web. We do need to find better ways to describe this space, though; ‘Web 3.0′ can be unnecessarily confrontational/epochal, and ‘Semantic Web’ carries way too much baggage…”

VentureBeat’s reminder that video from his session is available offered a welcome chance to go back and consider John’s comments at leisure… and they’re well worth your time, too.

John Battelle starts off by looking back to Doerr’s early investment in Google, questioning whether or not Doerr had any idea as to how big it would get. This is brought up to date with probing into the increasing diversity of Google’s portfolio; a diversity that Doerr describes when he says that Google is

“about ads and about applications”

“It’s a very clear set of opportunities that continues to grow enormously”

Doerr’s honest admission of his concern about rate of growth at Google is telling; although he also points to the benefits of hiring large numbers of highly talented engineers.

Battelle also asks why KPCB didn’t back Facebook, to which Doerr responds that they were already backing Friendster (number 13 by traffic worldwide, apparently, and already number 3 in the Chinese market despite just entering) and that ‘loyalty’ therefore prevented them from also supporting Facebook. Doerr goes on to talk about the importance of supporting those companies that they fund to the bitter end, “digging their heels in” as they’re “dragged over the cliff.” Loyalty is commendable, but does it really make sense for an investor to hang on for that long? We all make mistakes. Shouldn’t we be able to recognise them, learn from them, and move on… rather than plummeting over the cliff to our shared doom?

Moving on,

“Search is the killer app, but it’s really clear that in addition to search we’re going to do Discovery. Discovery and radical personalisation… [such as] Zazzle [with its] highly personalised commerce”

(Doerr’s emphasis)

The next block digs into Doerr’s interest in Green, which he backs up with compelling statistics. Looking from Europe, it’s been quite remarkable to see the sudden eruption of environmental angst in the Valley… and comparing it to the evidence on the ground, walking around San Francisco, that very little has really changed yet. It is interesting, though, to compare Doerr’s comments with those coming out of the Governments of Europe; both agree that ‘green’ doesn’t have to mean giving up our current standard of living… if we innovate technologically, if we do the small things such as not leaving devices sat on standby, and if we bring pressure to bear upon the incumbents to innovate along with the entrepreneurs.

Right at the end (at 37:45 on the timeline), things turn back to the Semantic Web and the direct interests of this blog. Troy Williams (formerly CEO of Questia, now at PeoplePad) asks,

“What do you think of the Semantic Web companies we saw earlier, and of the Semantic Web generally as an opportunity?”

Doerr responds,

“So, I’m very excited about the prospect of a Semantic Web. I don’t think it’s clear yet. I don’t think we’ve seen the ‘clear winner’ in those, but for us that falls in the category of this more immersive… experience. I think when we get to Web 3.0 that may be that cooler, more radically immersive web. We’ll see. Next year, the year after?”

We’re pretty excited about the opportunities offered by semantic technologies, too, although I would argue that we can do a lot to enhance today’s web with those technologies long before we reach immersive nirvana. All those connections out there on the social graph, all those intentions, all that attention; it’s just begging to be used, don’t you think?

Technorati Tags: John Doerr, KPCB, John Battelle, Semantic Web, Talis, Web 2.0, Web 3.0, web2summit

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