Mary Meeker, dubbed “Queen of the Internet” by the finance and investment magazine Barron’s, is a venture capitalist and former Wall Street Securities analyst. She has also been a partner at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, where she has participated in over 20 different deals. Her primary focus is on the internet and new technologies.
She got her start as a stockbroker with Merrill Lynch in 1982. Then, after finishing graduate school in 1986, she moved into an analyst position covering the technology sector at Salomon Brothers. By 1991, she specialized in covering the personal computer and consumer software industries at Morgan Stanley.
Meeker’s first internet trends report was published in 1995. At the time, she was one of the most closely followed internet analysts on Wall Street. Then, in 1996, Meeker and Chris DePuy of Morgan Stanley published "The Internet Report," a groundbreaking industry report that became known as “The Bible” for investors in the dot-com boom. The report was shared widely across the web and eventually wound up as a published book.
Since then, investors have kept a close eye on where Meeker sees the tech industry going. Her internet trends report, which she publishes every year, is highly anticipated. Successful stocks Meeker championed early on included Dell, Microsoft, Intuit, Netscape, AOL, Amazon.com, Yahoo!, eBay, and Google. Meeker has credited her success to being a product user with the desire to invest.
"I've made my best personal investments when I've been a user of the product," said Mary in an interview with Wired. "Like Apple. The epiphany for me came when I purchased my fifth iPod and I hadn't unwrapped my fourth. It was still in the plastic case." Meeker was named "one of the ten smartest people in tech" by Fortune magazine in 2010.
Meeker parted ways with Kleiner Perkins in 2018 and started her own venture capital firm, Bond Capital. Her debut fund cultivated $1.2 billion and in March 2021 closed its second fund with $2 billion in capital commitments. That same year, she was ranked #84 on The World’s Most Powerful Women list and #21 on the Midas List, both by Forbes.