John Doerr testifies in Kleiner trial, suggests he wanted to keep Ellen Pao until she sued
Top venture capitalist soured on employee around time she filed sex bias case — A top Silicon Valley venture capitalist testified Tuesday that he initially fought his partners to keep a female employee they thought wasn't up to the job.
Context & Ripple Effects
Doerr's testimony lands mid-trial, after Ellen Pao took the stand herself and after former partner Trae Vassallo agreed to testify about harassment by the same senior partner. It is Kleiner's most powerful figure answering the core question directly: was Pao pushed out over performance, or over her lawsuit?
First-order effects
- Doerr's claim that he fought his own partners to retain Pao puts him in direct conflict with the firm's trial narrative that she was combative and underperforming — one of those accounts has to lose with the jury.
Second-order effects
- If jurors credit Doerr's retention story, Kleiner's defense shifts from 'she wasn't up to the job' to 'the relationship collapsed only once she sued', which dovetails with Vassallo's planned corroboration of harassment by the same partner.
Third-order effects
- The trial is forcing VC partnerships to litigate their informal personnel decisions in public — a structure where a founder-legend like Doerr testifying against his own firm becomes the template for how bias claims against elite firms get argued.
The trend: Silicon Valley gender-bias disputes are migrating from private partnership deliberations into open court, with star investors' own testimony becoming the evidence.