Following His Green Dream

By Tony Dokoupil and David A. Kaplan | NEWSWEEK

From the magazine issue dated Nov 26, 2007

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Al Gore just won a Nobel Prize for teaching the world to think green, but he's also showing he knows a thing or two about another kind of green: money. Since 2000, according to published reports, the former veep has transformed himself from a public servant with around $1 million in the bank to a sparkling private consultant with a net worth estimated to be north of $100 million. He's a senior adviser to Google, a board member at Apple and now a newly minted general partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the Silicon Valley venture-capital firm that made billions investing early in Netscape, Amazon and Google.

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Gore has pledged to hand over his KP "salary" to Alliance for Climate Protection, a nonprofit he chairs. But the gift is more symbolic than material. Gore's salary—his cut of the 2 percent "management fee" that KP partners get on all investments—is typically a sliver of the total compensation that VCs receive. If Gore's profit-sharing deal is anything like the firm's other 23 partners, he's also in line to collect tens of millions of dollars a year. That's because partners carve up 30 percent of the profits if and when the alternative-energy start-ups that KP supports go public or are sold. (Kleiner Perkins declined to comment on Gore's compensation, but his communications director, Kalee Kreider, confirmed that he plans to donate only his "guaranteed income" to charity.) Should Gore's prospecting unearth a clean-energy gold mine the size of Google—which earned billions for KP partners—his share of the loot could make him U.S. history's richest ex-veep. Emphasis on "ex": Gore's relationship with KP is perhaps the strongest signal yet that his days in politics are over. The firm is notoriously secretive about its finances, and it's unlikely that KP would strike a deal with Gore if the association could subject the firm to public scrutiny. And anyway, with the kind of money Gore stands to make, why run for president?

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Posted By: The Whited Sepulchre @ 11/20/2007 11:43:19 PM

http://thewhitedsepulchre.blogspot.com/2007/11/al-gore-our-richest-vice-president.html

See my Fisking of the entire article. Cover your wallets, Gore is going to cost you
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Posted By: Want A Change @ 11/20/2007 11:45:30 AM

Yo......XJUG1987, what's up with the Commie Libs comment???? You gotta lot of nerve cherry picking your argument without talking about the Bush empire, or perhaps Romney or, etc, etc, etc. Man you need to take a long look in the mirror if you're calling Gore and Clinton a two faced fraud and realize that Republicans have taken that top position for the last 7 years. Get with the program XJUG and start calling a spade a spade instead of continuing the blind diatribe as spewed forth by the GOP.
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Posted By: xjug1987 @ 11/20/2007 11:13:55 AM

Typical liberals. Should a Republican have left office and gone through the "revolving door" or profited from their "Public Service" the Commie LIbs would be out raged. Gore had alot even before becoming Veep because his Father, another former Senator, profited from his office. Gore is now worth mult-millions. Clinton however, has never had a real job either. He has never lived in a house he actually purchased and paid for. Both have been living off the Govt since they arrived in Arkansas. The house in New York has a guest house they rent to the Secret Service for the total morgage they hold on the entire property. They are also worth in excess of $50M. They are disgusting hypocrites who care nothing about anyone else, but want to use the offices they hold to profit for themselves. Gore couldn't care less about anything he "preaches" about, because he doesn't walk the talk. Did Mother Theresa live in a palace but talk about caring for others? Again, Gore and Clinton, 2 faced frauds.