Billionaire John Doerr reveals his greatest regret is not investing in Tesla

A billionaire who backed Google and Amazon has revealed his biggest regret was not backing Tesla when it was a minnow.

A billionaire has revealed the worst decision he ever made — and it has cost him an absolute fortune.

John Doerr is the chairman of venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins and made a mint after backing Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

But he passed up the opportunity to invest in Tesla in 2017 a company that has since grown to have a market capitalisation of nearly $1 trillion USD.

Billionaire John Doerr could have been ever richer if he didn’t pass up a chance to invest in Tesla. Picture: Steve Jennings/Getty Images for TechCrunch

“The conventional wisdom was that venture capitalists thought not to invest in electric vehicle companies and not new car companies at all,” Mr Doerr told Bloomberg TV.

“We had the choice of backing a brilliant car designer by the name of Henrik Fisker or an ambitious, slightly crazy entrepreneur by the name of Elon Musk with Tesla and we made the wrong decision.”

Instead, in 2018 Kleiner Perkins poured $10 million into EV company Fisker Automotive, but the company went bust five years later.

Henrik Fisker started another EV firm named Fisker Inc. in 2016, using the same logo and trademarks, Business Insider reported.

Tesla was a fledgling company in 2017, with Martin Eberhard at the helm.

Tesla has gone from strength to strength since Elon Musk took over the helm. Picture: Britta Pedersen-Pool/Getty Images

Elon Musk took over as chief executive until the following year.

It took Tesla about five years to make its first car.

“That’s probably the worst investment decision of all time,” Doerr said on Bloomberg Wealth with David Rubenstein.

And the decision still haunts him.

“I don’t obsess on these [regrets], but I won’t ever forget,” he added.

Mr Doerr has made his fair share of smart decisions though. He backed Amazon after making an instant connection with 30-year-old Jeff Bezos when they first crossed paths.

“We were both kind of computer science geeks,” he said.

“He had a vision, which is true to this day, that if he had the broadest selection with the most affordable prices and the best customer experience that flywheel he could get to grow by obsessing on the customer.”

He had a feeling the company was destined for big things but didn’t suspect it would grow into the absolute e-commerce giant that it is today.

And while Amazon had a clear business plan, it was a leap of faith that led him to invest in Google — now Alphabet Inc.

He described his decision to invest in Google as “very controversial.”

“They had no business plan, no revenues.”

Mr Doerr also missed out on a chance to invest in Cisco and Sun Microsystems.