Thomas J. Perkins, controversial venture-capital pioneer, dies

Silicon Valley venture capitalist Thomas J. Perkins died Tuesday night at his home in Tiburon of natural causes after a prolonged illness, his longtime assistant, Kathleen Daly, confirmed.

An admirer of fast cars and boats and former husband to novelist Danielle Steel, Mr. Perkins was one of the earliest investors in Northern California’s nascent technology industry to gain renown for both his portfolio and his personal life.

Mr. Perkins got into venture capital in its earliest days — the days when “you could put every venture capitalist into a small room,” he told the makers of “Something Ventured,” a 2011 documentary about the industry.

Mr. Perkins also recruited partners like John Doerr, now the chairman of Kleiner Perkins, who started a new era of investing in Internet companies like Netscape, AOL, Amazon and Google.

Built in Turkey in 2006, the boat was described at “the most incredible, influential and groundbreaking yacht the world has ever seen.”

The Mill Valley sailing magazine Latitude 38 said the boat was one of the most-talked-about yachts in the world.

The boat also personified conspicuous consumption and wealth, a subject on which Mr. Perkins drew criticism when he compared the “progressive war on the American one percent” to Nazi Germany’s treatment of Jews in a 2014 Wall Street Journal opinion piece prompted by a critique in The Chronicle of his ex-wife Steel’s landscaping.