This makes me want to puke

The $12.5 million that he invested in 1999 when hardly anyone was interested in online search engines turned into a Kleiner Perkins stake worth $1.8 billion by the time the company went public 11 months ago. The stock has more than tripled since then, enabling Kleiner Perkins to retain a $1.7 billion stake in Google even though the firm has sold most of its shares.

Shriram, who met Doerr as one of the early executives at Netscape, got involved in Google even earlier. After leading a small group of investors that placed $1 million in the search engine in 1998, Shriram retains a stake currently worth $1.3 billion.

Doerr isn't quite ready to predict the investment in Zazzle will duplicate those staggering returns, but he still can't resist drawing some parallels. "They are Googlesque in their energy and their ability to think big," he said.