Meg Whitman, the former eBay CEO, hasn’t had a lot to do since her bid to become governor of California came to an ignominious end last fall. But she’s reportedly about to get back to work, with a new position at leading venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers.
Although Whitman herself has not yet commented on the news, Fortune reports that “sources close to [Whitman] and to the venerable Silicon Valley venture capital firm say that Kleiner will bring Whitman in as a strategic adviser to help scope investments and coach startups.”
The move to Kleiner is certain to pay off monetarily for Whitman, who dropped $145 million on her gubernatorial campaign. According to Fortune, though, she wouldn’t have been in dire financial straits even without a new job—the magazine reports that she’s already managed to earn back that money thanks to some savvy investing.
If Whitman is indeed signing on at Kleiner Perkins, her job there would likely involve coaching some of the social Web entrepreneurs that Kleiner has invested in through its sFund, a $250 million fund that the company launched last fall with help from Facebook, Amazon, Comcast and Zynga. So far, the list of companies that have gotten money thorugh sFund includes Flipboard, “the world’s first social magazine," and Lockerz, a youth-targeted social e-commerce company with more than 17 million members.
