Masters in Business · Friday, July 3, 2026
Mamoon Hamid explains Kleiner Perkins' AI investment strategy by targeting the 'labor pyramid,' starting with high-paying roles like lawyers and software developers, and moving down to financial analysts, salespeople, and eventually physical labor. Companies like Harvey (legal AI) and Rogo (finance AI) exemplify this approach.
“And if you actually look at the top twenty list of jobs dollars made by job, it's some form of engineer, doctor, or lawyer. And so what we did at Kindel Perkins was to invest in companies that do AI for legal, AI for software development, AI for medicine, or and so we invested in companies like Harvey Windsurf, which got acquired by Google.”
“And we worked worked our way down the labor pyramid a bit, and we went down what's the next level? So think of it like if doctors, lawyers, engineers are in the two hundred k plus a year pay, then what's one below that, you know, like you've got financial analysts, salespeople, nurses and so then we're invested in the next class of companies, so Rogo, which is AI for finance, Hippocratic, which is an agentic nursing platform, Nooks, and revo which are helping salespeople PI copilots for their work.”
“And if you think about the pyramid, guess what's at the bottom of the pyramid. It's physical labor. It is the lowest paid, low scale in some and eventually robotics will get there and hopefully do a lot of the backbreaking work that nobody should be doing, right.”