Mary Meeker

Why Mary is the canonical Analyst

Mary Meeker began her career at Merrill Lynch in 1982 before moving into sell-side research, joining Salomon Brothers as a technology analyst in 1986 and later Morgan Stanley, where she spent nearly two decades building the most authoritative body of internet analysis on Wall Street. In February 1996, she co-authored "The Internet Report" with Chris DePuy — a landmark document that became known as the bible of the dot-com era. Meeker served as Morgan Stanley's lead analyst on the Netscape IPO in 1995 and the Google IPO in 2004, and presided over the firm's flagship internet research franchise through the full arc of the first Web cycle, from speculative boom to post-crash reckoning. Her annual Internet Trends Report, published every year from 1995 to 2019, became the single most anticipated document in the technology investment calendar: a dense, data-driven synthesis of internet adoption, consumer behavior, advertising markets, and mobile infrastructure that decision-makers across the industry treated as foundational reading.

Meeker is the canonical Analyst of the Web cycle because she embodied what the role description defines as its core purpose: producing deep, structured analysis for specialist audiences — not explanation for the general public, but rigorous evaluation for decision-makers. Her method was deliberate accumulation of evidence — hundreds of charts, cross-sector comparisons, multi-year trend lines — assembled into voluminous annual reports that tracked the internet's structural evolution rather than reacting to individual events. Fortune's characterization in 2006 captured the approach precisely: "absolutely first rate when it comes to spotting big-picture trends before they come into focus." Where journalists covered stories and educators simplified concepts, Meeker quantified trajectories, making her work indispensable precisely during the uncertainty that characterizes every hype cycle.

In December 2010, Meeker left Morgan Stanley to join Kleiner Perkins as a venture partner, participating in over twenty investments including DocuSign, Square, and Lending Club, while continuing to publish the Internet Trends Report independently. In September 2018, she departed Kleiner to found BOND Capital, raising $1.25 billion for her debut fund and $2 billion for the second. In May 2025, BOND published its first AI Trends report, with Meeker as primary author — her first major trends analysis since 2019, applying the same data-synthesis discipline she developed during the Web cycle to the AI era. She has appeared on the Forbes Midas List and Forbes World's 100 Most Powerful Women, and was named one of Fortune's ten smartest people in tech in 2010.

The Analyst understands patterns, evaluates technologies and markets. See the Analyst role → · Read the full Analyst deep-dive →

Same role, different wave