KLEINER PERKINS SIGN UP COLIN POWELL... BECOMING THE CARLYLE OF VCS?

Kleiner Perkins has been busy this year recruiting various partners or special partners. Now they've signed on Colin Powell:

That's right, General Powell, the former U.S. secretary of state, will joining Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the well-known Silicon Valley venture capital firm, as a "strategic limited partner."

We'll provide a link tomorrow morning to our full Mercury News story about tech-savvy Powell, who owns a Treo, a Motorola Razr and three different computers. But Powell, who resigned last November, will not relocate to Silicon Valley from his office in Virginia. Instead, Kleiner Perkins has created a new kind of position for him, to draw on Powell's considerable global experience to help mentor entrepreneurs.

"I wanted to be on the leading edge of technology developments in American and in the world, which will not only benefit America, but all of human kind,'' Powell said in an interview. (full post)