Bumbling to Greatness

By Vince Thompson | Jul 1, 2009 |

Vinod Khosla is one of Silicon Valley’s most respected pioneers. A graduate of India’s Institute of Technology with an electrical engineering degree, Khosla failed at his first company which attempted to bring soy milk to the many homes without refrigerators in India. Then he came to Carnegie Mellon where he got his masters in biomedical engineering and soon after that to Stanford where he earned his MBA. It was in the valley that he co-founded Sun Microsystems and helped pioneer “open-systems” and RISC processors. Sun was funded by Kleiner Perkins Caulfield Byers and in 1986 Khosla joined them. As a venture capitalist, Khosla has been involved in the early days of Excite, NexGen (sold to AMD), Cerent (sold to Cisco), Juniper Networks and many more firms. Today he continues his relationship with Kleiner Perkins and also runs his own firm which invests in early through late stage firms in technology and green.

In this video from Bambi Francisco’s excellent news network for entrepreneurs, Vator TV, Khoshla is honored for Vision by the non-profit SD Forum, and while doing so sets the record strait on the subject of Vision while inspiring the audience to get to bat and go big.

 

Smartplanet TalkbackShare your ideas and expertise on this topic

The following tags are supported in Smartplanet comments:
<b></b> <i></i> <u></u> <pre></pre>

Leave a Reply

  1. Name: You are currently: a Guest |
advertisement

Quick Poll

advertisement

Christina Hernandez

Christina Hernandez is an award-winning journalist based in the Philadelphia area. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Diverse: Issues in Higher Education, the website of the Columbia Journalism Review and elsewhere. Christina is a graduate of the University of Delaware and Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.

Christina Hernandez

Christina Hernandez is an independent journalist whose reporting and observations are not influenced by financial holdings.

Melanie D.G. Kaplan

Melanie D.G. Kaplan is a veteran journalist, traveler and swimmer. She writes regularly for The Washington Post and is a contributing editor at Washington Flyer. She has also written for The New York Times, National Geographic Traveler, People and USA Weekend. Melanie is a graduate of Syracuse University and Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. She lives in Washington, D.C. with her beagle Darwin.

Melanie D.G. Kaplan

In addition to working as a journalist, Melanie keeps the dog food fund flush with occasional consulting jobs. In the unusual event that her writing mentions a company or organization for which she has provided editorial services, she will disclose that fact. She will do the same should she cover any companies in which she holds investments.

Pure Genius examines the best moves in the management and strategy trenches and deciphers what we can learn from them. Interviews, videos, guest posts and lessons from not-so-bright management moves will also be included.