Vinod Khosla, a native
Indian and the world's No.2 ranked Venture Capitalist, is considered as one of the
mo
st
influential personalities in Silicon valley. He is a partner in the
venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
Aged 50, he was among the first venture capitalist to understand that internet technology and fiber
optics could make communications so fast, cheap and easy and spot the potential of companies that sell
gear for high-speed optical networks.
He was born in 1955 in
a military family in New Delhi, India. He earned a B.Tech degree
from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi. After that he attempted to
start his own company in India, a dream since the age of 15. Being frustrated
by the experience, he gave up his mission. Then he went to United States and
completed M.S degree in Biomedical Sciences at Carnegie Mellon and also earned
an M B A degree from Stanford University in 1979.
Vowing to become a millionaire
before 30, ambitious Khosla found a business idea and partners from
Standford business club. They found Daisy
Systems, a computer-aided engineering and design company, but failed quickly
because the economics of the market went against it
At
27, Khosla became successful when he co-founded Sun Microsystems with a German student Andreas
Bechtolsheim, a multi millionaire. Khosla ran Sun until 1984.
In
1986, he joined in Kleiner Perkins, a firm that funded Sun as a general
Partner. During this time, Khosla has played key roles in starting
companies that are involved in multimedia, semiconductors, video games, Internet
software and computer networking. He conceived the idea to optimize SONET
for data, a scheme that led to the creation of Cerent Corp, a
telecommunications-equipment company which Cisco acquired in
1999 for $6.9 billion. Khosla was also instrumental in launching Juniper
Networks, a company many thought as the next Cisco.
Others include Viant, Extreme Networks, Lightera etc.
Khosla has won admiration because
of his ability to build and fashion companies and technologies. He plays an active role and is not satisfied
to sit back and let others work the plans while he okays the progress. Though he was
successful in almost all his ventures, there has been one time
that Khosla had been wrong. He backed 3DO Co, a game-maker whose shares now sell
for a fraction of the initial offering price in 1993.
Khosla's current effort is funding
and managing application service provider start-ups. He is chairman of two such
firms, Corio and Asera.
This
much respected entrepreneur lives in Woodside, CA with his wife and four daughters. Khosla believes
in closeness in family. His rules for life include having breakfast and dinner
with his family. He
is one of three billionaires of Indian origin in Forbes magazine’s list of
America’s richest 400 people.
Contact Address
Vinod Khosla
c/o Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
2750 Sand Hill Road
Menlo Park, CA 94025
