Vinod Khosla
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Vinod Khosla is an Indian American venture capitalist who is considered one of the most successful and influential personalities in Silicon Valley. He was one of the co-founders of Sun Microsystems and became a general partner of the venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers in 1986. In 2004 he formed Khosla Ventures.
Khosla's career motivation began when reading about the founding of Intel in Electronic Engineering Times at the age of sixteen. Khosla went on to receive degrees from some of the most prestigious institutions in the world: the IIT Delhi, India (Bachelor of Technology in Electrical Engineering ), Carnegie Mellon University (Masters in Biomedical Engineering), and Stanford Graduate School of Business (MBA).
After graduating from Stanford University in 1979, Khosla along with his Stanford fellows Scott McNealy, Andy Bechtolsheim (another Carnegie Mellon graduate school alumnus), and a UC Berkeley masters degree holder named Bill Joy founded Sun Microsystems. Khosla left Sun in 1985. Khosla is also one of the founding fathers of The Indus Entrepreneurs, and has guest-edited a special issue of Economic Times (ET), a leading business newspaper in India.
Vinod was featured on Dateline NBC on Sunday, May 7, 2006. He was discussing the practicality of the use of ethanol as a gasoline substitute. He is known to have invested heavily in ethanol companies, in hopes of widespread adoption. He cites Brazil as an example of a country who has totally ended their dependence on foreign oil.
He has four children.
Accomplishments
Founding companies
- Sun Microsystems
- Daisy Systems
- i-Ram Systems Inc.
- [Khosla Ventures]
Helping to found companies
- NexGen (now purchased by AMD)
- Excite
- @Home Network
- Juniper Networks
- Cerent
- Corvis
Board membership
- MetricStream
- E-asic Inc
- Spatial Photonics Inc
- Xsigo
- moka5
- Infinera
- Kovio
- Zettacore
Other
- The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE)
- 1999 World Technology Award Finalist
External links
- [Computer History Museum, 11-Jan-2006: Sun Founders Panel]
- [Sun Feature Story: The Fab Four Reunites] (webcast of the event)
- [Biofuel-ethanol] talk by Khosla. Google TechTalks March 29, 2006
- [Khosla Ventures]
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