Born on the twenty eighth of January 1955; Vinod Khosla with a net well worth of $1.Seventy one Billion is the founder of Sun Microsystems and now Khosla Ventures.
Khosla Ventures as the name itself shows is a Venture Capital Fund, while Sun Microsystems is a enterprise that had created the Java programming language and Network File System (NFS).
Being one of the maximum influential personalities in Silicon Valley, Vinod is likewise regarded to be as the world’s No.2 ranked Venture Capitalist, and become also a number of the first challenge capitalists to remember that Internet Technology and Fiber Optics had the potential to make communications so rapid, reasonably-priced and smooth.
Other than that, Vinod is likewise one of the founders of TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs), and has additionally co-based the CK-12 Foundation, which ambitions to expand open supply textbooks and decrease the cost of training in America and the rest of the world.
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About his non-public life – Vinod lives together with his wife Neeru and his 4 children Nina, Anu, Vani and Neal in Woodside, CA. With a sturdy notion in closeness of family, his day should include a breakfast and dinner together with his circle of relatives.
The Evolution Of Vinod Khosla!
So Vinod turned into the son of an Army Man from New Delhi, India, but in my opinion, held fascination about Information and Technology.
While reading the Electronic Engineering Times on the age of 14, he saw the founding of Intel. Inspired by way of that article, he decided to pursue technology as a career.
Having said that, he joined the Indian Institute of Technology to pursue his Bachelor of Technology in Electrical Engineering, after which he idea of trying his hand at his childhood dream of entrepreneurship at the age of 20.
After various and multiple attempts, Vinod did not begin a soy milk company for folks who lacked fridges. Frustrated; he learnt his lesson and gave up the undertaking and moved to the US to pursue his Masters of Science in Biomedical Sciences at Carnegie Mellon, and then later also finished his Masters in Business Administration from Stanford University in 1979.
Now, Vinod had set a target for himself to turn out to be a millionaire earlier than the age of 30, subsequently, to attain this goal the bold him, determined to sooner or later start his profession and began operating for Daisy Systems Corporation, a laptop-aided engineering and design organization.
That is wherein all of it started!
Journey From Being An Entrepreneur To Venture Capitalist!
Now Daisy Systems determined in 1980, became a corporation that synthetic laptop hardware and software for the EDA (Electronic Design Automation) industry, together with schematic capture, good judgment simulation, parameter extraction and lots of different equipment.
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Sun Microsystems Inc
While working for the company what supremely annoyed the man become, having to layout the computer hardware on which the Daisy software program had to be constructed. This is while the concept of Sun Microsystems erupted within the thoughts of Vinod. The concept become to build workstations for software developers.
After giving it a whole lot of notion and studies, Vinod sooner or later started Sun Microsystems alongside with his Stanford classmates Scott McNealy, Andy Bechtolsheim, and UC Berkeley computer technological know-how graduate pupil Bill Joy in 1982. The call ‘SUN’ turned into now not the actual solar, however the quick form for the Stanford University Network.
As most folks inside the entrepreneurial international already recognise, Sun Microsystems Inc. Become nothing but a corporation that sold computers, computer components, computer software program, and information generation offerings which were extra inclined in the direction of the software program builders.
SUN changed into additionally the agency that created the Java programming language, Solaris Unix and the Network File System (NFS), which these days nearly each developer uses. The enterprise was also at the back of substantially evolving many important computing technologies like RISC processors, Unix, virtualized computing, skinny patron computing, and many others.
The preliminary layout which became Sun’s first Unix computer, the Sun-1, became initially designed for the Stanford University Network Communications assignment as a non-public CAD computer. Interestingly, this system become built from spare elements that they had received from the Department of Computer Science at Stanford and Silicon Valley deliver houses.
And phrase has it that SUN turned into profitable after the first sector for the reason that its initiation in 1982. By the subsequent 12 months, the enterprise had gained a excessive recognition for generating Motorola 68000 processor-based systems with super pix. They also certified the pc design to other producers, who then used the equal to construct Multibus-based totally structures jogging Unix from UniSoft. Simply positioned – it became a huge component!
SUN went directly to turn out to be one of the early organizations to release an IPO in 1986 for Sun Workstations. Later, the company additionally changed their image to JAVA, out of the purpose that its Java platform higher represented the employer’s approach then.
And like they say – “Everything that starts offevolved has an quit”; similarly, SUN Microsystems Inc after going through an extended downtrend due to the fact that after the 2001 bubble bust, finally was offered to Oracle Corporation in 2009 for $7.4 billion. After their merger with Oracle USA, Inc. The organisation inside the following month (after the purchase) grow to be Oracle America, Inc.
Now at some stage in this entire lifecycle of SUN Microsystems, Vinod turned into best a part of this journey till 1984, quickly after which he moved out to end up a undertaking capitalist.
Thus giving rise to a new bankruptcy of his life!
Trivia: – the headquarters of solar microsystems is now the headquarters of fb!
Venture Capitalism
To begin with; Vinod joined the project capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers as a General Partner in 1987. During this stint and over the period of time; the formidable yet sensible hazard-taker that he become, Vinod had controlled to gain massive recognition and appreciation as a assignment capitalist. This become specifically due to his variety of successful early level investments.
Some of these protected Asera, Dynabook, BroadBand Office, Excite@Home, Viant, Extreme Networks, Lightera, SKS Microfinance – the Indian microfinance corporation that lends small loans to terrible girls in rural India, and plenty of others.
During this time, Vinod additionally gave start to the idea to optimize SONET for information, which ultimately brought about the introduction of Cerent Corp. Cerent was a telecommunications-equipment corporation which Cisco received in 1999 for $6.9 billion.
Other than that, he is likewise widely known for launching Juniper Networks, a organization which is believed to be the subsequent Cisco.
Now with a popularity of having a profile containing some of the maximum a success ventures, Vinod additionally has a few ventures in which he has long past incorrect. One of which includes 3DO Co, a recreation-maker. This company despite the fact that acquired an IPO but their shares now sell for a fragment of their preliminary offering charge in 1993.
Nevertheless, what's super is that, as opposed to cribbing and crying over the disasters Vinod has only controlled to research from his mistakes and flow ahead.
After gaining the relevant enjoy and publicity of the VC global, Vinod due to a steady urge to assist the new era, started his personal Venture fund in 2004 known as “Khosla Ventures”!
This urge had more often than not emerged after he saw that there was a number of capacity inside the newly evolving children. Hence, initially he began this fund the use of all his own family finances. Based out of Menlo Park, California; this Venture Capital firm particularly targeted on early degree groups inside the Internet, computing, cell, silicon technology and clean era sectors.
Additionally, the primary two investments made by using the company were also from the non-public pockets of Vinod himself and now not any institutional buyers. It become most effective after this, that the company started accepting investments from out of doors.
In March 2009, his fund changed into joined with the aid of Pierre Lamond as a General Partner, following which they completed fundraising for two new budget to spend money on Clean-Tech and Information Technology Start-ups. They had secured a total of $1 Billion well worth investor commitments which included $750 million to put money into conventional early level and growth level agencies, and $250 million for their 2nd fund – Khosla Seed, to awareness on investing in higher-risk possibilities.
In May 2010, the business enterprise also made a massive assertion that, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair became to join Khosla Ventures to offer strategic recommendation concerning investments in technologies targeted at the environment.
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The company nowadays manages greater than $four billion well worth investor capital in addition to investments funded by Khosla himself.
They preserve a assorted attention on a extensive range of regions together with health, advertising, economic services, education, massive facts, agriculture/food, strength, robotics and so forth.
They have additionally closely invested in bio-refineries for strength and bio-plastics, solar, wind, battery, engines, and so forth, and many different environmentally pleasant technology. Talking about their investments; Khosla Ventures has made a complete of 368 Investments in 221 Companies out of which 6 have succeeded to an IPO, while 36 of them had been acquired, so far.
Some of the organization’s investments include: Academia.Edu, Bloom Energy, DB Networks, EcoMotors, GreatPoint Energy, Panzura, Cogenra Solar, Snip.It, Relcy, etc. Personally, Vinod himself has also made a complete of 18 Investments in thirteen Companies as nicely which encompass – Vicarious, Watsi, Quanttus, Vittana, Ausra, and so on.
Achievements!
- Received the Global Indian of the Year Award through ET Awards
- Received the ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ in Entrepreneurship and Innovation on the University of California (2009)
- Received the EY Entrepreneur of the Year Award within the Northern California location (2007)
