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August - 1999 - issue > Cover Feature
Vinod Khosla - Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
Sunday, August 1, 1999



Vinod Khosla is very familiar with startups. At age 27, he was one of the original founders of Sun Microsystems. Though Khosla has had only a fraction of the publicity given to colleague John Doerr, today his reputation on the Silicon Valley VC circuit precedes him. Some give him much of the credit, as a matter of fact, for KPCB's string of Internet successes in the last several years.
Khosla says his real motivation is building companies, rather than getting in, liquidating, and getting out, and that's his edge. "I spend less than 10 percent of my time evaluating new deals, and less than 1 percent of my time looking at the financial aspects of a deal," said Khosla in a 1997 siliconindia interview. "I spend 90 percent of my time helping companies after I have made the investment -- in strategy, in tactics, in transactions, in relationships, in recruiting, in implementation of something, all in the process of building a company."

At Sun, Khosla pioneered open systems and commercial RISC processors. Pre-Sun, he was a co-founder of Daisy Systems where he designed CAD tools for electrical engineers. Now, Khosla serves on the boards of several leading-edge technology companies, including Juniper Networks, QWEST Communications and Ventis.

From Khosla's direction, we expect to see some major KPCB plays in network infrastructure and e-commerce this year. Khosla loves what he does and it shows. He's a winning combination of composure, strategy, aggression, determination and experience in the intensely competitive world of today's technology business.

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