Vinod Khosla
Vinod Khosla is one of Silicons Valleys most astute Venture Capitalists. He founded SUN Microsystems and then later went on his own and funded technology oriented companies which fared well.
Vinod Khosla was born on January 28, 1955 at New Delhi. He was born into a family of Military Officers. He earned a Bachelor of Technology degree in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi in 1976. Vinod’s career motivation began when he began reading the Electronic Engineering Times at the age of 16. In one of the issues, he read about the founding of Intel and that lay the seeds for his motivation of founding a company of his own. After finishing his Bachelors, he tried setting up a soymilk company in India to serve who did not have refrigerators, but failed. Frustrated by his experience, he went on to pursue his Masters in Biomedical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and graduated in 1980. Vinod Khosla then went on to take up his MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business.
The first company that he setup was Daisy Systems which soon closed down. Later he co-founded SUN Micrsosytems with Bill Joy,Andreas Bechtolsheim and Scott McNealy. SUN incidentally stands for Stanford University Network. According to MSNBC, Khosla is said to have created six new jobs for every day he has been in the country from 1976. Khosla now serves on the boards of Agami, eASIC, Indian School of Business, Infinera, Kovio, MetricStream, Spatial Photonics, Xsigo and Zettacore.
Khosla has been on the list of a number of rankings worldwide. They include
• #1 on the Midas List 2003. The Midas list is essentially the rankings of the top Venture Capitalists of the world.
• #445 on the Worlds richest people 2002
• #365 on Forbes 400 in 2003