Best quotes by Vinod Khosla
Vinod Khosla is one of the most prolific Venture Capital investors. Here are some of the best quotes by Vinod Khosla.
1. Aim for consequential outcomes:
“It doesn’t matter what your probability of failure is. If there’s a 90% chance of failure, there’s a 10% chance of changing the world.” “Most technology startups fail. There’s a winner, and there’s 7 out of 10 that lose.” “I don’t mind failing, but if I succeed it better be worth succeeding for.” “I have seen too many startups where they have reduced risk to a point where they have a higher probability of succeeding, but if they succeed it is inconsequential.” — Vinod Khosla
2. Focus on company building, not deal-making:
“We are in the company building business, not in the ‘deal’ or ‘capital’ business.” “I don’t think of myself as being in the investing business. I think private equity investors are very much in the business of doing deals, putting money in, getting money out. To me, that is a very, very different business and all that they are doing is spreadsheets. I think of myself in a completely different business of building companies. I have not made IRR calculations on a spreadsheet ever since 2004. I either believe or I don’t. If I believe, then my goal is to get involved and make things much bigger and help them be successful. It’s a different kind of business.” — Vinod Khosla
3. Do something different:
“If you’re doing what everybody else is doing, you’re not doing anything interesting, and we won’t want to invest.” “Doing things at the edge is what venture is about.” “I don’t even invest in businesses where six other people have the same technology.” “The idea is how can you turn a technology advantage into a business advantage? It’s much more like playing a chess game than it is investing. It is strategic, it depends how much you can help the company. Therefore, it is much more fun.” — Vinod Khosla
4. Seek for unfair advantages:
“We seek out unfair advantages: proprietary and protected technological advances, business model innovations, unique partnerships and top-notch teams.” — Vinod Khosla
5. Invest more in people than a specific plan:
“We invest more in people than in a specific plan, because plans often change.” “Failing quickly is a good way to plan. Failing often makes failures small and successes large….In small failures you accumulate learnings about what works and what doesn’t. Try many experiments but don’t bet your company on just one, keep trying, keep failing small.” “There are probably three or four things you can control out of ten that matter for the success of your company.” Competitors control another three or four. “The rest is just luck.” “I’ve never seen one [business plan] that’s accurate.” — Vinod Khosla
6. Believe will drive you through bad times:
“Bad times come for every startup — I haven’t seen a single startup that hasn’t gone through a bad time. Entrepreneurship can be very very depressing. If you really believe in your product, you stick with it.” — Vinod Khosla
7. Don’t focus solely on the monetary outcome:
“Seeking an acquisition from the start is more than just bad advice for an entrepreneur. For the entrepreneur it leads to short term tactical decisions rather than company-building decisions and in my view often reduces the probability of success.” — Vinod Khosla
8. Focus more on technology risk than market risk:
“We prefer technology risk to market risk.” — Vinod Khosla
9. Compete with yourself:
“How would you compete against yourself?” — Vinod Khosla
10. Lower your margins for high growth:
“I generally disagree with most of the very high margin opportunities. Why? Because it’s a business strategy tradeoff: the lower the margin you take, the faster you grow.” — Vinod Khosla
11. Acknowledge that you don’t know everything:
“Where most entrepreneurs fail is on the things they don’t know they don’t know.” “Things go wrong. There is lots of uncertainty, and there are times when you’re unsure of yourself. I’ve found that the less people know, the more sure they are.” — Vinod Khosla
12. Take advice from the right people:
“The single most important thing an entrepreneur needs to learn is whom to take advice from and on what topic.” “Entrepreneurs could get such great help, but instead they think they need money. It’s this sort of schizophrenic divide between worrying that you’re going out of business and dreaming big that’s needed. Sophisticated entrepreneurs know this. Less sophisticated entrepreneurs don’t even know whom to ask for advice. They’ll ask a marketing and a technology question to the same person. Ask different questions of different people, both those who have been successful and those who haven’t.” — Vinod Khosla
