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Current Feed Content TiEcon 2017 Grand Keynote Posted:Tue, 16 May 2017 06:50:43 +0000 TiEcon 2017 Grand Keynote Developing the Developed World Posted:Mon, 21 Nov 2016 06:50:43 +0000 Bloomberg Studio 1.0: Vinod Khosla Posted:Mon, 31 Oct 2016 06:50:43 +0000 Vinod Khosla talks robots, clean tech investing, entrepreneurship and more with Emily Chang. &#8220;20-percent doctor included&#8221; &#038; Dr. Algorithm: Speculations and musings of a technology optimist Posted:Fri, 30 Sep 2016 06:50:43 +0000 Healthcare has a radical opportunity to reinvent itself. Healthcare today often results in suboptimal patient outcomes despite doctors doing the best they can within the current system. Suboptimal outcomes result from the incomplete knowledge and personal biases of today’s system. Medicine has historically been approached according to tradition – the experiential evolution of best practices, and a reductionist system of small trials. Optimal treatment outcomes require a healthcare system that is instead primed by holistic, scientifically, probabilistically or other statistically-validated data and conclusions presented to patients as cost/benefit choices. It is time to move beyond the stethoscope, which remains the iconic diagnostic tool for most healthcare professionals worldwide, 200 years after its invention. Rubrik: Creating a Transformational Shift with Cloud Data Management Posted:Tue, 16 Aug 2016 06:50:43 +0000 Today, I’m excited to announce KV’s investment in Rubrik, a company that will transform how enterprises recover, manage, and secure all their data across private and public clouds. Rubrik is a company with an immense market that hasn’t seen innovation in decades and a great management team with a clear vision. Design isn&#8217;t only for customers Posted:Thu, 07 Jul 2016 06:50:43 +0000 IT matters Posted:Thu, 07 Jul 2016 06:50:43 +0000 Eating the big fish Posted:Thu, 07 Jul 2016 06:50:43 +0000 Operations and scaling Posted:Thu, 07 Jul 2016 06:50:43 +0000 Leaping from the stratosphere Posted:Thu, 07 Jul 2016 06:50:43 +0000 Inspire others through the art of story Posted:Thu, 07 Jul 2016 06:50:43 +0000 Digital manufacturing Posted:Thu, 07 Jul 2016 06:50:43 +0000 From seed to supercharge Posted:Thu, 07 Jul 2016 06:50:43 +0000 Startups Posted:Thu, 07 Jul 2016 06:50:43 +0000 Superforecasting Posted:Thu, 07 Jul 2016 06:50:43 +0000 Blended marketing analysis Posted:Mon, 21 Sep 2015 06:50:43 +0000 Knowing how to profitably acquire customers is the crux of growth marketing. To do this effectively, you should break the data down by the channel through which each customer arrived at your product and analyze each channel independently. Without this, there is no way to know where you should focus your attention or deploy more resources. Aggregated growth marketing effectiveness can change due to many different factors, and this ambiguous causation makes it impossible to clearly interpret what a change in average marketing effectiveness really means for your company... A primer on cohort analysis Posted:Mon, 14 Sep 2015 06:50:43 +0000 Knowing how to profitably acquire customers is the crux of growth marketing. To do this effectively, you should break the data down by the channel through which each customer arrived at your product and analyze each channel independently. Without this, there is no way to know where you should focus your attention or deploy more resources. Aggregated growth marketing effectiveness can change due to many different factors, and this ambiguous causation makes it impossible to clearly interpret what a change in average marketing effectiveness really means for your company... Paid marketing: A glossary of terms Posted:Mon, 07 Sep 2015 06:50:43 +0000 The terminology around paid marketing can be as inscrutable as any other insider jargon: LTV, CAC, payback period, conversion rates, channels, churn and the list goes on. The following is a basic glossary of the terms around paid marketing... A primer on paid marketing Posted:Mon, 07 Sep 2015 06:50:43 +0000 Without runaway organic growth, How can you grow your business in a cost-effective manner? How can you acquire customers profitably? Can you scale your customer acquisition and maintain profitability? How to scale: Lessons from Stripe CEO, Patrick Collison Posted:Wed, 15 Jul 2015 06:50:43 +0000 Stripe CEO, Patrick Collison, talks with Keith Rabois about culture and recruiting. Hear why Stripe tries to hire people who are intrinsically happy, why they’re willing to recruit people who are not initially enthusiastic about the company and what makes their onboarding process unique. Project RIFLE Posted:Tue, 23 Jun 2015 06:50:43 +0000 RIFLE is a decision making framework that helps improve targeting by quantifying otherwise non-quantified decisions. If you have a technology, what market should you apply it to? Should you sell to international or domestic markets? Big or small customers? What channels make the most sense for sales? RIFLE can help you be more rigorous and inspire a more effective way for you to make decisions at your company. Pitch the way VCs think Posted:Tue, 23 Jun 2015 06:50:43 +0000 Learn how to develop an effective fundraising pitch deck and tell your company's story with emotion. We'll guide you through developing your company narrative and what the VC thought process is while making an investment, not to mention basic tips and tricks, in addition to what works and what doesn't in fundraising decks. Social physics and human behavior Posted:Mon, 22 Jun 2015 06:50:43 +0000 Hear from MIT Media Lab's Alex Sandy Pentland as he explains social physics and the way human social networks spread ideas and transform those ideas into behaviors. Google in the new era of computing Posted:Mon, 22 Jun 2015 06:50:43 +0000 In this talk, hear from Google SVP, Sundar Pichai, as he discusses the evolution of new technology and how patterns of usage have shifted with their adoption. Why we brand Posted:Mon, 22 Jun 2015 06:50:43 +0000 Debbie Millman, the president and CMO of Sterling Brands, breaks down the basics of branding and why it's so important. Bitcoin 101 Posted:Mon, 22 Jun 2015 06:50:43 +0000 What is bitcoin and why is it so important? Hear from Balaji Srinivasan, co-founder of bitcoin startup 21, as he walks us through the fundamentals of bitcoin. How to be a CEO who cares about design Posted:Mon, 22 Jun 2015 06:50:43 +0000 Khosla Ventures design operating partner, Irene Au, explains why design is crucial to a startup's success and how founders who don't have a design background can still flourish in this crucial area. Growth Posted:Mon, 22 Jun 2015 06:50:43 +0000 In this talk, Alex Schultz, vice president of growth at Facebook explains the basics of how to gain sustainable traction. Hear stories from Facebook's early days acquiring users and learn why growth must be a priority for everyone in a startup's leadership. Tech recruiting best practices Posted:Mon, 22 Jun 2015 06:50:43 +0000 How do you recruit top talent in an extremely crowded market? Khosla Ventures operating partner, Ardy Daie, draws on 15 years of experience building world-class teams for startups and Fortune 100 companies and shares the best practices for technical recruiting. Hooked: Building Habit Forming Products Posted:Fri, 19 Jun 2015 06:50:43 +0000 Why do we use certain products every day? What draws us back to them so frequently? In this video, bestselling author Nir Eyal shows us the four components that are key to forming habits: trigger, action, reward and investment. Do you need a COO? Posted:Thu, 18 Jun 2015 06:50:43 +0000 Yelp COO, Geoff Donaker, explains how a startup CEO should approach the tricky decision of whether or not to hire a COO and when. Geoff discusses how he and CEO, Jeremy Stoppelman manage Yelp, and sheds light on the ideal attributes of a COO candidate. Implications of the second machine age Posted:Wed, 17 Jun 2015 06:50:43 +0000 In this talk, Erik Brynjolsson, author of The Second Machine Age, discusses how technology will force economic disruption and hypothesizes what the future may look like. Hypergrowth in the enterprise Posted:Mon, 15 Jun 2015 06:50:43 +0000 In this video, hear directly from Zenefits founder/CEO, Parker Conrad, as he talks about the company's hyper growth, the culture that enables urgency and action and how they got there from being the black sheep of YC prototype day. Consumer fundraising checklist Posted:Wed, 03 Jun 2015 06:50:43 +0000 So, you’re trying to raise money. Here’s a guide for thinking about the kind of information you’ll need to craft a narrative about your company. Depending on your stage of growth, you may want to focus on different elements of this checklist. This is meant as a general guide, not a prescriptive template. Gene pool engineering for entrepreneurs Posted:Thu, 14 May 2015 06:50:43 +0000 Table of Contents I. INTRODUCTION A. Why first hires are important B. Background on traditional (functional) recruiting C. Functional hiring II. ENGINEERING THE GENE POOL A. Benefits of gene pool engineering B. Step 1: Identity the five largest risks C. Step 2: Define the skill-set necessary to address those risks D. Step 3: For each […] Team 360 reviews Posted:Mon, 11 May 2015 06:50:43 +0000 The goal of Team 360 reviews is to provide CEOs with valuable developmental and evaluative feedback from key stakeholders. Risk matrix Posted:Mon, 11 May 2015 06:50:43 +0000 Understand and quantify your major risks and know what you have to prove to get your product to market. If/then planning Posted:Mon, 11 May 2015 06:50:43 +0000 The goal of if/then scenario planning is to better understand how you can manage your company’s spend and ensure capital efficiency in order to achieve success. Ask yourself what bad things could happen, and what would your countermeasures be? The art, science, and labor of recruiting Posted:Mon, 11 May 2015 06:50:43 +0000 Congratulations, you are now an executive at a venture-backed company! You survived the presentations, the term sheet shuffle and the due-diligence. Everyone is calling you the Founder (which is true), yet you are actually a technologist, an engineer or just a “great ideas person” with an instinct for the market. But now you have to recruit a team; perhaps, for example, a VP Marketing (maybe you have never been in a room with a real VP Marketing and don't really know what one does or how to assess his or her capabilities!) Worse still, you might be recruiting a CEO but have never really understood what a CEO does or how to appraise one. How do you evaluate a candidate, especially for a management role that you do not have great familiarity with? Stanford View from the Top / On failure and success Posted:Fri, 01 May 2015 06:50:43 +0000 In this talk, hear from Vinod Khosla during the Roanak Desai Memorial View From The Top talk at Stanford Graduate School of Business on the important of having a belief system and the value of brutal honesty. Startup Grind / Fearing failure as an entrepreneur Posted:Wed, 11 Feb 2015 06:50:43 +0000 Fireside chat with Startup Grind founder, Derek Peterson, and Vinod Khosla on fearing failure as an entrepreneur and other lessons learned. Forbes / The next technology revolution will drive abundance and income disparity Posted:Thu, 06 Nov 2014 06:50:43 +0000 There have been and will continue to be multiple big technology revolutions, but the most impactful on human society may be the one that finally builds systems with judgment and decision-making capability more sophisticated and nuanced than trained human judgment. Stanford University / How to start a startup: How to operate Posted:Thu, 06 Nov 2014 06:50:43 +0000 Keith Rabois shares many of the lessons he’s learned operating startups in this Stanford lecture covering everything from how to be an effective manager by editing and delegating, transparency, the importance of metrics and much more. TechCrunch / Could a Nobel Prize-winning innovation have almost been overlooked by Silicon Valley? Posted:Wed, 08 Oct 2014 06:50:43 +0000 I want to congratulate Shuji Nakamura (pictured above), the founder of Khosla Ventures portfolio company Soraa, and his fellow collaborators who were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics yesterday. They join an esteemed group of Nobel laureates that includes Albert Einstein, Marie Curie and Niels Bohr, all of whom have changed the course of human history. TechCrunch / The reinvention of medicine: Dr. Algorithm v0-v7 and beyond Posted:Mon, 22 Sep 2014 06:50:43 +0000 The “practice of medicine” developed through tradition, and the experiential evolution of best practices with small-scale medical research studies can be substantially improved through the “science of medicine” with statistically better-validated data and conclusions. Much of the current practice is driven by conclusions derived from partial information about a patient’s history and symptoms, incomplete medical understanding based as much on opinions as validated science, and interacting subjectively with known and unknown biases of the physician, hospital and healthcare system. TechCrunch Disrupt / Vinod Khosla predicts the future Posted:Tue, 09 Sep 2014 06:50:43 +0000 It’s never a dull moment when Vinod Khosla takes the stage with Michael Arrington: this year, we learn his thoughts on the forces that he thinks will shape the future, the things that make Silicon Valley culture worthwhile, and the dubious qualifications of VCs as advisors. TechCrunch / The case for intelligent failure to invent the future Posted:Tue, 02 Sep 2014 06:50:43 +0000 The world is changing at an increasingly rapid pace. In the past, experts with spreadsheets and econometric models or social scientists with subscale studies and linear models may have been useful. These so-called experts extrapolated from what came before, but as the rate of change has increased, looking to the past often is no longer meaningful – especially in a world driven by new technology. UX recruiting toolkit: Understanding UX Skills (1/7) Posted:Mon, 07 Jul 2014 06:50:43 +0000 User experience design is a multidisciplinary field. A well-designed product must be visually appealing and simple, and easy to understand, learn and use. Creating a well-designed product is an endeavor that requires technical skills — an understanding of computer science, human computer interaction and visual perception and cognition — and tremendous creativity. UX recruiting toolkit: Writing a Job Description for UX People (2/7) Posted:Sun, 06 Jul 2014 06:50:43 +0000 The best thing you can do for your company as founder/CEO is to hire a great team, so it’s worth investing a lot of time and energy into writing a good job description. Even if you are relying mostly on your network to source candidates, you’re likely to need at least a description of your company to circulate to elicit interest from candidates. UX recruiting toolkit: Sourcing candidates (3/7) Posted:Sat, 05 Jul 2014 06:50:43 +0000 “Where do you find designers to hire?” Now that you understand what UX skills you need to have for your team and have written a job description that describes these needs, it’s time to get the word out and start recruiting. UX recruiting toolkit: Reviewing candidates (4/7) Posted:Fri, 04 Jul 2014 06:50:43 +0000 Before looking at the portfolio and when deciding whether to contact a candidate for a conversation, start with the resume to establish some expectations. Fireside chat with Google co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin Posted:Thu, 03 Jul 2014 06:50:43 +0000 At the annual KV CEO Summit, we were fortunate to have both Larry Page and Sergey Brin sit down to discuss a wide range of topics including the acquisition that never was (although not for lack of trying!), why computers today are still pretty bad, their partnership over the last 16 years, the future of Google, government 2.0 and how machine learning and technology will shape our future of abundance. UX recruiting toolkit: Interviewing UX candidates (5/7) Posted:Thu, 03 Jul 2014 06:50:43 +0000 The phone screen is an opportunity to make sure the designer and opportunity are potentially a good fit for each other, based on obvious criteria: salary expectations, role and responsibilities, skills required, potential interest, and communication skills. UX recruiting toolkit: How to make your company attractive to designers (6/7) Posted:Wed, 02 Jul 2014 06:50:43 +0000 These 5 C’s are essential ingredients for making your company attractive designers, based on my own experience of recruiting hundreds of UX people to join companies that were not originally obvious places for designers to join, and based on the experience and advice of two of the best and well-known UX recruiters in our industry. UX recruiting toolkit: Compensation (7/7) Posted:Tue, 01 Jul 2014 06:50:43 +0000 “How much does a designer typically make?” The answer to this question varies widely, based on a number of factors: Current comp, Comp history, Competing offers, How long has the company been looking, How important is the role to fill, How much do you want the person, Quality of the candidate’s skills and experience. A dozen things I’ve learned from Vinod Khosla Posted:Sun, 22 Jun 2014 06:50:43 +0000 This post originally appeared on Tren Griffin's website 25iq, where he blogs about business models, investing, technology and other aspects of life he finds interesting. Tren works for Microsoft and previously was a partner at Eagle River, a private equity firm. This post is part of a series, which includes "A dozen things I've learned from... Marc Andreessen, Reid Hoffman and about marketing, distribution and sales." ThoughtSpot: Democratizing access to data Posted:Wed, 18 Jun 2014 06:50:43 +0000 In the early days at PayPal, key decisions were empirically driven, and the leadership team expected every employee be just as analytical. As a result, the entire team became facile with the metrics driving the business and insisted that regardless of seniority, each employee make rational calculations on their own. Reengineering everything with software Posted:Tue, 17 Jun 2014 06:50:43 +0000 In this video, hear from Daphne Koller, co-founder of Coursera, on how technology allows us to provide education to anyone at effectively zero marginal cost per student. The unbreakable laws of storytelling Posted:Wed, 11 Jun 2014 06:50:43 +0000 Persuasion occurs when you touch a person’s heart before reaching their head. Passion is everything. You cannot inspire and persuade unless you’re inspired yourself. MIT Tech Review / Fireside chat with Vinod Khosla Posted:Tue, 10 Jun 2014 06:50:43 +0000 In this talk, hear from Vinod Khosla about the future of health, how patients should be empowered to be the CEOs of their own health and some of the hardest questions facing society today. Wired / The prognosis for data-led medicine is healthy Posted:Fri, 06 Jun 2014 06:50:43 +0000 Today's medicine is more practice than science, albeit intelligent practice. Too much is left to qualitative judgments based on tradition, experience and dated, often un-tested, beliefs. But we are about to make a quantum leap in the capabilities of medicine driven by digital health technologies, sensors and data science. It's only a matter of time before this leap in technology empowers individuals to become the CEOs of their own health. Design is&#8230; Posted:Fri, 23 May 2014 06:50:43 +0000 Today, design is as important as technology. I was meeting with a startup last week when the principal architect asked me why is design more important now than ever before? And to answer that, let’s reflect on the evolution of automobile design. Pitch the way VCs think: Presenting powerpoint with emotion Posted:Tue, 20 May 2014 06:50:43 +0000 In this video, hear from Vinod Khosla as he explains how to effectively pitch investors. Company building Posted:Tue, 20 May 2014 06:50:43 +0000 In this video, Vinod Khosla explains how thinks about building a billion dollar company. Big data, better health Posted:Tue, 20 May 2014 06:50:43 +0000 In this video, hear from Ginger.io founder/CEO, Anmol Madan, as he explains how the explosion in data and sensors transitions care from episodic data to continuous insight, which results in improved clinical outcomes and cost savings. Company culture and downtown Las Vegas Posted:Tue, 20 May 2014 06:50:43 +0000 In this video, hear from Zappos founder/CEO, Tony Hsieh, as he shares one of his core tenants – a great brand is a story that never stops unfolding – and how that led to their focus on the redevelopment of downtown Las Vegas. Dare to disagree Posted:Tue, 20 May 2014 06:50:43 +0000 Margaret Heffernan is the author of “Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at our Peril.” Previously, she served as the CEO of InfoMation Corporation, ZineZone Corporation and iCAST Corporation. In this talk, learn why its important for leaders and organizations to cultivate a culture where people can dare to disagree based on her extensive research on willful blindness. Designing the future: Making technology more accessible Posted:Tue, 22 Apr 2014 06:50:43 +0000 Design matters. In 1980, when I was working on my first startup, Daisy Systems, I hired my first designer, David Kelly. This was long before his IDEO days and much to the chagrin of people who thought we were wasting precious venture money. The attitude towards design has since changed dramatically; mobile is the ultimate example. Cell phones were around for decades and then the iPhone came along and that changed everything. It also changed the perception of design’s role in technology, not just in terms of aesthetics but also in user experience and design thinking. Cleantech Investment Insight / Exploring decentralization Posted:Wed, 05 Mar 2014 06:50:43 +0000 We’ve believed for a long time that solving the world’s energy and resource problems will require a broad approach – no single technology or central institution can solve the problem alone, and it will require enterprises and consumers to each play an active role. Open Networking Summit / Re-engineering engineering: From a cathedral to a bazaar? Posted:Tue, 04 Mar 2014 06:50:43 +0000 In this video, hear from Vinod Khosla on software-defined networking. Rockefeller University Insight Lecture Series / 2030: 20-percent doctor included? Posted:Wed, 12 Feb 2014 06:50:43 +0000 "Silicon Valley is not a place but a state of mind." – Vinod Khosla In this talk, Vinod will speak about the ways in which he's seeking to apply Silicon Valley principles and approaches to transform, even foster a revolution in, healthcare. We'll hear Vinod argue that much of what physicians do can be done better by well-designed sensors, passive and active data collectors and analytics without taking away the human element of care. Open letter to 60 Minutes and CBS Posted:Tue, 14 Jan 2014 06:50:43 +0000 On January 5, 2014, CBS’ 60 Minutes aired a segment titled, “The Cleantech Crash” that grossly misrepresented the state of the sustainable energy industry. At Khosla Ventures, we are focused on finding real solutions for energy independence, rather than just pontificating. TiE / New trends and opportunities for entrepreneurs Posted:Tue, 10 Dec 2013 06:50:43 +0000 In this video, Vinod Khosla discusses new trends and opportunities and shares his advice for entrepreneurs to build disruptive and scalable businesses. Outlook Business / Make a great company and the money takes care of itself Posted:Sat, 07 Dec 2013 06:50:43 +0000 How has the Valley changed since you came here? The biggest change is that the culture of experimentation has become very accepted. In fact, if someone has been at a big company such as Hewlett-Packard or Cisco for very long, we consider that a negative. Nobody wants to hire somebody who has worked with big companies. Here, it’s all about trying new things. Failure has become a badge of honor. Failure as a tool Posted:Tue, 21 May 2013 06:50:43 +0000 "Google's greatest strength may be the luxury of failure" – WSJ. In this talk, listen to Vinod talk about how to use failure as a tool and why it may be the single most important tool we have. Transforming cultures Posted:Tue, 21 May 2013 06:50:43 +0000 In this video, hear from Debra Chrapaty, CEO of Nirvanix and Amit Soman, COO of EcoMotors as they discuss how the culture of a company contributes to its success. The answers to all your questions (in under 20 minutes) Posted:Mon, 20 May 2013 06:50:43 +0000 In this video, hear from David Sacks, the founder and CEO of Yammer, as he answers questions in under 20 minutes including on everything from startup success to distribution and sales. New solutions to age old problems Posted:Mon, 20 May 2013 06:50:43 +0000 In this video, hear from Jay Kimmelman, the co-founder and CEO of Bridge International Academies as he discusses how to disrupt the status quo in education. Survival to success: If/then scenario planning Posted:Mon, 20 May 2013 06:50:43 +0000 In this panel moderated by KV investment partner, Andrew Chung, hear from Jennifer Holmgren, CEO of LanzaTech, Chet Ferris, president and CEO of Stion and Don Runkle from EcoMotors as they discuss if/then scenario planning and how a startup can manage its spend to achieve success. The creative destruction of medicine Posted:Mon, 20 May 2013 06:50:43 +0000 In this video, hear Eric Topol, MD, chief academic officer of Scripps Health, talk about the creative destruction of medicine. Fireside chat with Aaron Levie, founder and CEO of Box Posted:Mon, 20 May 2013 06:50:43 +0000 Fireside chat with Aaron Levie, founder/CEO of Box and Keith Rabois, investment partner at Khosla Ventures. The story of Veritas Posted:Mon, 20 May 2013 06:50:43 +0000 In this video, hear from entrepreneur, Mark Leslie, as he discusses some of the things he learned about leadership and being a CEO as he guided Veritas from a startup to a Fortune 1000 company over a period of 11 years. Startup wisdom: What I wish I knew Posted:Mon, 20 May 2013 06:50:43 +0000 In this video, hear from author, entrepreneur and professor at Stanford University, Steve Blank, as he talks about heuristics and lessons learned from his 21 years of experience at eight startups. LightFair / The device that used to be a lamp! Posted:Wed, 01 May 2013 06:50:43 +0000 In this video, hear from Vinod Khosla as he compares LED lighting technology to the invention and adoption of smartphone technology and gives a look into the future with Soraa's GaN on Gan LED technology. Carnegie Mellon Innovators Forum / Innovation and entrepreneurship Posted:Thu, 25 Apr 2013 06:50:43 +0000 In this video, hear from Vinod Khosla in a moderated discussion with Carnegie Mellon University provost, Mark Kamlet. DEMO / Riding industry shifts Posted:Tue, 23 Apr 2013 06:50:43 +0000 In this talk, Vinod Khosla discusses how to identify and profit from industry shifts instead of getting left behind. The Sacramento Bee / Investment needed in new low-carbon fuel Posted:Sun, 17 Mar 2013 06:50:43 +0000 Oil companies would have you believe that the goals of the fuel standard are either impossible or obscenely expensive. Since the LCFS was first passed in 2008, the oil industry has spent millions of dollars trying to convince legislators and the public that low-carbon alternatives don't exist or that they can't be produced in large enough volumes to meaningfully reduce demand for traditional fuels or that corn ethanol is the only biofuel technology around. This is one of the biggest myths perpetrated by oil companies. TechCrunch / Venture assistance: A philosophical view of what boards should and should not do Posted:Tue, 26 Feb 2013 06:50:43 +0000 Most VCs pitch their venture firms as value added to a company’s entrepreneurial founders. Personally, I think leading VC firms do a pretty good job of being supportive of their companies, and most entrepreneurs funded by good funds like their investors. But, on the question of “value added,” most venture capitalists, even among the leading firms, are pretty passive and ineffective when it comes to assisting companies. The Leonardo / Thoughts on Twitter, entrepreneurship and much more Posted:Mon, 07 Jan 2013 06:50:43 +0000 In this video interview, hear from Vinod Khosla as he discusses Twitter, entrepreneurship and many other topics. Forbes / Technology will replace 80-percent of what doctors do Posted:Tue, 04 Dec 2012 06:50:43 +0000 Data-driven healthcare won't replace physicians entirely, but it will help those receptive to technology perform their jobs better. Healthcare today is often really the "practice of medicine" rather than the "science of medicine." Forbes / The big green opportunity: Transforming clean tech into &#8220;main tech&#8221; Posted:Tue, 27 Nov 2012 06:50:43 +0000 Clean tech as we see it continues to be a large opportunity – one that we believe will create significant impact and positive returns – despite what the pundits are saying. Clean tech as we see it continues to be a large opportunity – one that we believe will create significant impact and positive returns – despite what the pundits are saying. TEDxSF / Investing to expand global health Posted:Sat, 17 Nov 2012 06:50:43 +0000 In this video, Vinod Khosla discusses what healthcare might look like in 2025. TechCrunch / Signs it might be time to consider hiring a CEO Posted:Sun, 11 Nov 2012 06:50:43 +0000 As a founder, there sometimes comes a point in your company’s growth trajectory when you need to hire a CEO or president from the outside to get to the next level. This can be an incredibly difficult decision to make, but it’s better for you to make the decision yourself than to be told by your board that they’re hiring one whether you like it or not. TechCrunch / If, when and how to avoid hiring A CEO Posted:Sat, 10 Nov 2012 06:50:43 +0000 Though debated among some venture investors, in my view, it is always better for a founder to grow into being a CEO. When there’s a choice, the founder’s vision, culture, and approach are usually more important than “good management” alone. While I’ll offer some insights for investors, this piece is primarily addressed to the founders themselves. I’ll start with some suggestions for buying time to learn and grow into the CEO role. Gene pool engineering for entrepreneurs: Why first hires are important (1/11) Posted:Mon, 01 Oct 2012 06:50:43 +0000 A strong team is the most important element of a company’s ability to achieve success. The first few hires help the founders create the environment they will all work in and help drive the product development process. It is also the team that drives (and interviews) all future hires and their ideas and biases get incorporated in the team. There is always talk of startup culture, but it is the founders and their first round of hires that define that culture. Gene pool engineering for entrepreneurs: Background on traditional (functional) recruiting (2/11) Posted:Mon, 01 Oct 2012 06:50:43 +0000 Most of the time, startups need a culture of experimentation and an attitude of “change the industry rules, not play by them” is a key requirement . Often in larger, more stable enterprises, repeating yesterday’s strategy is 90-percent of the job. In startups, there was no yesterday and one can’t use “industry rules” to cause disruption. Gene pool engineering for entrepreneurs: Functional hiring (3/11) Posted:Mon, 01 Oct 2012 06:50:43 +0000 Entities structured with the traditional hierarchy often hire reactively, such as when an opening occurs due to attrition or poor employee performance. Consequently, firms facing market environments where change, innovation and rapid evolution take place can rush into a process that ends with a candidate to “fill the job.” Gene pool engineering for entrepreneurs: Engineering the gene pool (4/11) Posted:Mon, 01 Oct 2012 06:50:43 +0000 The goal of gene pool engineering is first to create a culture where multiple people engage in problem solving, and team members share best practices from previous organizations and a diverse set of backgrounds for the specific problems being addressed. Gene pool engineering for entrepreneurs: Benefits of gene pool engineering (5/11) Posted:Mon, 01 Oct 2012 06:50:43 +0000 The goal of startups is to create products that disrupt an established industry with its own rules and product lines. To ensure this, the founders require diversity in their team. Not diversity in the generic sense, but diversity in specific dimensions: age, professional record, academic background, and mindset. This risk-tuned diversity manifests in the product through the reduction of time, energy and resources to achieve the first key iterations. Gene pool engineering for entrepreneurs: Step #1: Identify the five largest risks (6/11) Posted:Mon, 01 Oct 2012 06:50:43 +0000 Systematically identify risky components and their multiple failure modes. Risks fall into the category of technical risk, where the failure of interdependent modules could result in the collapse of the product as a whole or general business risk or marketing risk, which encompasses everything else that is required to take the product to market. Gene pool engineering for entrepreneurs: Step #2: Define the skill-set necessary to address those risks (7/11) Posted:Mon, 01 Oct 2012 06:50:43 +0000 To address the key risks within the company, the main tool available to a CEO or manager is the hiring of experts who have successfully solved similar problems in the past. The more varied the company background of the engineers, the more failures and solutions at disruption they will have seen. Whereas, the more inexperienced team members lack the breadth of knowledge provided by the veterans, they can offer a corresponding lack of industry biases and a fresh perspective on a problem. Gene pool engineering for entrepreneurs: Step #3: For each risk, locate the centers of excellence (8/11) Posted:Mon, 01 Oct 2012 06:50:43 +0000 The third step of gene pool engineering involves identifying the organizations across academia, the corporate world, and any other top institutions that make use of the relevant skill sets for a particular risk. Gene pool engineering for entrepreneurs: Step #4: List the top three or more experts at each center of excellence with relevant skill sets and recruit them (9/11) Posted:Mon, 01 Oct 2012 06:50:43 +0000 Recruiters will often place a cursory “feeler” out to one or two individuals within an organization before checking the box and moving on to another firm. This customary practice reveals two flaws that our gene pool engineering approach addresses. Gene pool engineering for entrepreneurs: Step #5: Pursuing and recruiting candidates within that “gene pool” for recruiting (10/11) Posted:Mon, 01 Oct 2012 06:50:43 +0000 By addressing a company’s largest risk factors with proven problem solvers and creating a team that welcomes the exchange of ideas and best practices and experience from different areas, a team lead is engineering an organization that has the highest probability of mitigating risk and taking advantage of upside opportunities in the face of change, innovation, risk and lack of clarity into the future. Gene pool engineering for entrepreneurs: Conclusion (11/11) Posted:Mon, 01 Oct 2012 06:50:43 +0000 Make the platitude of “hire great people” a more actionable and quantifiable process. Great ideas suffering from poor execution can kill companies, while less spectacular ideas coupled with phenomenal teams can quickly swing a company from troubled to a success. TechCrunch Disrupt / Vinod Khosla and Michael Arrington Q&#038;A Posted:Fri, 21 Sep 2012 06:50:43 +0000 In this video, Michael Arrington and Vinod Khosla discuss everything from being labeled "legendary" to high-tech beef companies. TechCrunch / Do you need to be a jerk to be a successful entrepreneur? Posted:Sun, 09 Sep 2012 06:50:43 +0000 I recently read Ben Austen’s WIRED article about Steve Jobs, which prompted me to put together my thoughts about the tradeoffs of being a successful entrepreneur. Austen’s article draws a caricature of Jobs and puts forth a series of false choices. After reading it, you might be convinced that you can either be a jerk and successful or decent and mediocre. Guide for effectively managing terminations Posted:Wed, 01 Aug 2012 06:50:43 +0000 Sometimes, it just doesn't work out. This paper guides you through the difficulty around managing terminations. The New York Times / Maintain the Silicon Valley vision Posted:Fri, 13 Jul 2012 06:50:43 +0000 Some people seem to think that getting acquired should be the highest aspiration for an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. I disagree vehemently. In fact, I think that mindset does a disservice to the entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and around the world. This is exactly the wrong way to think about building a start-up not only because it develops the wrong company culture, but on a large scale it can poison the unique and innovative ecosystem that has developed in Silicon Valley over the past 40 years. Launch Silicon Valley / Interview with Vinod Khosla and Forbes&#8217; Eric Savitz Posted:Fri, 08 Jun 2012 06:50:43 +0000 In this video, Forbes' Eric Savitz interviews Vinod Khosla. Future babble: Why expert predictions fail Posted:Tue, 22 May 2012 06:50:43 +0000 In this video, hear from author and expert on experts, Dan Gardner. Lesson from screwing up Posted:Tue, 22 May 2012 06:50:43 +0000 In this video, hear from Vinod Khosla, as he discusses all the things he's learned from years of screwing up. Leadership and the virtuous cycle: How I made 44 quarters in a row Posted:Tue, 22 May 2012 06:50:43 +0000 In this video, hear from entrepreneur, Mark Leslie, as he discusses the virtuous cycle that can be created within a business that drives success (and revenue). Your brain on games Posted:Mon, 21 May 2012 06:50:43 +0000 In this video, hear from game designer and author, Jane McGonigal, as she discusses everything from the current state of gaming to whether or not gamers have super powers. Customer management is like dating Posted:Mon, 21 May 2012 06:50:43 +0000 In this video, hear from general partner of Kleiner Perkins, Bing Gordon, as he uses the metaphor of dating to discuss customer management from prospecting to long-term retention. Learn about the algorithm for dating a cat to tactics used on eHarmony and OKCupid. The lean startup Posted:Mon, 21 May 2012 06:50:43 +0000 In this video, hear from entrepreneur and author, Eric Ries, as he discusses lean startup principles. Also, find out why his favorite business movie is Ghost Busters. The feeling of knowing Posted:Mon, 21 May 2012 06:50:43 +0000 In this video, hear from author and neuroscientist, Robert Burton, as he discusses why people are overconfident and how we should think about decision making. Convergent, fast-moving technologies and the future of health and medicine Posted:Mon, 21 May 2012 06:50:43 +0000 In this video, hear from Daniel Kraft, MD, the executive director of FutureMed, as he talks about where technology will take the future of health and medicine. Fireside chat with Bill Gates Posted:Mon, 21 May 2012 06:50:43 +0000 In this fireside chat, hear from Vinod Khosla and Bill Gates as they discuss a variety of topics from food to toilets. TechCrunch / The “unhyped” new areas in Internet and mobile Posted:Sun, 19 Feb 2012 06:50:43 +0000 We are in a whole new world of platforms, a post-PC era, which I’d more aptly describe as the always/everywhere era, finally, and that means a whole new set of opportunities. Add to it the fact that because of a variety of factors too numerous to cover here, the cost of experimentation has gone down dramatically (one can start a web startup or write an Android app with no more than a student credit card!) and raw computing power is taken for granted. TechCrunch / Will we need teachers or algorithms? Posted:Sun, 15 Jan 2012 06:50:43 +0000 We have focused so much of our education system on children attending primary school, then middle school, then high school, all with the objective of attending university. This is a progression that still remains unchanged and largely unchallenged. TechCrunch / Do we need doctors or algorithms? Posted:Tue, 10 Jan 2012 06:50:43 +0000 Let’s start with healthcare (or sickcare, as many knowledgeable people call it). Think about what happens when you visit a doctor. You have to physically go to the hospital or some office, where you wait (with no real predictability for how long), and then the nurse probably takes you in and checks your vitals. Only after all this does the doctor show up and, after some friendly banter, asks you to describe your own symptoms. TechCrunch / The surprising path of artificial intelligence Posted:Mon, 09 Jan 2012 06:50:43 +0000 A.I. touches our lives in the form of chess computers that are better than most humans, computers beating the best humans at Jeopardy, intelligent ad targeting, Microsoft Kinect recognizing human motion and even amazingly, Google’s self-driving car that drove itself from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Guide for performance management Posted:Sun, 01 Jan 2012 06:50:43 +0000 Most managers complain about having to do performance reviews - so why do them? Performance reviews are not required by law. However, they are important tools to ensure you and your employees are on track re: performance expectations. Rocketspace / Insights for entrepreneurs Posted:Sun, 01 Jan 2012 06:50:43 +0000 In this video, hear from Vinod Khosla as he talks about entrepreneurship. Harker Research Symposium / Failing to succeed Posted:Sun, 01 Jan 2012 06:50:43 +0000 In this video, hear from Vinod Khosla as he discusses why failure leads to success. The enterprise sales learning curve Posted:Tue, 20 Dec 2011 06:50:43 +0000 “It always takes longer and costs more,” laments Don Valentine of Sequoia Capital, one of the most successful and respected venture capitalists today. This is consistent with our own extensive involvement in entrepreneurial companies over the past twenty-five years where it is the truly rare company that meets or exceeds its initial plans. The large majority miss the timing of their revenue ramp and require more capital than originally planned to achieve cash flow breakeven operations. When established companies release their first product in a new category (for them), they often face the same challenges. Where will biofuels and biomass feedstocks come from? Posted:Tue, 06 Dec 2011 06:50:43 +0000 When it comes to biofuels we have a few choices and options – we can do it poorly, with short- run approaches with no potential to scale, poor trajectory, and adverse environmental impact, or we can do it right – with sustainable, long-term solutions that can meet our biofuel needs and our environmental needs. We do need strong regulation to ensure land use abuses do not happen. The innovator’s ecosystem Posted:Thu, 01 Dec 2011 06:50:43 +0000 A tweet I saw recently showcases the mindset of the innovators that will lead this charge for change: "Cynics never do the impossible, achieve the improbable, take on the inadvisable. Hope is only path to extraordinary success." Tweeting is an innovation few could have seen or defined: who would have thought a few years ago that millions of people would follow messages in 140 characters? NASSCOM / Inventing the future Posted:Wed, 09 Nov 2011 06:50:43 +0000 In this keynote at NASSCOM, hear from Vinod Khosla as he discusses the trends that will shape the technology industry in the next decade and what it means to India. FailCon / Fireside chat with Vinod Khosla Posted:Thu, 03 Nov 2011 06:50:43 +0000 In this video, Vinod Khosla discusses failure as a tool. Forbes / Black swan thesis of energy transformation Posted:Wed, 21 Sep 2011 06:50:43 +0000 In this video, Forbes' journalist, Kym McNicholas, talks with Vinod Khosla as he discusses ignoring experts, failure and the black swan thesis of energy transformation, among many other topics. The art, science, and labor of recruiting: Appendix Posted:Tue, 20 Sep 2011 06:50:43 +0000 List of key questions to ask during an interview The art, science, and labor of recruiting: &#8220;Finally&#8221; Posted:Tue, 20 Sep 2011 06:50:43 +0000 A venture can only progress so far on the strength of ideas alone. The art, science, and labor of recruiting: Integrating into the team Posted:Tue, 20 Sep 2011 06:50:43 +0000 Once the offer is accepted it is critical that you begin to bring the person into the team. This will make dealing with counter-offers much easier and gets them excited and committed to your opportunity. The art, science, and labor of recruiting: Making the decision and following up Posted:Tue, 20 Sep 2011 06:50:44 +0000 The following must be addressed internally to ensure a smooth(er) recruiting process The art, science, and labor of recruiting: Reference checking Posted:Tue, 20 Sep 2011 06:50:44 +0000 Aim to conduct references with those names provided by the candidate, in addition to unsolicited references. It is often easy to ask a given reference “who would have a different or less positive view of the candidate?” or “who did not get along with/agree with them?” The art, science, and labor of recruiting: Other sources of information Posted:Tue, 20 Sep 2011 06:50:44 +0000 Whenever possible, get copies of performance reviews from previous jobs. Ask candidates to submit these late in the process to make sure answers are not tuned to what is already in the reviews. The art, science, and labor of recruiting: Assessing a potential candidate Posted:Tue, 20 Sep 2011 06:50:44 +0000 Assessing a potential candidate There are several competencies you will want to consider in key employees: content / knowledge, cultural fit, hiring competencies, motivation, work-style, leadership, values and past performance. (i) Assessing Domain Knowledge Test the candidate’s general industry knowledge and their breadth of industry knowledge. It’s important to find those candidates with their […] The art, science, and labor of recruiting: Interviewing Posted:Tue, 20 Sep 2011 06:50:44 +0000 Everyone knows the “right” answers to give. How do you decide if what you’re hearing is the truth, and, more importantly, the whole truth? If a candidate was involved in a success (or a failure), what was their real contribution to it? Were they just lucky (or unlucky) to be there? The art, science, and labor of recruiting: Sourcing candidates Posted:Tue, 20 Sep 2011 06:50:44 +0000 Finding great candidates is challenging: it takes dedication, innovative-thinking and focus. Use all your avenues to source candidates. The art, science, and labor of recruiting: Defining the role Posted:Tue, 20 Sep 2011 06:50:44 +0000 No candidate is perfect, so clarity about the necessary requirements and more importantly the tradeoffs is vital. The art, science, and labor of recruiting: Getting started Posted:Tue, 20 Sep 2011 06:50:44 +0000 Congratulations, you are now an executive at a venture-backed company! You survived the presentations, the term sheet shuffle and the due-diligence. Everyone is calling you the Founder (which is true), yet you are actually a technologist, an engineer or just a “great ideas person” with an instinct for the market. But now you have to recruit a team; perhaps, for example, a VP Marketing (maybe you have never been in a room with a real VP Marketing and don't really know what one does or how to assess his or her capabilities!) Worse still, you might be recruiting a CEO but have never really understood what a CEO does or how to appraise one. How do you evaluate a candidate, especially for a management role that you do not have great familiarity with? Black swan thesis of energy transformation Posted:Sun, 28 Aug 2011 06:50:44 +0000 The looming twin challenges of climate change and energy production are too big to be tackled by known solutions and time-­‐honored traditions. Incremental remedies are fine for incremental problems, but they are insufficient for monumental, potentially life-­‐altering threats, which need to be approached with a disruptive mindset. There are 5 billion people coveting the energy-­‐rich lifestyles currently enjoyed by 500 million people, mostly in the developed world. Accelerating climate change or climate progress? Posted:Wed, 24 Aug 2011 06:50:44 +0000 Climate change is a substantial risk, and the risk of global inaction is real. In the long-­‐term, for rapidly developing nations, carbon intensity targets are more feasible than absolute carbon caps. In the near-­‐term, technology-­‐driven carbon reduction capacity building is more important than absolute carbon reductions. Invent the future you want Posted:Sun, 15 May 2011 06:50:44 +0000 In this talk at the MIT 100k Entrepreneurship Grand Finale, Vinod Khosla discusses entrepreneurship and how you can invent the future you want. TiECON / Investing in the future Posted:Fri, 13 May 2011 06:50:44 +0000 In this talk at TiECON, Vinod Khosla discusses energy transformation. Team building Posted:Tue, 10 May 2011 06:50:44 +0000 In this video, hear from author, John Hamm, as he discusses what makes a great leader, hiring and developing healthy organizations. Power presentations Posted:Tue, 10 May 2011 06:50:44 +0000 "What is said is less important than what is heard." In this video, hear from Jerry Weissman, founder of Power Presentations, as he discusses the best way to get a message across. Company building &#8220;dozen&#8221; Posted:Tue, 10 May 2011 06:50:44 +0000 In this video, hear from Vinod Khosla as he provides his perspective on being around entrepreneurial ventures from his perspective as both a founder and investor. Founder perspectives: The importance of data, details and editorial Posted:Tue, 10 May 2011 06:50:44 +0000 In this video, hear from Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and co-founder and CEO of Square, as he discusses what he's learned from building both companies (not to mention the story of how his parents met!). Innovation, iteration and risk management Posted:Tue, 10 May 2011 06:50:44 +0000 In this video, hear from Will Roach, CEO of Calera, Steve Crane, founder and CEO of LightSail Energy and Jagdeep Singh, CEO of Quantumscape as they discuss innovation, iteration and risk management Cybersecurity: Managing complex risk in a dynamic environment Posted:Tue, 10 May 2011 06:50:44 +0000 In this video, hear from Matt Devost, the CEO of FusionX, as he discusses the fundamental risks associated with cybersecurity. Evolving a company Posted:Mon, 09 May 2011 06:50:44 +0000 In this video, hear from Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, as he discusses the evolution of a company. The big click problem Posted:Mon, 09 May 2011 06:50:44 +0000 In this video, hear from Marissa Mayer as she discusses the big click problem and how it relates to location and local. Catalyzing energy breakthroughs Posted:Mon, 09 May 2011 06:50:44 +0000 In this video, hear from Arun Majumdar, director of ARPA-E, about what kinds of innovation ARPA-E has seen and what is missing. The innovation ecosystem Posted:Mon, 09 May 2011 06:50:44 +0000 In this video, hear from John Hennessy, the President of Stanford University, as he discusses the innovation ecosystem. People, leadership and recruiting Posted:Mon, 09 May 2011 06:50:44 +0000 In this video, hear from Jed York, the CEO of 49ers, as he discusses people, leadership and recruiting. Culture of experimentation Posted:Mon, 09 May 2011 06:50:44 +0000 In this video, hear from Scott Cook, founder and chairman of the executive committee at Intuit, as he discusses surprises and experiments in business. Best practices: Building a board book Posted:Mon, 09 May 2011 06:50:44 +0000 In this video, hear from KV investment partner, Shirish Sathaye, about how to extract the most value out of a board and how to empower them with the necessary information about objectives, goals and challenges to engage them in a strategic discussion at a pretty deep level of detail. China opportunities Posted:Mon, 09 May 2011 06:50:44 +0000 In this video, learn more about China with their growing middle class, status as the number one exporter, not to mention that the country are expected to invest from $600-700 billion in sustainable energy in the next few years. Design thinking Posted:Mon, 09 May 2011 06:50:44 +0000 In this video, hear from Tim Brown, the CEO and President of IDEO, as he discusses how one might apply design thinking more broadly to a business, strategy and organization. greentechmedia / What matters in biofuels and where are we? Posted:Wed, 19 Jan 2011 06:50:44 +0000 Given the likely continued dominance of the internal combustion engine, cellulosic and sugar-derived fuels offer one of the lowest risk advances to quickly and affordably achieve low-carbon transportation. Furthermore, substituting higher value bio-chemicals for petro-chemicals, will promote enhanced sustainability across a wealth of industries and offer a critical step along the path to weaning the world off of oil. There also are measurable economic and national security benefits to drastically reducing the reliance on global oil. Scientific American / In search of the radical solution Posted:Sat, 01 Jan 2011 06:50:44 +0000 In a one-on-one dialogue, conducted before an audience of energy entrepreneurs and financiers at the recent GoingGreen conference in San Francisco, Scientific American’s Mark Fischetti asked Khosla to assess with his venture capitalist’s eye, which new energy innovations are most likely to succeed and why. Edited excerpts of the conversation can be found here, in addition to the full podcast and transcription. Foreign Policy / Long shots Posted:Fri, 10 Dec 2010 06:50:44 +0000 Whether or not the United Nations-brokered talks on a global carbon-reduction agreement currently limping toward their conclusion in Cancun go anywhere, climate change isn’t waiting. Scientific assessments, such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s regular reports, have noted more significant climate change impacts than previously expected, and amplified their warnings of the changes to come. greentechmedia / Corn ethanol: Time to move on Posted:Fri, 03 Dec 2010 06:50:44 +0000 We are approaching the expiration of tax subsidies for corn ethanol. Established in 2004, the initial purpose of the subsidy was to help nurture a nascent biofuels industry, help reduce America’s oil dependence, and serve as a stepping stone to cellulosic biofuels. However, the time has now come for us to stop subsidizing corn ethanol and let it compete as a fuel on its own economic and environmental merits. GreenBeat / &#8220;Smart grid&#8221; or &#8220;smart hype&#8221;? Posted:Mon, 01 Nov 2010 06:50:44 +0000 In this deck, get Vinod Khosla's perspective on the grid. Qualcomm CEO Summit / Innovation and innovators Posted:Mon, 01 Nov 2010 06:50:44 +0000 In this deck, get Vinod Khosla’s perspective on experts and how they influence (or don’t influence, as the case may be) innovation. Caltech Resnick Institute / Extrapolating the past vs. inventing the future Posted:Tue, 26 Oct 2010 06:50:44 +0000 In this video, hear from Vinod Khosla as he discusses the future. The Times of India / Lending A Helping Hand Posted:Sat, 18 Sep 2010 06:50:44 +0000 Critics have suggested that some profit-minded microfinance institutions (MFIs) have failed to lower interest rates and are exploiting the poor. Others think MFIs should be non-profits or "sustainable non-profit maximising" entities focussed solely on social outcomes. Reinventing transportation: Knowing less and failing more Posted:Wed, 15 Sep 2010 06:50:44 +0000 In this slide deck from Vinod Khosla's recent talk at NAIPC, get his take on the future of transportation. greentechmedia / Building carbon-reduction capacity Posted:Fri, 16 Jul 2010 06:50:44 +0000 Let's first think through the effects of a utility-only carbon cap like the one currently being discussed in Washington, D.C. In order to comply, utilities will pursue small incremental changes in efficiency and emissions. For example, a utility can achieve virtually all of the carbon reduction goals slated for 2020 by closing their oldest coal plants, upgrading a few burners to more efficient ones, repowering some coal plants with natural gas, and increasing the capacity factor of existing or new natural gas plants. The Washington Post / A simpler path to cutting carbon emissions Posted:Fri, 02 Jul 2010 06:50:44 +0000 If our goal is carbon reduction, a cap-and-trade or carbon-pricing bill, with its likely compromises, would be worse right now than no regulation. Pricing carbon below $40 per ton will not change how industry does business or drive adoption of new technologies. With legislation unlikely to support such prices, uncertainty is better than a low price that disincentivizes the development of technologies that have radically less carbon. greentechmedia / What really matters in thin film solar startups? Posted:Wed, 16 Jun 2010 06:50:44 +0000 Thin film modules have always promised to disrupt the PV industry landscape because they utilize significantly less material and vastly simpler processing than traditional crystalline silicon panels. Thin films have pushed new cost and scalability frontiers. Unfortunately, many have relatively low efficiencies and yields. Most current thin-film startup efforts do not appear differentiated enough to justify the hundreds of millions invested in them. Risk management Posted:Tue, 25 May 2010 06:50:44 +0000 In this video, hear from Vinod Khosla as he discusses risk management. CEOs as chief risk mitigation officers Posted:Tue, 25 May 2010 06:50:44 +0000 In this video, hear from KR Sridar, founder and CEO of Bloom Energy, as he discusses risk management. From one entrepreneur to another Posted:Tue, 25 May 2010 06:50:44 +0000 In this video, hear from Vinod Khosla as he provides an anecdotal retrospective of his work. Speaking with authenticity and charisma Posted:Tue, 25 May 2010 06:50:44 +0000 In this video, hear from Nick Morgan, president of Public Words, as he discusses how to find clarity in ideas and deliver them with panache. Solum: Making agriculture easier and more productive Posted:Tue, 25 May 2010 06:50:44 +0000 In this video, hear from Nick Koshnick, co-founder and CEO of Solum, as he explains soil testing and why it's important. People, leadership and startups Posted:Tue, 25 May 2010 06:50:44 +0000 In this video, hear from Bill Campbell, a board director of Intuit and Apple. Entrepreneur stories Posted:Tue, 25 May 2010 06:50:44 +0000 In this video, hear from Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Square, and Jagdeep Signh, CEO of QuantumScape as they tell stories of entrepreneurship. Toughing it out to glory Posted:Tue, 25 May 2010 06:50:44 +0000 In this video, hear from Babu Mandava, the CEO of Beceem Communications -- a 4G semiconductor company that builds mobile broadband chips (65% market share in 2009), as he discusses the challenges of building a company. Gene pool engineering, cycle times and risk Posted:Tue, 25 May 2010 06:50:44 +0000 In this video, hear Vinod Khosla as he discusses gene pool engineering, cycle times and risk. Out of the box: Nuclear power Posted:Tue, 25 May 2010 06:50:44 +0000 In this video, hear from John Gilleland, CEO of TerraPower, as he discusses why nuclear energy is essential and how it will raise the quality of living around the world. Hoover Institute / Energy transformation Posted:Sat, 01 May 2010 06:50:44 +0000 In this deck, get Vinod Khosla's take on entrepreneurship and how it can transform sustainable energy. The risk matrix Posted:Mon, 01 Mar 2010 06:50:44 +0000 In this deck, get the KV perspective on how we assess risk. Project Rifle: A quantified decision making framework Posted:Mon, 01 Mar 2010 06:50:44 +0000 In this deck, get Vinod's take on RIFLE strategy, a quantified decision making framework. Green@Google / Renewable energy, maintech not cleantech Posted:Thu, 21 May 2009 06:50:44 +0000 In this video and the accompanying deck, Vinod Khosla discusses sustainable energy. Harvard Business Review / Reasons for long-term optimism about technology and the economy Posted:Mon, 01 Dec 2008 06:50:44 +0000 conomists don’t appreciate the extent to which innovation can disrupt assumptions. A new technology can render forecasts obsolete. We are investing in many such technologies, and some of them will surely succeed. I live by an idea from the computer pioneer Alan Kay, who said, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” Stanford University / The black swans of energy invention Posted:Wed, 22 Oct 2008 06:50:44 +0000 In this podcast with the Stanford Entrepreneurship Corner, hear from Vinod Khosla as he shatters conventional wisdom on energy reduction and instead encourages entrepreneurs to solve environmental problems via cost-effective, innovative and scalable engineering. Algae conference / What will it take? Posted:Wed, 01 Oct 2008 06:50:44 +0000 In this deck, get Vinod Khosla's perspective on sustainable energy. Concentrating solar power (CSP) and concentrating photovoltaic (CPV): Opportunities and issues Posted:Wed, 01 Oct 2008 06:50:44 +0000 In this deck, get Vinod Khosla's perspective on sustainable energy sources. Renewable Energy: An investment perspective Posted:Wed, 01 Oct 2008 06:50:44 +0000 In this deck, Vinod Khosla shares his perspective on renewable energy. Biofuels: A case study Posted:Mon, 01 Sep 2008 06:50:44 +0000 In this deck, get Vinod Khosla's perspective on biofuels. Harvard Business School / Renewable energy: An investment perspective Posted:Mon, 01 Sep 2008 06:50:44 +0000 In this talk at Harvard Business School, Vinod Khosla discusses emerging opportunities in sustainable energy. Breaking the climate deadlock: Scalable electric power from solar energy Posted:Tue, 01 Jan 2008 06:50:44 +0000 ‘Breaking the Climate Deadlock’ is an initiative of former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and independent not-for-profit organisation, The Climate Group. Its objective is to build decisive political support for a post-2012 international climate change agreement in the lead up to the 2009 UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. Policy and perspective: The scoping plan for AB 32, and how to do it right Posted:Tue, 01 Jan 2008 06:50:44 +0000 Science can be precise but inaccurate, resulting in wonderfully precise yet completely misguided results from a policy perspective. Similarly, econometrics modeling can paint a picture with a limited, narrow range of possibilities (aka “low standard deviation”) with a significant mistake around the mean value (“high standard error”). Pragmentalists vs. environmentalists (part I): Prius &#8211; green or greenwash? Posted:Tue, 01 Jan 2008 06:50:44 +0000 What is the actual impact of hybrids? In this paper, we are will analyze hybrids, ranging from the conventional Toyota Prius to fashionable plug-in hybrids. Our focus here is on highlighting the actual carbon emission reduction of hybrids (particularly vis-à-vis biofuels), and discussing the best possible solutions to reduce these emissions at a reasonable cost both in the near and long-term. The device that used to be your phone Posted:Tue, 01 Jan 2008 06:50:44 +0000 In this deck, Vinod Khosla shares his views on the future of mobile. Green investing strategies Posted:Mon, 01 Jan 2007 06:50:44 +0000 At Khosla Ventures, we offer venture assistance, strategic advice and capital to entrepreneurs. In particular, the firm helps entrepreneurs and supports breakthrough scientific work in clean technology areas such as bio-refineries , bioplastics, water, materials, solar, geothermal, battery, engines and many other environmental areas. From a green perspective, there are four major areas of investments that we focus on: (1) oil use reduction (2) cleaning up coal based power generation (3) higher efficiency devices and equipment, and (4) new materials to replace petroleum based plastics, carbon intensive building materials, and clean water. The architecture of audacity Posted:Mon, 01 Jan 2007 06:50:44 +0000 In 1997, a dozen heads of state joined almost 3,000 participants from 137 countries in Washington, D.C. for the world’s first Microcredit Summit. During the summit, all agreed on an audacious objective: to reach 100 million of the world’s poorest families, especially the women of those families, with credit for self-employment and other financial and business services by the end of 2005. Wired / My big biofuels bet Posted:Sun, 01 Oct 2006 06:50:44 +0000 It may surprise you to learn that the most promising solution to our nation’s energy crisis begins in the bowels of a waste trough, under the slotted concrete floor of a giant pen that holds 28,000 Angus, Hereford, and Charolais beef cattle. But for some time now, I’ve been searching for a renewable fuel that could realistically replace the 140 billion gallons of gasoline consumed in the US each year. Think Equity / The green revolution Posted:Mon, 11 Sep 2006 06:50:44 +0000 In this video from Think Equity's annual growth conference, Vinod Khosla discusses alternative sources of energy, such as making ethanol a viable substitute for much of the petroleum now used to fuel cars. Biofuels: Think outside the barrel Posted:Sat, 01 Jul 2006 06:50:44 +0000 In this deck, get Vinod Khosla's take on the future of biofuels. A model for implementing the “bicycle commute economy” Posted:Sat, 01 Apr 2006 06:50:44 +0000 The economic development of India’s 600 million strong rural population presents formidable challenges and also great opportunities. A model called RISC – Rural Infrastructural & Services Commons – is presented that has the potential for achieving the multi-faceted goals of sustainable economic development through more efficient utilization of available resources by focusing them into a minimum viable economic size. The microcredit summit campaign as a social movement Posted:Tue, 14 Mar 2006 06:50:44 +0000 The Microcredit Summit Campaign (‘the Campaign’) has played a lead role in advocating for microfinance as one of the most important strategies to reduce poverty. Campaign data indicate that while the initial ‘100 million’ goal of the Campaign was a mammoth vision, participating microfinance institutions (MFIs) have converted much of its original audacity into quantifiable progress—making it one of the rare instances in history that the international community, led by civil society, set a collective, quantifiable, time-bound goal with global implications and impact and has come close to achieving it on time. How to write a good product requirements document (PRD) Posted:Sat, 01 Jan 2005 06:50:44 +0000 The PRD describes the product your company will build. It drives the efforts of the entire product team and the company’s sales, marketing and customer support efforts. It’s hard to come up with a more important, higher leverage piece of work for a company. The top 12 product management mistakes and how to avoid them Posted:Sat, 01 Jan 2005 06:50:44 +0000 Bad products are everywhere. Products that simply aren’t useful, don’t work right, are too difficult to learn, or that take forever to sell. Little wonder, as there are so many things that have to go right in order to create a successful product. There are, however, some pitfalls that occur so frequently and are so damaging that we believe they are at the root of the vast majority of bad products. Behind every great product Posted:Sat, 01 Jan 2005 06:50:44 +0000 Every member of the product team is important. To succeed, a company must design, build, test and market the product effectively. That said, there is one role that is absolutely crucial to producing a good product, yet it is often the most misunderstood and underutilized of all the roles. This is the role of the product manager. In this paper we discuss the role and responsibilities of the good product manager, and then we look at the characteristics of good product managers, where to find them, and how to develop them. Micro finance: Enabling the power of ideas and entrepreneurial energy for the other half Posted:Sat, 01 May 2004 06:50:44 +0000 In this deck, get Vinod Khosla's perspective on micro finance. Real time enterprises: A continuous migration approach Posted:Fri, 01 Mar 2002 06:50:44 +0000 Current market trends, global competition, and technological innovations are driving enterprises to adopt the practices of Real Time Enterprises. Real Time Enterprises are organizations that enable automation of processes spanning different systems, media, and enterprise boundaries. What makes entrepreneurs entrepreneurial? Posted:Fri, 01 Jun 2001 06:50:44 +0000 Professionals who work closely with them and researchers who study them have often speculated about what makes entrepreneurs "entrepreneurial". Of course, entrepreneurs also love to hold forth on this topic. 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