Vinod Khosla was born on January 28, 1955 New Delhi, India, is an Indian-American venture capitalist. He is an influential personality in Silicon Valley. He was one of the co-founders of Sun Microsystems and became first CEO & Chairman of Sun Microsystems and then became a general partner of the venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers in 1986. In 2004 Khosla formed his own firm, Khosla Ventures.
Khosla was born in a Punjabi family. His father was an army personnel and posted at New Delhi, India. He read about the founding of Intel in Electronic Engineering Times at the age of fourteen and this inspired him to pursue technology as a career. Khosla went on to receive degrees from the IIT Delhi, India (Bachelor of Technology in Electrical Engineering ), Carnegie Mellon University (Masters in Biomedical Engineering), and Stanford Graduate School of Business (MBA).
After graduating from Stanford University in 1980, Khosla along with his Stanford fellows Scott McNealy, Andy Bechtolsheim, and a UC Berkeley masters degree holder named Bill Joy founded Sun Microsystems. He became first CEO and Chairman of Sun Microsystems from 1982 to 1984. Khosla left Sun in 1985. He then joined the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in 1986 as a general partner. Khosla is also one of the founders of TiE, The Indus Entrepreneurs, and has guest-edited a special issue of Economic Times (ET), a leading business newspaper in India.
Khosla became a recognized venture capitalist, associated with Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers. While recognized for several venture “hits,” Khosla also played a key role with several of the tech industry’s most spectacular failures, including Asera, Dynabook, and others.
He also invested in an Indian Microfinance NGO, SKS Microfinance, which lends small loans to poor women in rural India.
In 2004 Khosla formed his own venture capital firm, Khosla Ventures. The firm is based in Menlo Park, California and manages approximately $1 billion of investor capital as well as investments funded by Khosla himself.