Quotes from Vinod Khosla

Everybody else is afraid to fail. I do not really care because when I fail, I try something new.

If I collected all the diamonds in the world, I'd have no 'income' but I'd have a lot of 'assets'. Would my company be worth nothing because I have no income? A lot of Net companies are collecting assets. They have to be measured with a new set of metrics.

When I started doing things on my own, I was figuring - remember, it was a very nascent market. And there was a lot that was unknown about the renewable marketplace in 2004, early 2003, when I was planning on it.

I believe a board in a small startup company should never vote on anything.

I do not know what got me interested in technology. What was very clear to me very early on was that I was not interested in religion and that naturally increased my curiosity about science and technology, and I fundamentally believe the two are conflicting.

Hopefully, I can advise entrepreneurs to avoid mistakes. But you can never be sure if you're trying something new and unreasonable.

The bulk of the utility industry today believes that coal and nuclear are the only solutions we have. Nuclear is greener but has the other issues. Coal, they think, can be transformed into the so-called clean coal technologies.

I've probably failed more often than anybody else in Silicon Valley. Those don't matter. I don't remember the failures. You remember the big successes.

Startups allow technologists and scientists to take risks and change plans in a way that would be frowned upon in a big company. Having said that, big companies will play a key role in certain areas and in partnerships with little companies. Each has its strengths.

We like to say at Khosla Ventures, and this is one of the reasons to do what we do, we'll take technical risks that nobody else will.

New industries are created by entrepreneurs who don't necessarily have subject matter expertise when they get started, yet they are still responsible for most of the innovation we see in society.

One of the best things data can enable us to do is to ask questions we didn't know to ask.

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.

Your cellphone has 10 sensors, and your car has 400. But your body has none - that's going to change.

There's a big difference between needs and requirements for grid-based electricity versus those for distributed rural homes or remote locations, or even rooftop solar, where photovoltaics do OK. The more economical a technology is, the faster we'll see adoption.

Imagine the world of mobile based on Nokia and Motorola if Apple had not been restarted by a missionary entrepreneur named Steve Jobs who cared more for his vision than being tactical and financial.

An entrepreneur is someone who dares to dream the dreams and is foolish enough to try to make those dreams come true.

One thing about technology is that there's always a win, place, and show, and everyone else goes under.

The first rule of venture capitalism is hands-on experience. You have to get your hands dirty.

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.

The world is hung up on food-based biofuels. Not only are they the wrong thing, they're the uneconomic thing.

Certain food-based biofuels like biodiesel have always been a bad idea. Others like corn ethanol have served a useful purpose and essentially are obsoleting themselves.

The willingness to fail gives us the freedom to succeed.

Future is not extrapolation of past