Vinod Khosla Quotes

Don't be intimidated by people who seem to be experts. Hear their points of view and get their judgements. But at the end of day, you've got to make a judgement because it's not their life that's going to be affected so much as your future.

As I've said, in 2007, we're free to go and we'll just have to do what's best for the business.

The successful man is the one who finds out what is the matter with his business before his competitors do.

Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it's about deliberately choosing to be different.

The only way anyone's going to succeed is to build the product.

I like being part of a big company's executive team. It's fun to stretch other parts of my brain, considering questions like, 'How should we think of acquisitions?' I get to be privy to things that would never come up at a small company.

I could go insane if I obsessed over every little detail of all of my companies. My management philosophy is to pay attention to the vital few and ignore the trivial many.

The thing that's confusing for investors is that founders don't know how to be CEO. I didn't know how to do the job when I was a CEO. Founder CEOs don't know how to be CEOs, but it doesn't mean they can't learn. The question is... can the founder learn that job and can they tolerate all mistakes they will make doing it?

I back people who I think will be seeking help and advice. These are the best entrepreneurs.

Management is all about managing in the short term, while developing the plans for the long term.

It never occurred to any of us to consult in this emergency farmers, doctors, lawyers, shoemakers, or even statesmen. We could not escape the belief that the prospect of obtaining what we needed might be somewhat improved by making application to those whose business and surroundings qualified them to intelligently respond.

To be successful in business, you have to be ruthless.

Empirical and observational data along with a healthy dash of intuition often have to be combined as business owners begin to look outward, not inward, at what solutions they can provide to their customers.

Questions matter. In business, remarkable performers are brilliant at getting to the right question: the one that speeds them to the place they need to get to and offers them the missing piece they need to find.

I can't ever remember being struck by lightning when making a big decision. It's always about taking in more and more data points and making tack adjustments as you figure it out. I call customers, suppliers, industry analysts and try to get as much information as possible.

Business is the systematic playing of games.

You need to have the advice from experienced people coming from different kinds of educational and backgrounds in general, and then you can make a decision. But you need people around you that you trust to give you advice, and you need to make sure that the facts of the case are presented.

If you put on your business hat, you can't maintain competitiveness by staying at a competitive disadvantage. I mean, you just can't. The odds are just not in your favor.

You can't predict the future, and you've got to go with your gut on these things, and I'm sure if you speak to a laundry list of CEOs and people who have gone through the startup process themselves, they'll say it's an endless hurdle race, and you are inevitably going to catch your legs on hurdles, and it's just how you roll with that.

Entrepreneurs can benefit a lot from the right help and advice, and you can avoid costly mistakes. You can get incredible leverage in hiring people who wouldn't even talk to you if you have the right help. An investor isn't about money - it's about the help and advice you can get.

There's certain circumstances, there's certain situations, there's certain decisions that have to be made based upon the business and you can't take that personal.

I have definitely learnt in business that when you have a smart, engaged entrepreneur with good judgement they can really drive even a mediocre business forward so to me the entrepreneur is very important.

You can talk about systems until you're blue in the face but that's secondary - if you're closing down, if you're first to the ball, it doesn't really matter what system you've got.

To build a great business, you have to do something hard just to be able to withstand all the competition that will later come your way.

When companies are successful or not successful, they almost immediately jump to the wrong conclusions about how they got there or why they got there.