Vinod Khosla Quotes

I'm not looking to... I'd like to build my company and make a bigger company always, but I think in the behind the scenes arena is where I'd prefer to spend my time.

Growing Ineos has been a lot of fun.

Successful enterprises are built from the ground up. You can't assemble them with a bunch of acquisitions.

The biggest challenge is to build the team and start the company, while hiring people, raising money, building a brand which has no history, all at the same time. You're doing a lot of things that in an established company are already done.

It's the whole big picture that we have to look at to create an organization that wins over the long term. And to just shoot from the hip on a decision based on winning over a 10-game period. No, that doesn't make sense.

Often, entrepreneurs don't build a board until they are forced to by their VCs when they raise their first financing round. This is dumb, as you are missing the opportunity to add at least one person to the team who - as a board member - can help you navigate the early process of building your company and raising that first round.

It's important for founders to think about how they would build their company from scratch - again.

I understand that fans think short-term, and there's nothing wrong with that. You live or you die in the short term. But I believe in our system, and when you do that, you don't make knee-jerk decisions.

Diversifying the business is definitely a good thing.

Strategic planning is the continuous process of making present entrepreneurial (risk-taking) decisions systematically and with the greatest knowledge of their futurity; organizing systematically the efforts needed to carry out these decisions; and measuring the results of these decisions against the expectations through organized, systematic feedback.

Young entrepreneurs should spend an awful lot of time thinking about what they want to go into.

As an entrepreneur, in many ways it's like looking into the crystal ball for what my company will hopefully go through as it starts to think about bigger challenges - scaling internationally, getting ready to go public, and all those different things.

I get a bit of a kick out of exporting private enterprise and incentives.

There's a final exam in venture every four to six years. The scary thing is you need to get an 'A' in every discipline. You need to be on generational planning, need to be on great deal flow, need be on great outcomes, you need to be on great company building.

We solve last year's problems without thinking about the future.

I'm not somebody who is going to build something for a few years, sell it, and then go off and just have fun.

My advice to fledgling entrepreneurs is always the same: build a company that you plan to be with for the next 10 years - that is the best way to increase your chances of success.

Yes, we can do business in Nepal and still succeed. That is what I proved.

When you're talking about capital and financial things, which I certainly pay a lot of attention to, I base those decisions on one question that I typically ask myself, which is 'Does it help us to build a better company?'

I think it's natural for any manager to want to grow his business. The question is at what rate, and in what direction, and in what format?

I think the biggest myth entrepreneurs have is that the growth and performance of their startups depends more on their entrepreneurial talent than on the businesses they choose.

We are quite open, however, to looking at acquisitions and there are opportunities that we periodically consider. and I think that may be something we do in the future, but I must say that there is no commitment to that at the present time in any form or size.

I don't want to be known as a serial entrepreneur. I like doing one thing at a time and making sure that gets my full attention until it's well established. I enjoy the initial years of a company because they are the most dynamic, and that is when I can give the best of myself.

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

In order to have your short term policies accepted, you have to have your long term policies understood.