Vinod Khosla: Ignore everything your VCs tell you
- Cromwell Schubarth
- Senior Technology Reporter- Silicon Valley Business Journal
- Email | Twitter | Google+
Vinod
Khosla, the much-followed venture investor and founding CEO of Sun
Microsystems, doesn't go to many board meetings of the companies he invests
in.
"Everybody is there from other venture funds talking as if they have earned
the right to advise entrepreneurs," Khosla said Wednesday morning at TechCrunch
Disrupt. "But the fact is they haven't done s--t."
When asked who is the VC who is
the most "full of s--t" by Mike
Arrington, Khosla joked. "I can't say. I would be offending too many
people."
So he advises startup entrepreneurs not to listen to most VCs, estimating
that about 90 percent of VCs "add zero value" to a startup and 70 percent to 80
"add negative value.""Listen politely and then do what you want," Khosla said he tells founders. "Knowing whose advice to take and on what topic is the single most difficult decision an entrepreneur has to make."
Khosla said when he offers advice, he includes an admission of what he isn't certain about.
"I'm never certain that I'm right," he admitted. "I'm confident that I have screwed up more than most people in this room. I am probably the world's expert in screwing up because I have tried more things and probably have a bigger rep for mistakes than anybody here."
Khosla said he looks for people who are doing something new and different and "unreasonable."
"If it's something that everybody else is doing, it isn't worth investing in," he said.
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Cromwell Schubarth is the Senior Technology Reporter at the Business Journal. His phone number is 408.299.1823.
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