Vinod Khosla Quotes
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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.
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You need a degree of foolishness to cause disruptive change in healthcare. Dare to dream.
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The world is hung up on food-based biofuels. Not only are they the wrong thing, they're the uneconomic thing.
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Doctors can be replaced by software – 80% of them can. I’d much rather have a good machine learning system diagnose my disease than the median or average doctor.
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Electric cars are coal-powered cars. Their carbon emissions can be worse than gasoline-powered cars.
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Big data will replace the need for 80% of all doctors
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Letting the perfect be the enemy of the good is one of the reasons we have a coal-dependent infrastructure, with the resulting environmental impact that all of us can see. I suspect environmentalists, through their opposition of nuclear power, have caused more coal plants to be built than anybody. And those coal plants have emitted more radioactive material from the coal than any nuclear accident would have.
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Seeking an acquisition from the start is more than just bad advice for an entrepreneur. For the entrepreneur it leads to short term tactical decisions rather than company-building decisions and in my view often reduces the probability of success.
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Any problem is an opportunity. The bigger the problem, the bigger the opportunity.
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No one will pay you to solve a non-problem.
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Will biofuel usage require land? Absolutely, but we think the ability to use winter cover crops, degraded land, as well as using sources such as organic waste, sewage, and forest waste means that actual land usage will be limited. Just these sources can replace most of our imported oil by 2030 without touching new land.
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The U.S. has fallen well behind Europe in recognizing climate change and the implications of climate change.
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Maybe some percentage that’s substantially larger than 95 percent of VCs add zero value. I would bet that 70-80 percent add negative value to a startup in their advising.
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My willingness to fail gives me the ability to succeed.
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Oil replacements and then efficiencies in engines and housing and the way we build houses is a very interesting market.
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As for companies invested in the space - I think its important to distinguish between a good investment and a material climate change technology - you can have the first without the second, even in the "clean tech" space.
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I'm a fiscal hawk. I vote against all taxes, but I do believe the environment, and climate change, is a bigger issue than fiscal deficits are as a risk to the nation.
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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.
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Every big problem is a big opportunity.
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I don’t mind failing, but if I succeed it better be worth succeeding for.
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The first rule of venture capitalism is hands-on experience. You have to get your hands dirty.
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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.
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Screw up often; but screw up ahead of everybody else, and than learn as much, and than use it to make subsequent investments.
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In my view, it’s irreverence, foolish confidence and naivety combined with persistence, open mindedness and a continual ability to learn that created Facebook, Google, Yahoo, eBay, Microsoft, Apple, Juniper, AOL, Sun Microsystems and others.
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We don't need a fuel that's cleaner, we need a fuel that happens to be cleaner, but is half the price of oil.
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It is important in any population to have an ecosystem around start-up ideas to leverage the most out of them such an ecosystem needs developing and most of this is about giving entrepreneurs confidence.
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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.
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How would you compete against yourself?
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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.
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I don’t mind the low probability of success, but it better be impactful if we do succeed.
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