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Vinod Khosla explains Wall Street crisis

Owen Thomas — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 13:40:00 EDT

Confused by Wall Street? Join the club. Vinod Khosla, a venture capitalist who is one of Silicon Valley's most revered brains, doesn't get what's happening, either. "If I can't understand it, I suspect a lot of people can't," he told Beet.tv's Andy Plesser in this video interview. "In the name of economic efficiency by slicing and dicing risk, we're reducing transparency, which is not a healthy thing." I was with him that far. But then he concluded: "Venture capital will be a pretty good place when we return to reality and invest in things we understand and are real." That rules out most Web startup investments made in the past couple of years. Heck, Khosla believes in cost-effective ethanol.

Vinod Khosla drops $3 million on health startup

Jackson West — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 20:40:00 EDT

Vinod Khosla's boutique VC firm Khosla Ventures has lead a $3 million investment round in ZocDoc, a startup which aims to make it easier to schedule doctor's appointments online. Managing the bureaucracies of the healthcare industry, with a nest of on- and off-network providers, HMOs and the like would make the ancient Greek civil servants of Byzantium blanch. Health revolutionaries from Steve Case to Google haven't exactly set the healthcare industry on fire, so good luck with that. Considering Khosla is struggling to convince his own son to eat vegetables, it's a good thing he tapped Khosla Ventures partner David Weiden to sit on the company's board.

Facebook board member lunches with Mrs. Rupert Murdoch

Owen Thomas — Wed, 28 May 2008 18:00:00 EDT

CARLSBAD, CA — Who are those cool cats in sunglasses at D6? Why, it's Jim Breyer of Accel Partners, a board member at Facebook, lunching with Wendi Murdoch, wife of the News Corp. CEO and chairwoman of MySpace China. Also at the table: Martha Stewart, seen here to the left; Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures; and Anne Wojcicki of 23andMe.

Wikipedia receives $500,000 from another VC

Owen Thomas — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 15:40:00 EDT

Ordinarily, this would be good news: Vinod Khosla, the former Kleiner Perkins venture capitalist, and his wife Neeru Khosla, have donated $500,000 to Wikipedia's nonprofit parent, the Wikimedia Foundation. But founder Jimmy Wales's dalliances with other VCs — chiefly Roger McNamee and Marc Bodnick of Elevation Partners — have cast a shadow over every dollar the organization receives. Is this one of the $500,000 donations McNamee recently said he helped broker? And if so, what do he and Khosla expect to get in return? For starters, keep a close eye on Wikipedia's articles on ethanol, a major business interest of Khosla's. Wales, ordinarily Wikipedia's front man, makes no appearance in the press release, quoted below:

*Wikimedia Foundation Receives $500K Donation*
''Vinod and Neeru Khosla, innovators in educational outreach, provide financial support to the Wikimedia Foundation.''

San Francisco, CA - March 24, 2008 - The Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization behind Wikipedia, is delighted to announce it has received a $500,000 donation from philanthropists Vinod and Neeru Khosla.

"We are thrilled and very grateful," said Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation. "Vinod and Neeru share the Wikimedia Foundation's vision: a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Today, they have moved us closer to making that vision a reality."

"Vinod and I are proud to help Wikipedia, a valuable global educational resource," said Neeru Khosla, co-founder and chair of CK12, a non-profit organization supporting the worldwide creation of "flexbooks," collaborative, open-source textbooks. "Wikipedia proves that mass collaboration works, and that small investments can reap extraordinary returns. We are happy to be a part of it."

The gift comes at a critical time in the history of Wikimedia, which has just relocated to San Francisco to be closer to Bay Area technical talent, like-minded non-profit organizations, and educational and research institutions.

"Moving to San Francisco was an essential step in the maturing of the organization," said Gardner. "Now that we are here, and have built a great team of smart people, we're well-positioned to make significant progress."

Wikipedia, the world's largest encyclopedia and one of the 10 most popular websites world-wide, is written, edited and maintained entirely by a global community of thousands of volunteers. It was founded in 2001 by Jimmy Wales. The Wikimedia Foundation, founded in 2003, has a staff of 15, and provides organizational support for Wikipedia and eight other collaboratively-created information projects.

In coming years, the Wikimedia Foundation plans to launch outreach projects designed to encourage contributions to Wikipedia from targeted groups such as academics, speakers of small languages, people in developing nations and older people. It also plans to increase the distribution of material from Wikipedia and its other projects in non-web-based formats such as DVDs and books, to provide information for people who are not online.

While Wikipedia burns, Jimmy Wales and women in bikinis save "world on fire"

Owen Thomas — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 08:00:17 EDT

We were right: Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales really did skip off to Richard Branson's Caribbean getaway in early March, even as a scandal unfolded over his governance of the world's most comprehensive list of gay animals. The powwow on Necker Island, which included Google's Larry Page, Tesla Motors chairman Elon Musk, former British prime minister Tony Blair, and VC Vinod Khosla, discussed global warming. Branson asked: "Is the world on fire?"

It may well be. Aflame, too, are the sentiments of Wikipedia's volunteers, many of whom are already enraged by Wales's jetsetting ways. For Wales, the gathering had an added attraction: After lunch, Branson took a party by catamaran to Mosquito, where women in bikini danced on the beach. "Normally the girls would be naked, but the prime minister is here," said Branson.

(Image via Wikimedia Commons)

Max Levchin's Slide set to take in new funding

Nicholas Carlson — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 12:33:13 EST

Serial entrepreneur and PayPal cofounder Max Levchin's widget maker Slide will take in a new round of funding, according to Boom Town. The deal, put together by New York-based Allen & Company, is said to propel Slide's value well past the $60 million to $80 million set just over a year ago.

The San Francisco startup, known for its social apps on Facebook and MySpace, last took funding in 2006 — about $20 million from BlueRun Ventures, Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures, and the Mayfield Fund. Maybe now Levchin can get some sleep. (Photo by flawedartist)