Gawker: valleywag, vinod khosla

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.

Ethanol investor wants to kill the electric car

Owen Thomas — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 09:20:00 EDT

CAMBRIDGE, MASS. — At MIT's EmTech conference, venture capitalist Vinod Khosla made a shocking assertion: Electric cars are irrelevant. Unless some unlikely breakthrough in battery technology comes about, they will never take enough of the market to matter. This is a financially convenient argument for Khosla to make: He has invested heavily in biofuels startups. But he raises a point few in the privileged West think about: Will the rising middle classes of China and India buy a $25,000 Prius, or a $2,500 Tata Nano?

Make no mistake: Khosla intends to overturn oil-based transportation, and make a bundle while doing so. He is a skeptic of corn-based ethanol, but favors biofuels made from cheaply grown biomass like switchgrass. But he also thinks combustion engines can be improved to reach 100 miles per gallon — a "diesel Prius," he calls. Electric cars? Too burdened with heavy batteries, too costly to ever make up a large portion of our transport. Oh, but just in case he's wrong, he's got a couple of long-shot startups in his portfolio which could make them practical.

(Photo by James Duncan Davidson/O'Reilly Media)

Technology Review editor addicted to Twitter, gossip

Owen Thomas — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 09:00:00 EDT

CAMBRIDGE, MASS. — I'm here in the hub of the universe for EmTech, a conference thrown by Technology Review, MIT's magazine of self-importance. Jason Pontin, who is the magazine's editor-in-chief, publisher, and whatever title he's added last week, has just introduced Vinod Khosla, one of the venture-capital industry's brightest names. But is Pontin gazing raptly at Khosla, taking in his every word of wisdom? No, he is not. I can see his laptop screen from six rows away. He is using Twitter, a recent topic of obsession for him. This grand chronicler of innovation is whiling away the duration of Khosla's presentation 140 characters at a time. Oh, wait! I take that back. Now he's reading Valleywag.

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.

Khosla family's vegetable drama hits Facebook

Jackson West — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 16:20:00 EDT

Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla's 15-year old son Neal, a student at ritzy San Francisco prep school Lick-Wilmerding, is refusing to eat any vegetables. "The only vegetable he has had this week is a single, lone piece of onion that snuck into his fajitas, despite spending the majority of dinner carefully picking all the vegetables out of his food," according to his sister Nina, who IM'd Valleywag this morning in desperation. The family has gotten Neal to agree to eat vegetables, but only if a Facebook group they've set up garners 1,000 users.

Father Vinod, who is now backing startups which turn vegetable matter into energy, has suggested that all women stop talking to the young master until he relents. With the habit of "coughing freely and infrequently washing his hands," reported by his sisters in the Facebook group's description, I can't imagine many women who would talk to him in the first place. What are some of the effects of malnutrition? Well, a lack of vitamin C or ascorbic acid, which can be found in onions among other fruits and vegetables, can lead to scurvy. And trust me, no pubescent teen with scorbutic gums is getting to first base any time soon. We won't even get into what this is doing to his father's cleantech investments.

Vinod Khosla bets on all the horses, but saddles up with Obama campaign

Jackson West — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 17:20:00 EDT

Accel Partners' Joe Schoendorf has asserted in the past that betting against venture capitalist Vinod Khosla is a good way to lose money. One reason why is because Khosla covers his bets — in the primary election cycle, Khosla donated the maximum amount allowable for an individual, $2,300, to the campaigns of Hillary Clinton, John McCain and Barack Obama. Since 1986, the India-born venture capitalist has given a total of $63,800 to Democrats and $19,400 to Republicans. But now that the primary season is over and Obama and McCain are due to be coronated by their parties at the summer conventions, which horse will Khosla be riding?

Obama. He's joined the Democratic senator's "India Policy Team." But there's more to it than just ties to India. Khosla is also a big investor in ethanol production, and is pictured here with General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner, and Bill Roe, president of ethanol manufacturer Coskata. Obama has taken large donations from ethanol lobbyists and pandered to corn growers as a strategy to boost support in conservative southern Illinois during his run for the senate. Obama can certainly turn to Khosla to argue the merits of turning food into fuel by proxy. Personally, I'm just surprised Khosla has offered no support for presumptive American prime minister Amitabh Bachchan. (Photo by AP/Gary Malerba)

Britney Spears, Perez Hilton and Vinod Khosla walk into a courtroom

Jackson West — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 19:40:00 EDT

Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla of Kleiner Perkins was sued by prison inmate Jonathan Lee Riches, who wanted $43 million from Khosla because "Khosla’s fund invests in prison buildings," among other concerns. Riches has also sued former Giants slugger Barry Bonds and hundreds of other celebrities, inspiring Khosla to quip, "Well, there is at least one thing I have in common with Britney Spears and Perez Hilton now." [Private Equity Hub] (Photos by AP/John Raoux, Rolando Aviles, Jack Plunkett)

Bill Gates divesting from Pacific Ethanol at a loss

Jackson West — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:40:00 EDT

Cascade Investment LLC, the fund managed by Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, has made good on its November promise to exit from its investment in Pacific Ethanol. What's surprising? He's doing it at a loss, converting his preferred shares to common shares worth $8 apiece and selling them for less than $4 apiece. With 1.4 million shares sold in three days, that's a loss of over $5 million. Pocket change for Gates, certainly, but in almost halving his original 20 percent stake it's a strong vote of no confidence in the ethanol business. While Accel Partners Joe Schoendorf has said that "a good way to lose money is to bet against Vinod [Khosla]" who's been bullish on ethanol, I'm going to side with Gates on this one.

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.

Vinod Khosla gave Brazilian slave-labor employers a thumbs-up

Jackson West — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 16:20:00 EDT

When asked about his his $200 million investment in an ethanol startup in Brazil, where corruption is rife, labor standards lax and the environmental track record abysmal, investor Vinod Kohsla replied, "We have a very professional management team." Those responsible for actually cutting the cane might tend to disagree after being subjected to inhuman working conditions which some activists describe as "slave labor."

Vinod Khosla's Brazilian ethanol venture uses slave labor, just like most Valley startups we know

Jackson West — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 16:20:00 EDT

The Brazil Renewable Energy Company, or Brenco, was the target of the Brazilian Labor Ministry's slave-labor investigation unit last month. Brenco produces ethanol from sugarcane, which is more carbon-efficient than corn-based ethanol but incredibly labor-inefficient — cane farming is some of the hardest work on Earth. How did the company, backed in part by Vinod Khosla's VC firm, address this inefficiency? By paying workers less than a dollar an hour, packing them cheek-to-jowl in substandard living conditions, preventing them from leaving the unsanitary housing on their free time, feeding them poorly, and (rather ironically for an ethanol manufacturer) banning alcohol.

Brenco also counts former president Bill Clinton, big money Democrat Ron Burkle and AOL founder Steve Case as investors. 133 workers freed from their servitude received a final paycheck and bus tickets home. I guess Brazilian workers just don't understand the entrepreneurial spirit of putting in long hours at a startup to help the company succeed. Savvy Valley employees know that if you want to enjoy basic human freedoms you should work at Starbucks or the post office.

(Photo by AP/Andre Penner)

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)

Vinod Khosla thinks all you Prius owners...

Mary Jane Irwin — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 14:32:51 EDT

Vinod Khosla thinks all you Prius owners are on personal guilt trips. The venture capitalist likens it to giving money to "art museums instead of starving people [in Africa]." Ethanol and bio-fuels are better bets because the average consumer isn't willing to spend $5,000 to save a half ton of carbon per year. Neither is Khosla. [VentureBeat]

iLike a good mustache, don't you?

Owen Thomas — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 21:24:08 EDT

ATHERTON — I'm told I left the party too early, but once Third Eye Blind started playing, Thursday night's iLike bash was pretty much over for me. Don't get me wrong — I like Third Eye Blind. It's right in tune with my utterly bland and more than slightly gay musical tendencies. But this is exactly why I will never, ever use a service like iLike, which makes a Facebook app that allows you to reveal your musical taste, or lack thereof, to your friends by posting songs, and find people with similar tastes by seeing who's going to concerts. Here's the thing: I know my taste in music is egregiously bad. I don't want to advertise the fact to the world, and if anything, I want to meet people who specifically dislike the music I listen to. That's all right, though — what I really wanted to listen to was the buzz in the room.

As I walked into the swank backyard of Marc Bodnick, the Elevation Partners managing director who is, unlike private-equity colleagues Bono and Roger McNamee, not a rock star, I was instantly handed a mango margarita and surrounded by men with mustaches. "What is this? The Edge?" I thought to myself. But it turns out that the Castro-conformist facial-hair regime wasn't the result of the gay mafia; no, it was just one of those Silicon Valley workplace motivational schemes gone horribly wrong. iLike CEO Ali Partovi abstained, but twin brother Hadi, the company's COO, joined in. He's in the upper left of the above collage, joined by various employees.

Snacky but control-freaky PR doyenne Brooke Hammerling tried to stop me from taking pictures, but I snuck away, whipped out of the camera, and went crazy documenting the iLike team's unfortunate facial hair. They even offered to supply a disposable razor and shaving cream so I could convert my goatee to the preferred look. I declined.

The party was ostensibly for iLike, but there was a big contingent of Facebookers, pumped from their second ultimate-frisbee win against Google. Founder Mark Zuckerberg showed up, and we made small talk about his sister Randi's burgeoning online video career. Then I sat down to dinner with Ron Conway, the angel investor, who affected a lack of concern about the meltdown in the markets. He did seem a bit distracted, though. Could the rumors be true that he just lost a big local deal to out-of-town venture capitalists?

Speaking of power VCs, as I was talking to Conway, VentureBeat blogger Matt Marshall pointed out semiretired Kleiner Perkins partner Vinod Khosla to Eric Eldon, one of his writers. It was a really good turnout — especially considering that Bodnick and iLike were competing with a private, but well-attended, August Capital event just down Sand HIll Road. I'd tell you more, but much of the night was off the record. Good thing, too, as I had one too many mango margaritas.

Geek out: Martha Stewart and John Cusak hit the D Conference

Nick Douglas — Wed, 31 May 2006 15:31:58 EDT

Journos Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher had a grand time hosting the Wall Street Journal's D Conference, or at least they've learned to fake it. Reporter Dan Farber has a write-up at ZDNet, and he kindly lent his event photos. Here they are, misinterpreted.

"Looks great, doesn't he?" says Melinda Gates. "I left him alone at Bath and Body Works, and he picked himself a moisturizer."

Damn it, if Walt Mossberg hears one more story about that stinking John Markoff, he's switching to hard liquor.

Jean Louis Gassee: "I worked at Apple for nine years, and honestly, Steve's feet are this huge."

Martha's only smiling because she thinks that's Daler Mehndi.

After the jump, Mr. High Fidelity looks for a cooler conversationalist.

ZDNet king Eric Hippeau to serial entrepreneur Josh Felser: "Oh, my unbuttoned shirt is no accident, Josh. Let's dump this dump and go...share some war stories."

Lotus founder Mitch Kapor tells Answers.com founder Bob Rosenschein: "There's the 98-pound Dictionary.com guy. Let's go throw wine in his face."

Martha Stewart and her boyfriend, the man who built Word and Excel, Charles Simonyi. (They really are dating.)

The crowd was delighted as Walt and Kara performed a scene from A Streetcar Named Desire. "Listen, baby, when we first met - you and me - you thought I was common. Well, how right you was. I was common as dirt."

"Walt. WALT. Put down the Jack Daniel's and let's stop the 'I'll kill that ass Markoff' talk."

AOL exec Jason Calacanis pulls the Kawaii Anime Girl sign we all know and love. Meanwhile, the extinguished body of VC Yossi Vardi slumps in its chair.

"And we'll have a farm...with ethanol-fueled vehicles...and I can pet the rabbits! Tell me about the rabbits, Vinod!"

Dan's schwag. That damn Long Tail gets EVERYWHERE.

John Cusak pulls the over-the-shoulder glance, made easier because Kara Swisher is half his height.

Photos: D Conference [Dan Farber on Flickr]

Techies high on ethanol

ndouglas — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 22:31:59 EST

One word, young Ben Braddock: Ethanol.

So it's not at whisper-in-the-Graduate's-ear level yet, but ethanol frenzy earned the requisite New York Times trend story. And yes, there are some pretty big Valley names involved.

Vinod Khosla, founder of Sun and a former Kleiner Perkins VC, is in on the game. (And his SUV photo op screams, "Ethanol fuel justifies driving this behemoth!") So is honorary Valley mogul Bill Gates. And Google's Larry Page and Sergey Brin checked out an ethanol factory when they visited those crazy Orkut-lovers in Brazil.

Which means it has to succeed. Techie investments in transportation always do. Ethanol! They'll build cities around it!

On the Ethanol Bandwagon, Big Names and Big Risks [NY Times]
Brazil has head start on ethanol production [CMI Brasil]