Vinod Khosla
Born	(1955-01-28) 28 January 1955 (age 57) Delhi, India
Alma mater	IIT Delhi Carnegie Mellon University Stanford Graduate School of Business
Occupation	Venture capitalist, Khosla Ventures
Net worth	$1.3 billion (2012)[1]
Spouse	Neeru
Children	Nina, Anu, Vani and Neal

Vinod Khosla (born 28 January 1955) is an Indian-born American businessman and venture capitalist. Khosla was one of the co-founders of Sun Microsystems, where he served as its first CEO and Chairman in the early 1980s. In 1986, he became a general partner of the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, where he remained through the early 2000s. In 2004 Khosla formed his own firm, Khosla Ventures, which focused on venture investments in various technology sectors, most notably clean technology.

He is a strong supporter of clean technology and said "If it doesn't scale, it doesn't matter. Most of what we talk about today—hybrid, biodiesel, ethanol, solar photovoltaics, geothermal—I believe are irrelevant to the scale of the problem."^[2]

Early life and education[link]

Khosla's father was an officer in the Indian Army and was posted at New Delhi,^[3][4] India. He read about the founding of Intel in Electronic Engineering Times at the age of fourteen and this inspired him to pursue technology as a career.

Khosla went on to receive degrees from the IIT Delhi, India (Bachelor of Technology in Electrical Engineering), Carnegie Mellon University (Masters in Biomedical Engineering), and Stanford Graduate School of Business (MBA).

Career[link]

After graduating from Stanford University in 1980, Khosla worked for electronic design automation company Daisy Systems. Then in 1982, Khosla co-founded Sun Microsystems (SUN is the acronym for the Stanford University Network), along with his Stanford classmates Scott McNealy, Andy Bechtolsheim, and UC Berkeley computer science graduate student Bill Joy. Khosla served as the first Chairman and CEO of Sun Microsystems from 1982 to 1984, when he left the company to become a venture capitalist.

In 1986, Khosla joined the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers as a general partner. At Kleiner, Khosla became a recognized venture capitalist, with several successful early stage investments. Khosla also played a key role with several of the tech industry's most spectacular failures, including Asera, Dynabook, BroadBand Office, Excite@Home, and many others.^{[citation needed]}

He also invested in an Indian Microfinance Company, SKS Microfinance, which lends small loans to poor women in rural India. Khosla is also one of the founders of TiE, The Indus Entrepreneurs, and has guest-edited a special issue of The Economic Times (ET), a leading business newspaper in India.

Khosla was featured on Dateline NBC in May 2006 where he discussed the practicality of ethanol as a gasoline substitute.^[5] He is known to have invested heavily in ethanol companies, in hopes of widespread adoption. He cites Brazil as an example of a country that has ended its dependence on foreign oil.^[6]

Khosla was a major proponent of the "Yes on 87" campaign to pass California's Proposition 87, The Clean Energy Initiative, which failed to pass in November, 2006. In 2006, Khosla's wife Neeru co-founded the CK-12 Foundation that aims to develop open source textbooks and lower the cost of education in America and the rest of the world. Khosla and his wife are also donors to the Wikimedia Foundation, in the amount of $500,000.^[7]

Khosla Ventures[link]

In 2004 Khosla formed his own venture capital firm, Khosla Ventures. The firm is based in Menlo Park, California ^[8] and manages approximately $1 billion of investor capital as well as investments funded by Khosla himself.^[9]

In September 2009, Khosla completed fundraising for two new funds, to invest in cleantech and information technology start-ups. Khosla Ventures III secured $750 million of investor commitments to invest in traditional early stage and growth stage companies. Khosla also raised $250 million for Khosla Seed, which will invest in higher-risk opportunities.

In May 2010 it was announced that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair was to join Khosla Ventures to provide strategic advice regarding investments in technologies focused on the environment.^[10]

Other accomplishments and affiliations[link]

In addition to his role in founding Sun Microsystems, Khosla has been involved in the founding of a number of other businesses and organizations. Khosla was also involved with the founding of Daisy Systems in 1981.^{[citation needed]} He is also one of the founders of TiE, The Indus Entrepreneurs, and has guest-edited a special issue of Economic Times (ET), a leading business newspaper in India.^{[citation needed]}

Khosla was a finalist for the 1999 World Technology Award and served as the Honorary Chair of the DonorsChoose San Francisco Bay Area Advisory Board.^{[citation needed]} In addition, Khosla is a Member of the Board of Trustees of the Blum Center for Developing Economies at the University of California, Berkeley.^[11] The Center is focused on finding solutions to address the crisis of extreme poverty and disease in the developing world.^[12] Mr.Khosla said at the NASSCOM that "Being an Entrepreneur was hot".When asked whether he ever feared failure, Khosla said only those who dare to fail can succeed. “Freedom to fail is a key ingredient in success. Try and fail, but do not fail to try. Every disadvantage in India is an opportunity to do something big,” he said.^[13]

See also[link]

• Khosla Ventures
• Range Fuels
• Virgin Green Fund

References[link]

External links[link]

• Making cement while sequestering carbon, Issue 127, July 2008; Retrieved 2008-07-20.
• From geeks to greens. The Economist, Feb 28, 2008
• Vinod speaks to Google employees about ethanol on March 29, 2006
• Vinod Khosla Charlie Rose, 22 Sept. 2006

J. Michael Arrington
Arrington at the World Economic Forum
Born	Jack Michael Arrington[1] (1970-03-13) March 13, 1970 (age 42)[1] Orange, California
Nationality	American
Occupation	Blogger, entrepreneur
Website
TechCrunch , uncrunched.com

J. Michael Arrington (born March 13, 1970 in Orange, California) is the founder and former co-editor of TechCrunch, a blog covering the Silicon Valley technology start-up communities and the wider technology field in USA and elsewhere. Magazines such as Wired and Forbes have named Arrington one of the most powerful people on the Internet.^[2][3]

In 2008, he was selected by TIME Magazine as one of the most influential people in the world.^[4] Wired magazine also included him in a flowchart of "internet blowhards" citing his obsession with "Web 2.0".^[5]

Biography[link]

Arrington grew up in Huntington Beach, California and Surrey, England, attended the University of California, Berkeley and graduated from Claremont McKenna College with a major in economics. He went on to Stanford Law School and graduated in 1995.^[6] He practiced corporate and securities law at O’Melveny & Myers, and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.^[7]

Arrington left the practice of law to join Real Names, which failed after raising $100M.^[8] Arrington was co-founder of Achex, an internet payments company, which was sold to First Data Corp for US$32 million and is now the back end of Western Union online. "I made enough to buy a Porsche. Not much more," he says.^[8]

His other entrepreneurial endeavors include co-founding Zip.ca and Pool.com, acting as chief operating officer for Razorgator, and founding Edgeio. He was also more recently on the board of directors for the startup Foldera which was designing a software as a service organizational tool.^{[citation needed]}

Michael Arrington with Chamillionaire

TechCrunch[link]

Arrington rose to internet prominence with his Silicon Valley blog, TechCrunch. TechCrunch covers internet startups and news. In early September 2011 Arrington was reported to be no longer employed by TechCrunch but associated with a new investment company, AOL Ventures.^[9] Within days, it was being reported that he was no longer associated with AOL Ventures.^[10]

Controversies[link]

Gillmor Gang and Leo Laporte[link]

On the Gillmor Gang on June 6, 2009, Michael Arrington accused Leo Laporte of giving the Palm Pre a good review in return for accepting a 5-day evaluation unit, which Laporte interpreted as an attack on his journalistic integrity subsequently causing Laporte to storm off the air. Later that same day, Michael Arrington and Leo Laporte apologized to each other. After much discussion between Steve Gillmor, Leo Laporte, Michael Arrington and Robert Scoble, it was decided that the Gillmor Gang would no longer appear on the TWiT network due to the "hostile" nature of the show which Laporte didn't agree with.^[11] Laporte later confirmed on the pre-show of the June 9, 2009 recording of Net@Nite that future shows of the Gillmor Gang will not air on the TWiT Netcast Network.

Dropping out of college[link]

Arrington has been known to advocate dropping out of college,^[12] stating at the 2010 UC-Berkeley Distinguished Innovator Lecture Series that “the best thing in the world is to go to Harvard for a year and drop out. Everyone knows you were smart enough to get in”.^[13]

Interview with Carol Bartz, CEO of Yahoo![link]

In May 2010, Arrington was involved in a verbal confrontation with CEO of Yahoo!, Carol Bartz. Arrington started the interview by asking Bartz, "So how the fuck are you?" To which she responded, "Is that appropriate?".^[14] Later in the interview, Bartz became perturbed with Arrington's criticism of the Yahoo! business model of conglomeration rather than single revenue source producers. Bartz then responded to Arrington saying, "you are involved in a very tiny company" and ended the exchange by telling him to "fuck off."^[15] Bartz received some support from bloggers for her response, including Guy Kawasaki who stated, "I respect Carol Bartz even more now."^[16]

See also[link]

• CrunchPad

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Michael Arrington

• Michael Arrington Personal Weblog
• Profile at CrunchBase
• "TechCrunch Site Makes Arrington A Power Broker", Wall Street Journal, 2006-11-03
• "The makings of a media mogul: Michael Arrington", Elias Bizannes's blog, 2008-12-26

Tim O'Reilly
Tim O'Reilly at the PayPal X Innovate in 2009.
Born	(1954-06-06) June 6, 1954 (age 58) Cork, Ireland
Alma mater	Harvard College
Occupation	Founder and CEO, O'Reilly Media
Website
tim.oreilly.com

Tim O'Reilly (born June 6, 1954) is the founder of O'Reilly Media (formerly O'Reilly & Associates) and a supporter of the free software and open source movements.^[1]

Life and career[link]

Born in County Cork, Ireland,^[2] O'Reilly moved to California with his family six weeks after he was born.^{[citation needed]}

O'Reilly was initially interested in literature upon entering college, yet after graduating from Harvard College in 1975 with a B.A. cum laude in Classics, he became involved in the field of computer user manuals. He defines his company not as a book or online publisher, nor as a conference producer (though the company does all three), but as a technology transfer company, "changing the world by spreading the knowledge of innovators."^[3] O'Reilly serves on the boards of directors of two companies, CollabNet and MySQL AB, and served on the board of Macromedia until its 2005 merger with Adobe Systems. He also serves on the board of directors for the public-service organization Code for America. In February 2012 he joined the UC Berkeley School of Information Advisory Board.^[4]

Thoughts and Activism[link]

Software Patents[link]

In 1996, O'Reilly fought against a 10-Connection Limit on TCP/IP NT Workstations, writing a letter to the United States Department of Justice, Bill Gates, and CNN, concerned that the Internet is still in its infancy, and that limitations could cripple the technology before it ever has a chance to reach its full potential.^[5]

In 2001, O'Reilly was involved in a dispute with Amazon.com, leading a protest against Amazon's one-click patent and, specifically, Amazon's assertion of that patent against rival barnesandnoble.com. The protest ended with O'Reilly and Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos visiting Washington D.C. to lobby for patent reform.

Open Source Software[link]

O'Reilly compartmentalizes open software into three long-term trends: 1) The commoditization of software, 2) Network-enabled collaboration, 3) Software customization; what he terms the "three Cs".^[1] O'Reilly concedes that software commoditization has been driven by standards, but that software itself is no longer the primary focus of value in the computer industry. O'Reilly sees the role of open source as being indisputable with the development of the Internet, pointing to the widely used TCP/IP protocol, sendmail, Apache, Perl, Linux and other open source platforms. In his article "Open Source Paradigm Shift",^[1] O'Reilly describes his concern about the current trends leading towards new sources of lock-in that we do not understand.^[6]

Internet Operating System[link]

O'Reilly envisions the Internet Operating System^[7] as consisting of various sub systems, such as media, payment, speech recognition, location, and identity. He uses the analogy of the biome of the human body, having more bacterial than human cells, but depending upon millions of other organisms, each pursuing their own interest, but nevertheless weaving a co-operative web. O'Reilly praises Facebook for their willingness to open up their platform with concepts like the Open Graph Protocol.^[8]

See also[link]

• Infoware
• Web 2.0
• O'Reilly Media
• Make
• Foo Camp

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Tim O'Reilly

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Tim O'Reilly

• tim.oreilly.com O'Reilly's home page and archive
• "Tech guru Tim O'Reilly challenges next generation to get serious" - Los Angeles Times
• FUTURIST magazine interview with O'Reilly, Re: Future of Publishing
• The Software Paradigm Shift Audio of O'Reilly's 2003 interview with IT Conversations
• NerdTV Interview (video, audio, and transcript available) - 29 September 2005
• Tim O'Reilly interview - O'Reilly on Linux PC Pro interview covering Linux, Java and books
• The Trend Spotter Wired Magazine profile - October 2005, "Tim O'Reilly built an empire on computer manuals and conferences that make sense of new technologies. Along the way he became the guru of the participation age."
• Tim O'Reilly on social media video, November 2007
• Tim on Twitter
• Nine questions on the state and the future of web2.0 video, November 2008
• 7 minutes of Tim O'Reilly at Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin video
• Tim O'Reilly talks about Govt 2.0 at Aspen Ideas Festival, July 2009 video
• Tim O'Reilly on FLOSS Weekly