Vinod Khosla

Vinod Khosla (Gurmukhi: ਵਿਨੋਦ ਖੋਸਲਾ; born 28 January 1955) is an Indian/American businessman listed by Forbes magazine as a billionaire. Khosla made his early fortune as one of the co-founders of Sun Microsystems, a company which created the Java programming language and Network File System (NFS) after his departure as founding CEO and chairman in the early 1980s.

Early life and education

Khosla's father was an officer in the Indian Army and was posted at New Delhi, India.

Khosla 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. He attended Mount St Marys High School in Delhi. He went on to receive multiple degrees from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (Bachelor of Technology in Electrical Engineering), Carnegie Mellon University (Masters in Biomedical Engineering), and Stanford Graduate School of Business (MBA).

Career

In 1980, after post-graduating from Stanford University, Khosla worked for electronic design automation company Daisy Systems.

Khosla Ventures

Khosla Ventures is a venture capital firm focused on early stage companies in the Internet, computing, mobile, silicon technology and clean technology sectors that was founded by Vinod Khosla.

The firm is based in Menlo Park, California, and manages approximately $1.3 billion of investor capital as well as earlier funds funded by Khosla.

History

The firm was founded in 2004 by Vinod Khosla, a former general partner of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The firm's first two investment vehicles were funded with Khosla's own personal capital and were not open to institutional investors. In March 2009, Pierre Lamond became General Partner. In December 2009, Khosla completed fundraising for two new funds, to invest in cleantech and information technology start-ups.

Khosla Ventures Fund III secured $1 billion of investor commitments to invest in traditional early stage and growth stage companies. Khosla also raised $300 million for Khosla Seed, which will invest in higher-risk opportunities and science experiments. The firm has invested in bio-refineries for energy and bioplastics, solar, wind, battery, engines, LED, HVAC efficiency and other environmentally friendly technologies. The company focuses on technology risk based investing in very large markets.

Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold computers, computer components, computer software, and information technology services and that created the Java programming language, Solaris Unix and the Network File System (NFS). Sun significantly evolved several key computing technologies, among them Unix, RISC processors, thin client computing, and virtualized computing. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982. At its height, Sun headquarters were in Santa Clara, California (part of Silicon Valley), on the former west campus of the Agnews Developmental Center.

On January 27, 2010, Sun was acquired by Oracle Corporation for US $7.4 billion, based on an agreement signed on April 20, 2009. The following month, Sun Microsystems, Inc. was merged with Oracle USA, Inc. to become Oracle America, Inc.

Sun products included computer servers and workstations built on its own RISC-based SPARC processor architecture as well as on x86-based AMD's Opteron and Intel's Xeon processors; storage systems; and a suite of software products including the Solaris operating system, developer tools, Web infrastructure software, and identity management applications. Other technologies include the Java platform, MySQL, and NFS. Sun was a proponent of open systems in general and Unix in particular, and a major contributor to open source software. Sun's main manufacturing facilities were located in Hillsboro, Oregon, and Linlithgow, Scotland.

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

Coordinates: 37°25′25″N 122°12′37″W / 37.4237°N 122.2103°W / 37.4237; -122.2103

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) is a venture capital firm located on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park in Silicon Valley. The Wall Street Journal and other media have called it one of the "largest and most established" venture capital firms and by Dealbook as "one of Silicon Valley’s top venture capital providers."

KPCB specializes in investments in incubation and early stage companies. Since its founding in 1972, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers has backed entrepreneurs in more than 500 ventures including AOL, Amazon.com, Navigenics, Citrix, Compaq, Electronic Arts, Genentech, Genomic Health, Geron Corporation,Google, Intuit, Juniper Networks, Nebula,Netscape, Sun Microsystems, Symantec, Verisign, WebMD and Zynga. KPCB focuses its global investments in three practice areas – digital, clean tech and life sciences.

Firm

KPCB was formed in 1972. It has traditionally focused on early-stage investments, but also does later-stage investments.

List of people considered father or mother of a field

The following is a list of significant men and women known for being the father, mother, or considered the founders mostly in Western societies in a field, listed by category. In most non-science fields, the title of being the "father" is debatable.

Fine art

Games

Humanities

Military

Nations

Natural and social sciences

Sports

Technology

Fields

Computing

Inventions

Towns, cities, and regions

Transport

See also

References