When you think of the top-tier people in the tech industry today, you’ll certainly think of Vinod Khosla. From years ago when he was a co-founder of Sun Microsystems to his current role as a venture capital investor at Khosla Ventures, his time has been very valuable for decades now.
With that in mind, it was interesting when he told Michael Arrington on-stage at last month’s Disrupt SF conference that smart young job-seekers should send their resumés along to him. You’d think that poring over job applications would be a bit below his pay grade at this point. But it turns out, staffing is one of the things that Khosla is pretty obsessive about — when it comes to his venture capital firm and the startups in which it invests.
So when Vinod Khosla came backstage, the first thing we asked him about was what exactly he looks for in these resumés he so enthusiastically solicits. I don’t want to give too much away, but if you thought that — since he holds numerous degrees from the likes of IIT Delhi, Carnegie Mellon and Stanford — he’d be focused on hiring people with “proper” schooling credentials, you’re certainly mistaken.
We also got to discuss several other things beyond the hiring process. So please watch the video embedded above to see Vinod Khosla talk all about recruiting, startups that are solving big problems, and much more.
Also, please forgive the wire sticking out of my ear — we were on a break and I had to have it in to hear when they’d be going back to the show onstage. I’m just realizing now how distracting visually it is.
Vinod Khosla was a co-founder of Daisy Systems and founding Chief Executive Officer of Sun Microsystems, where he pioneered open systems and commercial RISC processors. Sun was funded by longtime friend and board member John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. In 1986 Vinod joined Kleiner Perkins, where he was and continues to be a general partner of KPCB funds through KP X. Through the years there, with other partners, he took on Intel’s monopoly with Nexgen/AMD (the only...
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