Vinod Khosla To Speak At Disrupt SF

We’re excited to announce that Vinod Khosla will once again take the Disrupt SF stage.

The last time he was at Disrupt, Khosla dropped a bomb by saying that 70-80 percent of VCs actually add ‘negative value’ to their invested companies — and only 5 percent, or less, added anything at all.

Khosla is the founder of Khosla Ventures, a venture capital firm that focuses on funding environmentally friendly technologies in addition to the standard lot of Internet, computing, mobile and silicon technology companies.

And, as you can see from his on-stage presence at Disrupt, he’s known as a keen investor that isn’t afraid to speak his mind.

Khosla Ventures invests in a diverse range of companies, including online payments provider Stripe, the Canary smart home security system, code challenge community HackerRank, home-buying startup OpenDoor, and Uber and Lyft competitor Summon (formerly InstantCab). They’ve also taken an interest in the Star Trek-esque food scanner SCiO and on-demand grocery startup Instacart.

Khosla was a co-founder of Daisy Systems, a pioneer in electronic design automation, and founding CEO of Sun Microsystems, a multinational vendor of computers, computer software and hardware, and information technology services that Oracle bought in 2009. Before that, Khosla was a general partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and he continues to manage KPCB funds through KP X.

In a time when investments in biofuels is on the decline, Khosla and his VC firm remain invested in clean fuel technologies. For instance, Khosla committed to personally make a $25 million investment in KiOR, Inc. in addition to the $25 million his firm invested. They’ve also recently participated in a $15 million Series B round for BioConsortia, an agricultural biotechnology company that discovers natural microbial products, as well as a $60 million series D round for bio-ethanol company LanzaTech New Zealand.

We’re excited to see what other advice Khosla has for us at Disrupt SF 2014, and we hope you’ll join us. He joins our growing list of speakers that includes Peter Thiel, Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen and Marc Benioff.

Tickets for Disrupt are currently available for purchase, and if you’d like to help sponsor the event, sponsorship packages are available.

Anthony Domanico contributed to this article.