I've probably failed more often than anybody else in Silicon Valley. Those don't matter. I don't remember the failures. You remember the big successes.
Interpretation
Failures are often overshadowed by achievements, which define our journey.
In this quote, Vinod Khosla reflects on the nature of success and failure in his career in Silicon Valley. He acknowledges that while he may have experienced numerous failures, they are insignificant compared to the successes he remembers. This highlights the importance of resilience and focusing on positive outcomes rather than dwelling on setbacks.
In practice
During a motivational speech at a startup event.
Seeking an acquisition from the start is more than just bad advice for an entrepreneur. For the entrepreneur it leads to short term tactical decisions rather than company-building decisions and in my view often reduces the probability of success.
Is it 10 years, 20, 50 before we reach that tipping point where climate change becomes irreversible? Nobody can know. There's clearly a probability distribution. We need to ensure this planet, and we need to do it quickly.
Entrepreneurs have the flexibility and the ability to do things that large companies simply cannot. Could a large company pull off a trick like Amyris, going from anti-malaria medicine to next-generation fuel?
The only way you multiply resources is with technology. To really affect poverty, energy, health, education, or anything else - there is no other way.
You need a degree of foolishness to cause disruptive change in healthcare. Dare to dream.
Did Google know much about media? Or Amazon about commerce? Tesla about cars? SpaceX about rockets? EBay about classifieds? What did I know about computing when I started Sun Microsystems? We should celebrate these entrepreneurs, not pillory them for fighting entrenched incumbent industries that have political influence and money.
I have my dream job. If I was seven years old and you asked me what I'd want to be 30 years from now, I'd say exactly who I am. So, 'rare' and 'lucky' are the exact right words. It took a lot of hard work, and I took a weird route to get here, but man, am I grateful for it.
This is an extraordinary achievement, nearly nine years in the making.
If you don't understand how to run an efficient operation, new machinery will just give you new problems of operation and maintenance. The sure way to increase productivity is to better administrate man and machine.
Start out by making 100 users really happy, rather than a lot more users only a little happy.
It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech. Overnight success is a fallacy. It is preceded by a great deal of preparation. Ask any successful person how they came to this point in their lives, and they will have a story to tell.
Famous men have the whole earth as their memorial.
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