Power Struggles: Storage standoff, 12/25/00

By JULIE BORT AND JIM DUFFY
Network World, 12/25/00

The money guy

Vinod Khosla
General partner, Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers

Drive, ambition and vision define Vinod Khosla. Some industry watchers consider him the most influential figure in Silicon Valley and blessed with the Midas touch.

Khosla dreamed of starting a technology company when he was 15, and he was determined to become a millionaire before 30. Khosla began making that dream come true two decades ago when he founded Daisy Systems, a maker of computers and software for computer-assisted engineering. In 1982, at the tender age of 27, he helped create Sun. He conceived the idea to optimize SONET for data, a scheme that led to the creation of Cerent, which Cisco acquired in 1999 for $6.9 billion. Khosla was also instrumental in launching Juniper Networks, a company many tout as the next Cisco.

Khosla's current endeavor is funding and managing application service provider start-ups. He is chairman of two such firms, Corio and Asera. Yet he still finds the time to spend breakfast and dinner every day with his wife and four daughters. That's drive. That's ambition. The vision speaks for itself. That's why Khosla is one of the most powerful people in networking.

The rest of the 25 most powerful people in networking

Main story

Builders of the infrastructure

Software superheroes

Service provider commandos

Network executive forces

To top