Vinod Khosla
Khosla Ventures
Vinod grew up dreaming of being an entrepreneur. He was raised in an Indian Army household with no business or technology connections. When, at age 16, he first heard about Intel, he dreamt of starting his own technology company.
Upon graduating with a Bachelors in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, he tried to start a soy milk company to service the many people in India who did not have refrigerators. He then came to the US and got his Masters in Biomedical Engineering at Carnegie-Mellon University. His startup dreams attracted him to Silicon Valley where he got an MBA at Stanford University in 1980.
In 1982, Khosla started Sun Microsystems to build workstations for software developers. At Sun he pioneered "open systems" and RISC processors. Sun was funded by long time friend and board member John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
In 1986 he switched sides and joined Kleiner Perkins where he was a general partner. There, he worked with Nexgen/AMD, Juniper, Excite, and many other ventures.
In 2004, Khosla formed Khosla Ventures. Khosla Ventures offers venture assistance, strategic advice and capital to entrepreneurs. The firm helps entrepreneurs extend the potential of their ideas in both traditional venture areas like the Internet, computing, mobile, and silicon technology arenas but also supports breakthrough scientific work in clean technology areas such as bio-refineries for energy and bioplastics, solar, battery and other environmentally friendly technologies.
Marissa Mayer
Google
Marissa leads the product management efforts on Google's search products- web search, images, groups, news, Froogle, the Google Toolbar, Google Desktop, Google Labs, and more. She joined Google in 1999 as Google's first female engineer and led the user interface and webserver teams at that time. Her efforts have included designing and developing Google's search interface, internationalizing the site to more than 100 languages, defining Google News, Gmail, and Orkut, and launching more than 100 features and products on Google.com. Several patents have been filed on her work in artificial intelligence and interface design. In her spare time, Marissa also organizes Google Movies- outings a few times a year to see the latest blockbusters- for 6,000+ people (employees plus family members and friends).
Concurrently with her full-time work at Google, Marissa has taught introductory computer programming classes at Stanford to over 3,000 students. Stanford has recognized her with the Centennial Teaching Award and the Forsythe Award for her outstanding contribution to undergraduate education.
Prior to joining Google, Marissa worked at the UBS research lab (Ubilab) in Zurich, Switzerland and at SRI International in Menlo Park, California.
Graduating with honors, Marissa received her BS in Symbolic Systems and her MS in Computer Science from Stanford University. For both degrees, she specialized in artificial intelligence.
Mark Suster is a serial entrepreneur who grew up in Northern California.
After graduating from UCSD (economics) and University of Chicago (MBA), he joined Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) in Los Angeles to build computer systems for large corporations. There, he focused mostly on computer networking but had stints with programming, database design, system modeling, and testing.
In 1994 he transferred within Accenture to their technology center of excellence in Sophia Antipolis, France, where he traveled extensively throughout Europe.
Suster started his first company in 1999 while headquartered in London - a SaaS platform for large-scale engineering and construction projects including the London Underground, Thames Water, BNP Paribas, and all of the top German construction firms. The company grew to have offices in seven countries before it was sold in 2005..
He then launched his second company, Koral, in San Mateo, California, which l...
While many legendary Silicon Valley companies were founded by teams of two, partnerships aren't without their problems, states venture capitalist Mark Suster. Disagreements arise based on personal life changes, business strategies, and roles within the company. Suster prefers to avoid playing the role of co-founder "marriage counselor" by working with a strong, individual entrepreneur.
Co-founder
While many legendary Silicon Valley companies were founded by teams of two, partnerships aren't without their problems, states venture capitalist Mark Suster. Disagreements arise based on personal life changes, business strategies, and roles within the company. Suster prefers to avoid playing the role of co-founder "marriage counselor" by working with a strong, individual entrepreneur.
Courtesy : Stanford
Mark Zuckerberg is the founder of Facebook, a networking tool used by college students to meet people, reconnect with old friends and arrange events. The company just redesigned its Web site and received venture capital.
Founded as Thefacebook in February 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, Chris Hughes, and Dustin Moskovitz at Harvard, the website spread across campus and, within a few weeks, over half the undergraduate population had registered. The website then expanded to allow students from Columbia, Stanford, and then other Ivy League colleges to register. It became something of a network phenomenon, spreading rapidly to other schools, despite some competition from similar, local websites.
Courtesy: ecorner (ecorner.stanford.edu)
