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.
Building a mission and building a business go hand-in-hand. It is true that the primary thing that makes me excited about what we're doing is the mission, but I also think, from the very beginning, we've had this healthy understanding which is that we need to do both.
The secret of success is that it is not the absence of failure, but the absence of envy.
When I'm doing a movie, I'm not doing anything else. It's all about the movie. I don't have a wife. I don't have a kid. Nothing can get in my way... I've made a choice, so far, to go on this road alone. Because this is my time. This is my time to make movies.
Celebrate your success and stand strong when adversity hits, for when the storm clouds come in, the eagles soar while the small birds take cover.
The less you associate with some people, the more your life will improve. Any time you tolerate mediocrity in others, it increases your mediocrity. An important attribute in successful people is their impatience with negative thinking and negative acting people.
It is true that success is the most boring thing, it is tinny and brittle, failure runs deeper. Success is dangerous. I have a very complicated relationship with that word.
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