A Few Lessons from Vinod Khosla

Photo by TechCrunch

Notes from A Few Lessons from Vinod Khosla by Kristina Simmons.

Khosla Ventures is an investor in Plastiq, a startup where I once ran growth and marketing. However, I’ve never been able to spend time with Vinod Khosla. I appreciated this article by Kristina Simmons on her 3.5 years of spending time with Vinod.

Some of the items I highlighted…

• “Surround yourself with the people you can learn from at the fastest pace”

• “…only work with people who are BOTH smart and nice”

• “It’s not the plan you make, but the people you hire.”

• “Incremental innovation is pretty easy, but to reinvent an industry, it takes thinking outside the current status quo. Our mind is the biggest barrier to reaching a goal.”

• “The only time you can test your values is when you have to give something up.”

• “…a legacy is more than what someone does, it is how they do it, their values, and who they surround themselves with (both professional and personal).”

• “If everyone played it safe, we wouldn’t get anywhere.”

• “You must be comfortably uncomfortable.”

That last one hits home because it’s a slight tweak on the mindset we had as a team at Plastiq during a key stage of hiring and growth: “Get comfortable with being uncomfortable."