Vinod Khosla

When I started doing things on my own, I was figuring - remember, it was a very nascent market. And there was a lot that was unknown about the renewable marketplace in 2004, early 2003, when I was planning on it.

New industries are created by entrepreneurs who don't necessarily have subject matter expertise when they get started, yet they are still responsible for most of the innovation we see in society.

We love serious technology innovations, and there is a strong bias towards large technology innovations that are sort of disruptive to the current market.

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.

You take something like RingCentral. It doesn't need any more money or financing: it is relatively mature, recurring revenue business - not really worried - but you know, we could sell it tomorrow. We have not been in a rush to sell it. We don't care about exits as much. We care about building fundamental value.

Our focus is not on exit. In fact if you talk to any of my entrepreneurs, I'm generally saying, 'Don't sell the company,' when other investors want to sell. I'd much rather focus on building long-term value in building companies rather than worrying about exits.

What an entrepreneur does is to build for the long run. If the market is great, you get all of the resources you can. You build to it. But a good entrepreneur is always prepared to throttle back, put on the brakes, and if the world changes, adapt to the world.

There's a big difference between needs and requirements for grid-based electricity versus those for distributed rural homes or remote locations, or even rooftop solar, where photovoltaics do OK. The more economical a technology is, the faster we'll see adoption.

The bulk of the utility industry today believes that coal and nuclear are the only solutions we have. Nuclear is greener but has the other issues. Coal, they think, can be transformed into the so-called clean coal technologies.

First, you should take money and have plenty of money fueling your tank. But money becomes dangerous if you assume it's going to keep coming. Make sure you can get your burn rate to a sustainable level if you hit the brakes hard, within 90 days.

Certain food-based biofuels like biodiesel have always been a bad idea. Others like corn ethanol have served a useful purpose and essentially are obsoleting themselves.

My life is full of way more mistakes than successes.