This content was created by GHION.AI . This content was uploaded by GHION.AI . This is a YouTube video titled "Vinod Khosla: Entrepreneurship is the Driving Engine of the Economy" (recorded 2011-10-17). The excerpt is from a seminar/Q&A where a moderator (SPEAKER A) asks for career advice for students nearing graduation and Vinod Khosla responds. Khosla urges pursuing entrepreneurship only if it is a passion, stresses the importance of deep knowledge and expertise, comments on shifts in funding environments (periods of cheap money versus tighter conditions over the next few years), and remarks that investors often act from fear and greed. The clip is advisory in tone and aimed at students/early‑career professionals.
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Turning back the clock one more time. So we're back in the '70s and we're about to graduate. How many people in this room are just about to graduate in the next 6 months? Okay, and the next year, put up your hands over the next year. Yeah, so we have quite a few that are thinking about the next stage of their career, just like we were, you know, getting out of engineering school in those days. But given the circumstances right now, I know if I— and I remember 2 or 3 years ago in this very same seminar, everybody was either, you know, going into a startup, going to get involved in a startup, maybe a CEO at 23. But now I hear in my office hours, oh, you know, I don't know, you know, I got to go to an established company or consulting or investment banking if they'll have me. So what's your advice as far as to these young people right now as they look out for this next stage of their career?
So let me just say entrepreneurship is the driving engine of the economy and is going to continue to be the driving engine. So have no doubt about it. So don't give up on the dream if you have the dream. But entrepreneurship is not something you do because it's a career. It's a passion. It has to be a passion. That's what makes it fun. I don't— I've never worked for a living. I literally walk off anything that's not interesting. I work on things that are interesting to me, and it doesn't matter, right? It doesn't matter whether you're building Sun or training a whale. If you have passion, And think about training a whale. It's a pretty difficult job. How do you start, right? How did they do it the first time around? But it's a challenge, and if you have an interest in it, and if you have a passion for it, it can be done. And both are equally hard. So follow your interest and passion, and life is much more fun that way. Trying to do what's expected of you, sort of the career thing, has never appealed to me. I won't tell you it's the wrong thing. I wouldn't advise any of my kids to do it. Right? Having said that, what's even more important is when you do something, you're qualified to do it. Right? So deep knowledge, deep expertise is important. And in this kind of an environment, and the last couple of years we had an environment where money was free. So, if money was free, you could waste lots of it and save something else, like time. In today's environment, and it's probably true for the next 2 or 3 years, but I have no question we will see the cycle of too much money again sometime in the next 5, 6 years. Guaranteed. And Tom reminded me, I talk in this Harvard Business Review article, investors have only two emotions, because they don't have a fundamental belief system by and large. It's fear and greed.
