This content was created by GHION.AI . This content was uploaded by GHION.AI . This is a YouTube video titled "Vinod Khosla: Taking Risks" featuring a conversation from April 5, 2012, with Vinod Khosla discussing his philosophy on taking risks, entrepreneurship, and personal anecdotes about hang gliding and skydiving.
How old were you?
27. Yes, 27.
And how old was Bill and Andy and Scott?
We were all about the same age. All within a year of each other. Yeah.
Okay, so he says, quote, we had big dreams when I was hang gliding. I remember seeing this motto, quote, success comes to those that dare to dream dreams and are foolish enough to try and make them come true. You have to try to do something extraordinary because unless you try something extraordinary, you won't ever do anything extraordinary. Did you really say that or is that Harvard?
No, no.
You still believe in that philosophy?
I absolutely still believe in that. All of that by the way, is. I don't hang glide anymore.
Yeah, I was going to say, do you still hang glide?
I don't hang glide anymore though I am going to pick it back up again this summer or at least pick up skydiving if not hang gliding. My wife, I made the mistake of taking my wife skydiving and she forbid me from ever going skydiving again.
I just like to see the Kleiner Perkins partners faces when you tell them that.
Well, I have a stronger reason. My daughter who just turned 12 wanted to learn skydiving and 12 is the minimum age so I promised her I'd take her. My wife can't say no. You always want a good excuse to do what you really want to do. But that quote is really important because you really need to stretch. Like I said, entrepreneurs don't have the right to do what they get. It's not a right, it's not even reasonable. And so trying something extraordinary is really important. And then what's equally important is this level of foolishness that that quote talks about. That's not my word. It was at the end of this movie on hang gliding because if you sort of do the rational thing, you wouldn't doing a startup as 4, 20, 70 year olds try and take on IBM and debt. It's just not reasonable. You just have to have that belief in yourself and a level of naivete because you don't really need to know what you can't do because once you come within the reasonable domain, you will be constrained by your belief about what's reasonable. It's really important.
