Vinod Khosla: To do something exceptional, you have to be willing to fail

Not being willing to fail means generally that you'll not take any risks, you won't do anything new and innovative. And if you don't do something new and innovative, you're doing what everybody else is to do something exceptional, you have to do something out of the ordinary. And that usually means risk. If you're doing the ordinary stuff, the low risk stuff, you're doing what everybody else knows how to do and will do. The way I put it, I'd rather have a high probability of failure and a large consequence of success than reduce risk to the point where my probability of success is high and the consequences of success are inconsequential. And I think that happens in a lot of startup companies. As much as you want to try and not fail without being willing to fail, you're not going to succeed in a big way, because you're not going to take big risks.