Khosla Venture's Samir Kaul on building an iconic, durable firm, and the role of non-consensus decision making

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.

We have a conversation with Samir Kaul from Khosla Ventures. 

Founded in 2004, Khosla is one of the largest and most well-known venture capital firms in the world and led by legendary investor and entrepreneur Vinod Khosla. The firm is known for investing in companies that are solving very large and complex problems. The firm currently has over $15B in AUM investing in companies such as Square, Doordash, Stripe, OpenAI, and Impossible Foods.

During the episode, we covered investing across cycles, the market insanity we saw pre-2022, and how they approach both building a firm and investing.

Note: We recorded this prior to the news that Keith Rabois was rejoining the firm, hence no mention of it during the discussion.

About Samir Kaul:Samir Kaul is a Founding Partner and Managing Director at Khosla Ventures, and he specializes in investments across health, sustainability, food, and advanced technology sectors. His notable investments leading to successful exits through IPOs or acquisitions include companies like Vicarious Surgical, View, Guardant Health, Nutanix, Oscar, Quantumscape, Granular, SLD, NanoH2O, Iora Health, and Raxium. Additionally, he has played a pivotal role in investments in transformative startups such as Impossible Foods, Mojo Vision, Primer, and many others, demonstrating a keen eye for identifying and nurturing groundbreaking technologies and business models.

Before joining Khosla Ventures, Samir's career was marked by significant achievements in biotechnology and venture capital at Flagship Ventures and the Institute for Genomic Research, where he contributed to pioneering efforts in genomics and biotech startups like Helicos BioSciences and Codon Devices. His work in sequencing the Arabidopsis genome set new standards for efficiency and impact in the field of genomics. Beyond his professional endeavors, Samir is deeply committed to philanthropy, serving on the boards of the Tipping Point Community, UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital, and the US Ski and Snowboard Association, showcasing his dedication to societal betterment and healthcare.

In this episode, we discuss:

(01:45) Samir’s career path to venture

(05:15) Traits of Successful Entrepreneurs

(06:04) Building Long-term Companies

(08:49) Venture Capital's Role Beyond Funding

(12:13) Evolution of Venture Capital

(16:15) AI and Tech Super Cycles

(22:24) Learning from Past Mistakes

(28:03) Investing in High Conviction Trends

(32:33) Firm Culture and Decision Making

(37:17) Hiring and Building a VC Team

(39:12) Advice to Younger Self

I’d love to know what you took away from this conversation with Samir. Follow me @SamirKaji and give me your insights and questions with the hashtag #ventureunlocked. If you’d like to be considered as a guest or have someone you’d like to hear from (GP or LP), drop me a direct message on Twitter.

Podcast Production support provided by Agent Bee