Vinod Khosla: Your willingness to fail is what will let you succeed

Explicit content warning

06/01/21 • 32 min

Vinod Khosla is a Silicon Valley legend, having achieved greatness as a founder with Sun Microsystems and as one of the best venture capitalists of all time. In this episode, Mike Maples, Jr of Floodgate talks to Vinod about why it's wrong for breakthrough builders to play it safe and how to turn the odds in your favor when setting out to build a massive breakthrough. Check out the Pattern Breakers Blog at patternbreakers.substack.com for even more Pattern Breaking content from Mike. Mike's book Pattern Breakers is available now wherever you buy books. Follow Mike on X!

Previous Episode

Breakthrough Lessons: Design your category

Startups change the future so they MUST be different, rather than better. Christopher Lochhead shows us how category designers realize that different is believable from a startup, but better is not. Any powerful startup idea pre-supposes an exponentially different future, which means your startup MUST change the way the people think about the future rather than incrementally improve on the products they already use. Different forces a choice rather than a comparison. And different sticks, while better gets lost in the noise. In this lesson of greatness, we cover the specific steps involved in applying category design to your startup. Check out the Pattern Breakers Blog at patternbreakers.substack.com for even more Pattern Breaking content from Mike. Mike's book Pattern Breakers is available now wherever you buy books. Follow Mike on X!

Next Episode

Breakthrough Lessons: Why you must master risk-taking to seize greatness

Most people think that risk should be avoided. But Vinod Khosla teaches us otherwise...Risk is something people *take* when they create breakthroughs. This lesson of greatness talks about the key frameworks for why this is the case as well as how to take risks intelligently to tilt the odds in your favor. Check out the Pattern Breakers Blog at patternbreakers.substack.com for even more Pattern Breaking content from Mike. Mike's book Pattern Breakers is available now wherever you buy books. Follow Mike on X!