If you are afraid of failure, be sure that you will never succeed. If you can see failure in the eye and face challenges, rest assured success will be yours. And Vinod Khosla, a partner in KPCB, is one such man who has looked failure straight into the eye and emerged stronger after every failure. No wonder today he is considered one of the most influential personalities in Silicon Valley. Khosla's capacity to work hard has become almost a legend. A partner in the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Khosla today is considered semi-retired, which means he's only working 80 hours a week.

That is how Forbes describes him in its 2005 Midas list. But Khosla says he chose his current work arrangement because of his kids. "For the next four or five years, they're all going to go through high school, and it's pretty important for me that I have the flexibility of my time and schedule," he told in an interview recently. No wonder, for the man knows his strength lies with his family. Born in 1955 to an army family in New Delhi, Khosla did his BTech from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.

Immediately thereafter, he tried to start his own company - a dream he had been nurturing since the age of 15. But it didn't click and he went to the US and did his MS in biomedical sciences at Carnegie Mellon. Later, he also earned an MBA from Stanford University. Khosla had promised to himself that he would become a millionaire by the age of 30. And with that in mind, found a business idea and partners from Standford business club.

Together, they launched Daisy Systems, a computer-aided engineering and design company. But this venture too collapsed, as the market was not ready for his visionary step. At the age of 27, Khosla again launched the third company - the Sun Microsystems with his friends and colleagues and ran it until 1885. In 1986, he joined Kleiner Perkins, a firm that had funded Sun as a general partner. During his tenure at this VC firm, he played key roles in starting companies that are involved in multimedia, semiconductors, video games, Internet software and computer networking.

In fact, Khosla was the man behind the idea to optimize Sonet for data, a scheme that led to the creation of Cerent Corp, a telecommunications-equipment company, which Cisco acquired in 1999 for $6.9 billion. He was also instrumental in launching Juniper Networks. Among other firms he helped with funding are Viant, Extreme Networks and Lightera. Known for his global reach and understanding of international IT business, Khosla was also one of the founding fathers of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE). But now Khosla is concentrating on investing solo and in science projects - research-based projects that produce breakthrough technologies. Khosla who lives in Woodside, California, with his wife and four daughters, believes in closeness of the family. Probably, it's the family, which is the fountain of his boundless energy that gives him enthusiasm to work more and more and achieve greater heights of excellence.