Jan 29, 2004
Promod Haque-
Rank 1
Age: 55
Occupation: Venture Capitalist
Company: Norwest Venture Partners
First time in the top spot, eclipsing Vinod Khosla, a founder of
Sun Microsystems. Haque
was raised in Delhi, India by a bureaucrat father and school
teacher mom. Dad wanted him to be a doctor. Became a millionaire financier
instead. Studied engineering at the University of Delhi. Postgraduate
work in Siemens' medical group spurred him to learn how to design medical
instrumentation. Moved to the States to get a Ph.D. in electrical engineering
at Northwestern University with only a $4,000 loan from his dad. "I
knew that at the end of the first year if I didn't make enough progress,
I would be out of cash." Says that experience helps him understand
the plight of startups.
Worked for a decade at a string of medical instrumentation companies,
then started vetting ideas for Norwest Venture Partners in 1990. Bought
into the client-server revolution, made his first big scores on Tivoli
and Forte Software. More recent hits: Cerent, Siara, OnDisplay, Extreme
Networks and Winphoria Networks.
Thinks today is like the 1980s: Back then big companies used PCs only
for spreadsheets and word processing. Then networking and the Internet
came along. As bandwidth gets cheaper and mobility increases, more advanced
applications will proliferate. Believes outsourcing abroad is just beginning
and is an absolutely crucial step for even the smallest companies. Long
term, exposing countries like India and China to technology will create
additional markets for U.S. products, he says.
Jan 29, 2004
Vinod Khosla, Rank
2 in 2004
Rank 1 in 2003
Age: 49
Occupation: Venture Capitalist
Company: Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
Deposed king of venture still inspires fantasies of early retirement
among his hard-driven entrepreneurs. Made billion-dollar exits look
easy in the boom: Cerent, Siara, Corvis, Juniper. Went afoul with ExciteAtHome.
Nothing to brag about in 2003. Hopes to reclaim crown with Kovio, Infinera,
OnFiber, Zaplet.
Promod focuses on investments in enterprise software and communication
technologies. Promod was an early investor and a board member of Cerent
Corporation (acquired by Cisco), Siara Systems (acquired by Redback
Networks) and OnDisplay (acquired by Vignette). He seeded Extreme Networks
in 1996. His current investments include, AmberPoint, Inkra Networks,
Virtela Communications, Winphoria Networks and Zettacom. Other notable
investments and previous board seats include Tivoli Systems (acquired
by IBM), Forte Software (acquired by Sun Microsystems), Kiva Software
(acquired by Netscape Communications), Information Advantage (acquired
by Sterling Software), Resonext Communications (acquired by RF Micro
Devices), and Showcase Corporation (acquired by SPSS). Prior to Norwest,
Promod spent 18 years in various operational roles ranging from product
development, marketing, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Executive
Officer at various public and private companies - Siemens International,
Thorn EMI, Emergent Technologies and Dimensional Medicine, Inc. He received
a bachelor of science in electrical engineering from the University
of Delhi, India. He holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Northwestern
University and an MBA from Northwestern's Kellogg Graduate School of
Management, where he serves on the advisory board.
Khosla, Vinod # 445 on World's Richest People 2002 , # 490 on World's
Richest People 2001 , # 365 on Forbes 400 2003 , # 391 on Forbes 400
2002 , # 246 on Forbes 400 2001 , # 274 on Forbes 400 2000 , # 243 on
Forbes 400 1999 , # 1 on Midas 2003 , # 2 on Midas 2002
Click here: Vinod
Khosla