Forbes Midas list- 2 NRIs Top Rank 1 & 2

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




Rank Name Title Company

1 Promod Haque VC Norwest Venture Partners
2 Vinod Khosla VC Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

3 David Strohm VC Greylock
4 L John Doerr VC Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
5 Lawrence Sonsini L Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati
6 Michael Grimes B Morgan Stanley
7 Paul Chamberlain B Morgan Stanley
8 J Peter Wagner VC Accel Partners
9 Charles Cory B Morgan Stanley
10 Seth Neiman VC Crosspoint Venture Partners
11 Roger Evans VC Greylock
12 Geoffrey Yang VC Redpoint Ventures
13 Peter Mills VC AtVentures
14 Michael Goguen VC Sequoia Capital
15 William Savoy VC Vulcan Ventures
16 Kevin Compton VC Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
17 David Spreng VC Crescendo Ventures
18 Rob L Soni VC Matrix Partners
19 Tench Coxe VC Sutter Hill Ventures
20 Todd Dagres VC Battery Ventures
21 James Barksdale VC General Atlantic Partners
22 Roger McNamee VC Silver Lake Partners
23 James W Breyer VC Accel Partners
24 Robert Davoli VC Sigma Partners
25 Peter Morris VC New Enterprise Associates