Credit: Bart Nagel

For many years a partner at the blue-blooded venture capital firm of Kleiner Perkins ­Caufield and Byers, Vinod Khosla has been called the best venture capitalist in the world by both Forbes and Red ­Herring magazines. Certainly, he has succeeded more grandly and more reliably, and has failed less spectacu­larly, than any of his peers. In 2004, he founded Khosla Ventures, which advises entrepreneurs and invests in his latest area of interest: the clean energy technologies that might replace the burning of coal and oil.

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