Network Computingwww.networkcomputing.com

In the early 1980s, at the age of 27, Khosla co-founded Sun Microsystems. A year later he joined up with Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers (KPCB) as a venture capitalist for emerging technologies. The roster of companies that count him as a current or past board member includes Asera, Cerent Corp., Concentric Network Corp., Corio, Corvis Corp., Excite@Home, Juniper Networks, Qwest Communications and Siara Systems.

Recognizing the importance of communications infrastructure early on, Khosla laid the cornerstones on which many enterprises were built. Companies such as Excite, Juniper Networks and Qwest Communications would not be where they are today without Khosla's support, both financial and intellectual. He has stepped outside the traditional venture-capitalist mentality and become an architect who is just as concerned about building the company as he is about building his own fortune.

Specializing in the optical market, Khosla funded Cerent--a good investment indeed, as Cisco Systems eventually bought the company for an impressive $6.9 billion.

He also funded Siara Systems, which produced high-speed metropolitan-area and broadband fiber optic network equipment, and was purchased last year by Redback Networks for a cool $4.3 billion. And Khosla's most successful venture to date is Juniper Networks, the router company that competes handily with Cisco, producing the fastest routers at the core of the Internet. Juniper's market cap? The company is already worth more than $62 billion. That's three companies totaling close to $73 billion in value.

In his early days at Sun Microsystems, Khosla participated in the creation of the first and, today, the most successful RISC-based platform, proving that there's a world beyond the Wintel phenomenon. And as a champion of the optical market, Khosla has made investments that have been (excuse the pun) right on the money. It's no secret that optical networking remains one of the hottest investment areas; optical is the technology that drives every long-haul data network. Sooner or later, every voice and data transmission will travel over fiber until it gets to the last mile of distribution--and Khosla saw it coming.

Acting as the mastermind behind KPCB's communications and e-business strategies, Khosla will continue to play a crucial role in many of tomorrow's success stories. In addition to his interest in optical technology, Khosla is actively pursuing the ASP (application service provider) market: Attempting to kick-start that somewhat reluctant market, he's stepped up to the plate and launched Asera and Corio. Although the ASP market hasn't developed as quickly as he'd like, his bullish outlook on it should pay off handsomely in the long run.

So if you're looking to find the next hot growth area in technology, remember, the wise money often follows Khosla.