Spawned in Pune, India. My parents wanted me to join the army, but I had other plans. I fell in love with entrepreneurship after learning how Andy Grove immigrated to the U.S. and started Intel.

Started the first programming club at IIT Delhi. Wrote a paper on parallel processing before the concept took off in the IT industry. Tried (and failed) to start a soy milk company for the many in India without refrigerators.

Decided it was time to head to America. Got into Carnegie Mellon for a master’s in Biomedical Engineering. Stanford MBA program? Rejected twice before I finally got in.

Graduated from Stanford GSB and co-founded Daisy Systems—the first big deal in computer-aided design for electrical engineers. Significant revenue, profits, IPO.

Co-founded Sun Microsystems. It started because I was frustrated building computer hardware for Daisy software. At Sun, as founding CEO, I pioneered open systems and commercial RISC processors. Longtime friend John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins funded the company.

Sun Microsystems

Joined Kleiner Perkins as a general partner. Helped take on Intel’s monopoly by building Nexgen (later acquired by AMD), which became Intel’s only serious competitor. Incubated Juniper Networks to challenge Cisco in routers—KPCB got a 2,500x return. Involved in Excite’s ad-based search strategy. Disrupted telecommunications with Cerent Corp., acquired by Cisco in 1999 for $7.2 billion.

Forbes

Invested in OpenAI.

OpenAI

Joined Extraordinary Club.