BANGALORE, INDIA: Serial entrepreneur and renowned Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla launched the TiE Entrepreneurial Summit (TES) 2011 in Bangalore on Tuesday.

At the curtain-raiser event for the summit to be held December 15-16, Khosla went down memory lane about his Stanford days and his early career.

"Personally, I like the Stanford story a lot. As the university mandated two years experience, I took up two full-time jobs in one year when at Carnegie Mellon. After a lot of persistence, I was put on the wait list of Harvard... when one guy dropped out of the course, I told them that I would be his replacement and got in. It's about your selling skills on why should someone bet on you," narrated Khosla.

He also said that since he started out early, he didn't have anything to lose. "I am proud to have started a computer club at IIT, Delhi, though as a hobby."

The co-founder of Sun Microsystems exhorted entrepreneurs to make the consequences of failures small and try different versions of their mistakes to succeed. "Never repeat your mistakes, make something new."

More often than not, people's gut instinct about what to to was right, only how they did it was not, said Khosla, adding, "Analyze which part of your plan failed and don't be religious about what you think is right. Being passionate about what you do will help you face any adverse situation."

Failure, according to him, was never an option and it is important for entrepreneurs to think that they know more than what they actually did with an air of arrogance.