“I prefer brutal honesty to hypocritical politeness. 99% of the world only does hypocritical politeness. Oh, you're doing great. How does that help you? What's actionable? Hey, you're screwing up in this area. Do something about it. Is actionable.”
Summation with Auren Hoffman · Startups & Venture · November 2026
Context
Auren Hoffman compared Vinod Khosla to a tough coach whom players don't always like but who wins. Khosla agrees and says this has been his firm's motto since 2004.
Transcript
…help an entrepreneur be as good as they can to create as big a business, as impactful a business as they can create. That's sort of what's really fun for me. Why I'm learning so much at age 71, going on 72. And I'm not slowing down. It's just too much fun, way more fun than playing golf or sailing.
…at least when I hear about when people talk about Vinod Khosla without you there, it's like it's like of this like amazing coach that kind of the players don't always like, but who brings out like the greatness in the players and keeps winning championships. Do you think that's a fair comparison?
Yeah, that is a fair comparison. And if I can help create, look, I don't want to work with entrepreneurs who don't want honest direct feedback. Since we started our firm in 2004, I've had a phrase on there that's the highlight. I prefer brutal honesty to hypocritical politeness. 99% of the world only does Hippocratical politeness. Oh, you're doing great. How does that help you? What's actionable? Hey, you're screwing up in this area. Do something about it. Is actionable. And here's what you should do. I'll give you a story. Around the year 2000, I was on the board of a company. I won't say which one with three prominent venture capitalists of that era on the board. After the dot-com mania, everybody had lots of cash. This company had $50 million in their bank account and going on a path that I didn't think would work. I told them it wouldn't work and what they should do about it, how they should do things different. The other VCs just kept saying, polite things, you're doing great. You know, you have lots of runway. Four years…
So they let you kind of be like the bad guy or something like that. Yeah, I
was the bad guy. I eventually told the entrepreneur, I'm getting off the board. That was my solution. His next startup, he only did with me, not the other VCs. In retrospect, he liked the fact he was getting feedback others weren't giving him.
Yeah.
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