Billionaire venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures, sat for The WSJ Money Interview to dissect whether the American Dream hinges on luck or skill. The India-born investor, who built a fortune backing early-stage technology companies, applied the framework to topics ranging from entrepreneurial success to his public social-media clashes, including at least one with Elon Musk.

Khosla's perspective carries weight in Silicon Valley circles where his firm has seeded transformative companies across clean energy, artificial intelligence, and biotechnology. The interview surfaces a debate that shapes how limited partners allocate capital: whether venture returns stem from repeatable process or unpredictable outliers. Khosla's own trajectory — immigrating to the U.S. and co-founding Sun Microsystems before launching his venture firm — exemplifies the immigrant-founder archetype that has driven disproportionate value creation in U.S. tech.

The feud with Musk, while personal, underscores how public disputes among tech titans can influence market sentiment and talent flows. For investors, Khosla's calculus on luck versus skill offers a lens for evaluating fund managers: distinguishing between managers who consistently identify asymmetric bets versus those who benefited from a single vintage's tailwind.