Summary List Placement About a decade ago, Ben Ling was going about his business as a senior director of product management at Google overseeing its crown jewel, its search products, when he received a surprise phone call from Vinod Khosla, the legendary founder of Khosla Ventures. Top execs at major tech firms hear from VCs all the time, but usually those calls involve things like a startup looking for cofounders or a VC asking for help to vet some technology. In this case, Ling was surprised to learn that Khosla was looking to hire him to become a VC.