Tie Silicon Valley Celebrates 25 Years

The Indus Entrepreneurs (Tie) celebrated its silver jubilee at its annual two- day conference in Santa Clara in California on Friday and Saturday, May 5th and 6th.

The Santa Clara Convention Center came alive with schmoozing and socialising of veteran Tie members including some founding members, charter members and many new and old entrepreneurs and other professionals from all over the globe. Insightful and interesting panel sessions and keynotes by industry experts on Machine Learning, Internet of Things, Security, Digital Health and others were very popular amongst the attendees.

Twenty Five years of the organisation's formation was celebrated by honouring the founding team that includes Stalwarts like Kanwal Rekhi, Suhas Patil, Kailash Joshi, AJ Patel, amongst others. With humble beginnings of the entrepreneurs club with seven members, today, the nonprofit has become an extremely vibrant and successful global entrepreneurial ecosystem with chapters all over the world. The organisation was christened as the Indus entrepreneurs to be inclusive of all entrepreneurs from all the nations of the region.

The members narrated their experiences of coming together in December 1992 with the intent of giving back via mentoring young entrepreneurs eager to walk the difficult but hugely rewarding path of entrepreneurship.

"Our mission was always to make Tie a global organisation. That vision started taking shape in 1997 when Tie expanded beyond Silicon Valley to Southern California and other regions in the US. In 1998, Tie entered India by engaging with Parsi businessmen that led to the formation of three chapters in India starting with the chapter in Delhi." Said Kanwal Rekhi, second President of Tie.

To reinvigorate and move with the times, the organisation has introduced some new initiatives like the Influential Circle comprised of over 6000 domain experts that the entrepreneurs can connect with virtually to get rapid mentoring and answers. In the same vein and in keeping with the core Tie mission of engagement with entrepreneurs and making a difference, programs for late stage tech startups from all over the world has also been introduced. The mature stage tech startups via the Tie mentors can get the needed visibility that they need for partnerships and other alliances.

"Our challenge now is to take the innovation, the creativity and the spirit that fills Silicon Valley to across the US. This nation is so deeply divided as the wages have not grown for the bottom 40% while jobs and wages continue to grow in Silicon Valley. It's time for The Valley to show the same leadership and innovation and answer the call for leadership to other regions in the US that desperately need leadership and belief in education and jobs and mentorship in how to grow jobs. There's not a better time when people in Silicon Valley can step up and help the country grow economically and help people in the middle class to be a part of the 21st century economy. I am so happy to be a representative of this district and I would not have got here without many of you and I am honoured to have come to share a few words," opined Ro Khanna, the Congressman from the region.

Ro's comments were followed by a keynote by Tim Draper one of US's most successful venture capitalists. Vish Mishra, the convention's co-chair and a past president of Tie introduced him and mentioned how humbly and generously Tim had donated half a million dollars for Tsunami relief.

Then Tim took the audience on a journey of his investment days in companies like Hotmail and Skype. "You entrepreneurs will do whatever it takes to make great things happen, to change the world and make our lives better.it is wonderful to see new technologies transform old industries. We are all focused towards that. I believe that there are highly regulated industries that are giving bad service at high cost. Real estate, insurance, manufacturing and others also need transformation. Even the venture capital industry, accounting, legal and others will be completely changed by Smart Contracts, Crowdsourcing, Bitcoin and other emerging industries in the next five to ten years," said Draper.

He went on to talk about Marketplace of how this new technology with companies like Uber and Airbnb have changed the taxi and rental markets and how similar things will be happening to other services too. "Keep your eyes open for new technologies and when you see it transform one industry, think of all others that it can change and if it's an industry that you know well, jump on the bandwagon," suggested Draper.