PDF: 2962 pages, 5.2 MB - Bay Area Council Economic Institute

A Diverse, Vibrant Community
TiE has forums for experienced and young CEOs to meet and exchange ideas, and for members
to discuss specific cross-border business challenges as well as broad economic and policy trends
as they relate to entrepreneurship. An annual job fair connects members with startup companies
that have job openings. Through a mentoring clinic, charter members advise young entrepreneurs
with early stage companies or startup business plans. The TiE Institute acts as an “entrepreneurial
university,” offering global business strategy and management education taught by
charter members. A women’s forum enables women members to form distinct professional networks
of trusted relationships. A TiE Salon organizes charter member events centered on arts,
music and science.
Special interest groups (SIGs) link up experienced entrepreneurs, executives and venture investors
with interest in specific industries such as the Internet, networking, consumer technologies,
software, semiconductors and wireless communications. A relatively new initiative, TiE Life
Sciences, focuses on the convergence of life sciences and other technologies by enabling networking
across disciplines.
TiE has emerged over the years as the preeminent Indian business organization in the Bay Area,
but its dramatic worldwide success and expansion have not come without growing pains.
TiE Re-Examines its Mission
Can there be such a thing as too much success? At age 16, TiE
faces an identity crisis.
During the 1990s, the organization played a key role in building a
robust professional network of Indian engineers, entrepreneurs
and investors in the Bay Area, beginning with Silicon Valley. Its
concentration on business formation, wealth creation and mentorship
nurtured a number of well-known Indian-owned and managed
startups, such as Brocade Communications, Juniper Networks,
Hotmail and Wind River Systems. It is estimated that the TiE network
helped originate or enable as much as $100 million in venture
and angel investment in Silicon Valley tech enterprises during its
first decade.
But in the early years of this decade, the organization drifted: Y2K
work gradually tapered off, the Internet bubble burst, and crossborder
business activity slowed in the post-1997, post-9/11, post-
SARS landscape. In response, TiE expanded beyond tech and
Silicon Valley to more broadly translate the best entrepreneurial
practices of Silicon Valley—innovation, good corporate governance,
increased productivity through technology, flexible financing
alternatives—to the overseas South Asian diaspora.
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