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July - 2002 - issue > View From the Top
Is TiE suffering from Page-View Syndrome?
Monday, July 1, 2002

Afforded the luxury of hindsight, we can speculate endlessly on the causes of the great dot-com
crash a few years back, blaming the foolhardy entrepreneurs, the blind venture capitalists, or a greedy Wall
Street. But all this pointless name calling aside, I think it can safely be said that one of the primary sources of the dot-com crash is the fact that many promising start-ups, in the heat of the moment, got swept away with the obsessive desire to increase the pageview of their web sites at any cost. In t h e process, they let
the fundamentals—like revenue generation and customer needs—fall by the wayside. These start-ups suffered, in short, from Page-View Syndrome.



It seems that The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), a Silicon Valley based non-profit organization, has lately fallen victim to the very same syndrome.



TiE’s co-founder, Kanwal Rekhi, points out that TiE “was started to support entrepreneurs from the Indus
region, many of whom felt they were not getting sufficient encouragement and support from mainstream
players.” However, TiE’s annual conference, held in mid-June of 2002, was repeatedly touted to be “the
world’s largest entrepreneurial conference”—notably omitting any reference to Indus entrepreneurs in
particular.



TiE, moreover, was extremely careful to downplay the long-form of its acronym in all recent media advertising. TiE has now been organization created for the advancement of entrepreneurship.”
Out of the hundred speakers at TiE’s conference this year, only about 30% were of Indus origin. In addition, TiE went out of its way to recruit non-Indian founders of successful start-ups to share their stories with conference attendees. Strangely, TiE’s original mission statement—which Rekhi has so forcefully and eloquently laid out— has been gradually eclipsed by TiE’s rapacious need to expand and multiply.



Advertisements for this year’s TiE conference proclaimed that it would be the premier hub to meet
entrepreneurs. Well, everyone seemed to come except entrepreneurs. As reported by Reuters, TiE’s 2002
conference had about 2000 attendees. What Reuters failed to report, however, is that on the day before the
conference, in a desperate bid to boost attendance, each of TiE’s 250 volunteers was given five free passes to distribute freely.



Including the volunteers, then, the number of non-paying attendees amounts to a staggering 1500! If you also add in the one hundred speakers, several representatives from each TiE
chapter in the U.S., vendors setting up booths, and hopeful job seekers, the number of actual entrepreneurs at this year’s conference was abysmal.



It might be objected that the low turnout of entrepreneurs at this year’s TiE conference simply reflects the nation’s current economic doldrums. Although this is undoubtedly true to a certain extent, I think it suggests, more fundamentally, that Indian entrepreneurs have begun to lose faith in TiE’s ability to support their cause.



In a troubling echo of the now-defunct dotcoms of yore, TiE has invested much of its energy into maximizing its “page-views” (namely, garnering a wider audience), thereby losing sight of its core value proposition.



Entrepreneurship is immensely benefited when a passionate entrepreneur finds an experienced predecessor with the time and capital to guide him (or her). Mainstream entrepreneurs usually find mentors in their alumni, family, and friends. TiE, recognizing that these traditional avenues are blocked to many aspiring Indian entrepreneurs, originally set out to help these budding entrepreneurs whose passion and efforts would otherwise have been stymied. The success
stories of such entrepreneurs as Exodus founder, K.B. Chandrasekhar—mentored by Kanwal Rekhi—attest to the value of this strategy.



Now that TiE is caught up in trying to be the “world’s largest” entrepreneurial association, what has happened to its core value proposition? Is TiE creating entrepreneurs or merely taking
credit for Indian entrepreneurs who are successful to begin with? In the case of Exodus, TiE lived up to its mission statement by helping K.B. Chandrasekhar get to the next level. After Exodus, however, there are no stories for TiE to tell.



In their frenzy to grow and expand, Silicon Valley TiE leaders are doing more arm to Indian entrepreneurs than they can comprehend. Indians have always had the “branding” of being good techies and engineers, but in order for Indians to prove that they make good managers and entrepreneurs, they have had to transform their traditional branding.



Despite its Herculean efforts to be all-inclusive, TiE has always been—and will surely continue to be—perceived as an association of Indian entrepreneurs. As such, TiE plays a crucial role in the way Indians in the U.S. are branded. How will Indian entrepreneurs be perceived if there are no young role models speaking at a conference purportedly created and designed to help them? What kind of branding are they generating when they have to sit through Deepak Chopra’s proselytizing on “mind, body, and soul,” or when TiE has to enlist Bali Brahmbhatt, the “King of Indian Pop,” to attend its conference? TiE goes around boasting that 30% of Silicon Valley start-ups have an Indus connection. Even if this is true, how in the world does it benefit budding entrepreneurs trying to survive these tough times? It may satisfy the inflated egos of retired leaders with millions in their bank accounts, but many of us are still struggling and
such statements do nothing to further our entrepreneurial efforts.



In the hey-day, TiE organizers made billions by investing in hot start-ups spearheaded by
Indian entrepreneurs. In these darker times, has TiE established a fund to help out struggling
Indian entrepreneurs with a temporary line of credit? Does a charter member of TiE offer his
services free of charge to a company on the verge of bankruptcy? Shouldn’t TiE mention the
companies that failed as well as those that succeeded with TiE’s involvement? We know that
there are more failures than successes in the world of entrepreneurship, and a non-profit
organization is shirking its duties if it fails to share the experiences of these less fortunate
companies. Indian entrepreneurs need coaching from a leader, not another preacher from an MBA
school.



This is undoubtedly a difficult time for entrepreneurship. Being in the publication business, we know this as well as anyone else. But this does not mean that you abandon your core goals. As part of my job, I constantly meet Indian entrepreneurs in the Valley. Since I co-founded the New York chapter of TiE and, therefore, still feel some degree of ownership, I ask these entrepreneurs, “Is TiE helping you?” Surprisingly, eighty percent of the time, the answer is a firm “No.”



TiE—preoccupied with opening new chapters, going on cruises with chosen members, and parading around in motorcades in Malaysia—no longer seems to have the time to listen to, and mentor, Indian entrepreneurs. In Silicon Valley, new ventures come and go on a daily basis. When a company fails, it usually only hurts its employees, investors, and management. But when a non-profit organization representing people of a certain ethnic background veers in the wrong direction, entire communities are adversely affected. With the direction that “page-view”-obsessed TiE seems to be headed, we can only hope that this doesn’t happen. TiE needs to step back and evaluate its core purpose, and then come forth to spell out what they stand for.










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