Silicon Valley is an amazing place to be in as you can find yourself interacting with many smart people from almost any part of the world. Still today, it continues to make an enormous impact in the society and our day to day lives in an amazing way with new technologies and innovations. There is no single day when one or two articles appear highlighting the accomplishments of enterprising and risk-taking entrepreneurs.


The support system within the realm of an innovative ecosystem that exists here between angel investors, venture capital, risk-taking entrepreneurs, legal and advisory firms and determined and passionate entrepreneurs embarking on solving the next big problem is absolutely fascinating. This month's article brings to you a generous angel investor, advisor and highly successful executive who has helped many of these young entrepreneurs from his advice, connections to the global companies and global markets such as Japan. Tsuyoshi Taira, Founder and CEO of Tazan International, a Venture Capital and Management Consultancy Firm, has been involved as founding investor and director with a number of Silicon Valley startup companies including Silicon Storage Technology (SST), Pico Power Technology Inc. (acquired by Cirrus Logic), Junglee Corporation (acquired by Amazon.com), Armedia (acquired by Broadcom), Apptivity (acquired by Progress Software) and many others. Previously, he was Chairman of Sanyo Semiconductor and he also worked at Fairchild Semiconductor. He has published a number of books including "Audio Amplifier", "Transistor physics And application" as a Co-author and most recently a book on entrepreneurship, "My fellow engineer, let's challenge" from Nikkei BP. Based on my recent discussions with him, here are four key take away (4KTA) points that center on the concept around helping others while going through your entrepreneurial journey.


Helping Others - The most fulfilling and motivating aspect is deriving the enjoyment by helping young entrepreneurs to achieve great things from a mere concept and idea. Despite many successes and many failures, one key ingredient that I find in successful entrepreneurs is their sheer focus on helping and benefiting others including employees, customers and partners. Kazuo Inamori, Founder and Chairman of Kyocera Corporation, is an outstanding example of this. In 1959 he founded Kyocera to focus on ceramic materials that became largest supplier to semiconductor industry. His basic philosophy was focused around employee success. He ensured that as company grows, employees are happier and are able to make a decent living. Make others happy, fulfilled and appreciated. This has been the core foundation of his philosophy. These core principles, when applied by any entrepreneur, can harness and channel the vast pool of creative energy from their team members into successful products thereby creating a well-run and efficient organization. When Inamori came to Silicon Valley during its early days, he noticed that telecom cost was much cheaper here compared to Japan. He felt that there had to be a cheaper way for Japanese people to make calls to their friends and family. To realize that vision, in 1984, he founded KDDI Corporation, now Japan's second-largest telecommunication services provider. Due to his well-respected success, most recently, Japanese government asked him to help restructure Japan Airlines when it entered bankruptcy protection. His Buddhist belief and Confucius philosophy is a part of his life and for whatever he does, he first asks himself, "Does it benefit others, not for me? And I will not do it just for my fame". This mantra continues to guide his success.


Mindset - An entrepreneur must cultivate certain mindset such as anticipating failures, being inherently curious, being able to delegate and following instincts to grow, understand and lead their business. Entrepreneurs with this mindset are the ones who eventually succeed. In addition, they must be passionate and enthusiastic for contributing towards the society and industry to make people's lives better. For instance, when the founder of Pico Power came to me for investment and advice, he was amazingly enthusiastic and passionate about helping the PC industry by improving the issues of heat and power that Intel 486 chips were having at that time. With no further questions, I asked Sanyo Semiconductor to make an investment of $1.5 million dollars, which was unheard of in those days for a Japanese company to invest in a startup idea. The company went on to become successful with its products and was acquired by Cirrus Logic.