Connect with a Mentor
Mentor Connect
Mentor Connect is a flagship program where a structured environment for Mentorship is provided to TiEcon attendees
Timings: Cohort A : 9:00 AM to 10:00 AM PT | Cohort B: 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM PT
Register for a TiEcon Pass
Who should attend
- A wantrepreneur looking to validate your idea
- A novice entrepreneur looking for guidance
- A startup founder looking for advise to pivot his/her startup
How is it done
- 60 min time slot with mentor and mentee - done virtually
- A time slot is booked ahead of the event
- In a small setting (typically 8-10 mentees)
Who are our mentors
- Highly accomplished business professionals
- Silicon Valley veterans and domain experts
- Serial entrepreneurs with a proven track record
Track Chairs
Mentors
As LinkedIn's top Career Coach, Dilip has worked with over 6,500 clients globally since launching his own—fifth—career during the Valley's downturn in 2001. Dilip's specialty is reinvention and he has pioneered the concept of an Inductive Résumé, which helps clients take their career from the known to the unknown. Together, with his genius-discovery tool (Unique Skills), Inductive Résumé, and forward-looking messages, Dilip has made several breakthroughs in how professionals should project their message and manage their careers through compelling verbal branding. This messaging strategy is particularly valuable to those pursuing their start-up dreams to get themselves the right investor and market audiences.
Based in the Silicon Valley, Dilip often works with professionals, from those just launching their careers, to start-up entrepreneurs, C-level executives, and business owners to coach them to be effective in their pursuits. His clients from 23 countries are diverse: From entrepreneurs, physicians, movie starts, to technology professionals. Dilip's previous careers include heading an engineering organization in a Fortune-100 high-tech company, working as a technology consultant, as a marketing consultant, and as a leadership-effectiveness coach.
Dilip has authored five books and has published articles in Harvard Business Review, Chief Executive, and other publications. His weekly career thoughts appear on his website, on LinkedIn, and in widely syndicated blogs by other publishers, enjoying wide readership. He also holds two technology patents. Dilip holds degrees from IIT-B and Stanford.
Prabakar is Chief Strategist and Co-founder of The Fabric. Prabakar has a successful track record as a serial entrepreneur. Previously, Prabakar drove Juniper's content and media strategy and the technology for its media delivery infrastructure solutions, which an outgrowth of Juniper's acquisition of Ankeena, which he co-founded with Rajan. Before Ankeena, Prabakar was at Citrix Systems, driving the technology vision and product strategy of the company's Application Networking Group. Prabakar joined Citrix via its acquisition of NetScaler Inc., where he served as CTO and EVP of Strategic Planning and Corporate Development.
Prior to Netscaler, Prabakar was Senior VP of Technology at Exodus Communications. Prabakar has over 25 years of leadership experience in the hi- tech industry where he has held a variety of executive positions spanning engineering, marketing, and business strategy at companies such as Intel, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM. Prabakar has served on the board of directors and/or technical advisory board of several companies and is a charter member of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE). Prabakar holds an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and B.S. in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.
Dr Sanjit Dang has been a successful Venture Capitalist, Corporate Executive, Board Member, Speaker and Writer in Silicon Valley for almost two decades. He is currently the Co-Founder and Chairman of U First Capital. They provide Venture Capital as a Service to Corporations by bringing Startups, University IP, etc in the Corporate's specific areas of interest (dedicated model). Prior to that, he was at Intel Capital where he had an excellent track record of driving 1 Exit every year: DocuSign (IPO 2018), Body Labs (AI startup, Acquired by Amazon in 2017 within 2 years of leading Series A investment), Voke (Acquired by Intel in 2016 within 7 months of leading Series A investment), Maginatics (Acquired by EMC in 2015 within 1 year of leading investment) and Basis Science (Acquired by Intel in 2014 within 1 year of investment).
He has been an Investor and on the Board of several companies, including True Fit (AI for eCommerce, Raised $100M), Reflektion (AI recommendation for eCommerce, Raised $42M), Helpshift (AI-driven Customer Service, Raised $38M) and Enlighted (Smart Lighting, Acquired by Siemens in 2018). He is also an investor in Mirantis (Cloud Computing, raised >$100M), GoodData (SaaS Business Intelligence, raised over $100M) and Arcadia Data (Big Data 2.0, Raised $26M).
Sanjit has over a decade of Exec leadership experience in Product Design, Business Development and Strategy across several domains: Big Data, Natural Language Processing, 3D Camera/Apps, Supply-Chain Analytics and Flash Memory. He has managed $2Bill/year accounts and executed >30 partnership deals in $100M-$2Bill range. Always striving to be ahead of the curve, Sanjit worked on Big Data Analytics before industry created the term 'Big Data'. Similarly, he launched 2 online courses during graduate school in 1999 and published iconic papers on learnings, way before the MOOC revolution started.
A hands-on executive whose passion is to solve tough problems by building new products that significantly improve consumer experience, reduce complexity or save money. Have both big company and startup experience in product development and service delivery space - including executing necessary steps along the way from idea conception to assembling talent to fundraising to converting the idea into a product and an exciting business.
Currently the co-founder & CEO of Blendid, a food robotics startup. Prior to this, co-founded Retrevo - a consumer product discovery and eCommerce company recognized by Time Magazine as the Best Shopping Website of 2011 and acquired by Barnes & Noble where I led sales & merchandising for NOOK, co-founded Telseon - a metro broadband service provider that offered services at 1/10th of the cost compared to then incumbent service offerings (acquired by OnFiber/Qwest Communications), and incubated wireless business at Extreme Networks that made large scale deployment of wireless network a breeze in enterprise environments.
Entrepreneur, CEO and Advisor to many software startups in the Mobile and SaaS areas. I have been lucky to get many wins along the way including four successful exits as a Founder - Veraz going public on NASDAQ, Espresso Logic acquired by CA, CyLAN acquired by Hifn and Internetware acquired by Symantec.
Helping Entrepreneurs is my passion and some of the ways I do that is by teaching next generation entrepreneurs at Northeastern University and UC Berkeley, mentoring at Google Launchpad and by contributing my time to TiE Silicon Valley where I am also a board member. Helped organize many TiEcon; one of the largest entrepreneur conferences in the world.
My purpose is to engage strategically with some of the most exciting startups on a global basis. Strategic engagement would entail understanding your strategic priorities on technology, products, go-to-market, expansion plans etc and then bring the global resources of Amazon ( not just AWS) to the table to see how we can accelerate your customer success and business growth. Strategist. CEO/GM. Built 5 Category Leaders. TedX Speaker.
Senior Executive with demonstrated success in guiding technology companies from market entry through rapid business growth and market share leadership.
SiliconValley Bank
Priya is the Managing Director at Silicon Valley Bank. As the Market Lead for India, MENA and SEA, she provides international market entry advice and introductions with a focus on technology and innovation cross-border companies, entrepreneurs and venture capital funds in emerging markets. Prior to this role she was Director of Early Stage practice. Priya calls on her experience, expertise and connections to champion a more inclusive innovation economy. She works closely with community and diversity ecosystem partners, including Change Catalyst, Kapor Capital, Big Brothers Big Sisters Organization, Women Who Code, and more. Other university partners Priya has partnered with include Dorm Room Fund, The House Fund, Stanford Venture Studio and Rough Draft Ventures.
Through her work at SVB, Priya supports entrepreneurs who strive to make the world a better place, and she echoes that commitment in her free time as well. She's on the board of Big Brothers Big Sisters and of Women Who Code, an organization dedicated to helping women to excel in technology careers. In addition, Priya is a charter member of TiE, a nonprofit focused on nurturing the next generation of entrepreneurs, as well as a venture partner at Xfund, which connects venture capital firms with superior research universities and advisor at Entrepreneurship at Cornell University.
In my role as Chief Information Officer, I oversee the firm's technology development and deployment of digital, experience-centric wealth management solutions—which enhance the advisor's ability to seamlessly connect solutions and access data, and allow investors to work with their advisor in a way that is intuitive, integrated and flexible. As a member of both Pershing's Executive Committee and BNY Mellon's Senior Leadership Team, I'm closely involved in the firm's strategic direction and actively collaborate with my colleagues across the enterprise.
I serve as a spokesperson on technology trends and issues, and have been featured in financial publications including Investment News and ThinkAdvisor, and on Bloomberg Radio. I'm also a regular keynote speaker and panelist at industry events and conferences.
Alagu earned a BE in Electrical and Electronics Engineering at the Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS), Pilani, India and a MS in Computer Science at North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA.
National Grid Partners
Raghu is a Director at National Grid Partners investing in early stage companies in the broad enterprise SW vertical. Raghu has 20+ years of experience with technology, capital markets, and IP/innovation.
He comes from SRI Ventures and GE Ventures prior to that, where he invested in deep tech and industrial infrastructure (SW, HW, and telecom). Prior to this, he managed a large portfolio of collaborative open-source technology projects while at the Linux Foundation and headed the startup investing business at Intellectual Ventures (IV) helping invest in early stage startups.
Prior to IV, Raghu held buy-side and sell-side roles at Wall Street firms (Oppenheimer & Co, Collins Stewart) and brings extensive experience in the hardware and software design space having worked in various roles including, semiconductor fabrication, chip design, systems architecture, strategy, and marketing (Texas Instruments, Intel, Cadence Design Systems).
Radhika Iyengar is a TEDx and keynote speaker, an author, a Silicon Valley Woman of Influence, and a serial entrepreneur. She is a Managing Partner at DoubleNova Group, a Silicon Valley-based advanced technology advisory firm advising the Global 2000. She is also the Founding Partner at StarChain Ventures, a Silicon Valley-based venture studio focused on solving significant global challenges with advanced technologies - Blockchain, AI, IoT.
Radhika is the author of Enterprise Blockchain Has Arrived, a member of the Government Blockchain Association and the California Gov Ops Blockchain Working Group advising Governor Newsom; California state legislature. An enterprise blockchain expert, she advises companies globally in the fintech, healthcare and supply chain sectors. Radhika is a sought-after speaker, and has keynoted at key venues: Google, Intel, Stanford, Harvard, MIT, UC Berkeley, UCLA and at top blockchain & healthcare conferences. As a blockchain and digital health expert, she has been interviewed by Business/Tech Insider, CNN International , SF Bay Area radio shows and podcasts. Multilingual in 9+ languages, she advises governments and international accelerators. She has raised $150M+ for startups through direct advisory and premier programs in partnership with governments and accelerators.
Radhika is on the Board of Directors at UPWARD Women, TiE Silicon Valley, and serves on the Advisory Boards of WBAF (World Business Angel Investment Forum), Partners in Digital Health Institute, and Blockchain in Healthcare Today. She holds an MBA from Chapman University, an AB from Bryn Mawr College, and is a Certified Network Engineer.
Preetish Nijhawan is an entrepreneur known for co-founding the internet company Akamai Technologies in 1998.
Before joining NeoEdge, Nijhawan was a Vice President at BMC Software and prior to that he was a co-founder and Vice President at iVita Corporation, and was a consultant for McKinsey & Company. Earlier in his career he also spent 6 years at Intel Corporation in engineering and management roles.
Preetish is now Managing Director and co-founder of Cervin Ventures,[1] a Venture Capital firm that invests in very early-stage software companies. Nijhawan now works for a group of companies (JME Software, Scalable Software and Neon Enterprise Software) as CFO. Prior to this, Nijhawan worked with NeoEdge Networks in Palo Alto, California as Vice President of Strategic Alliances where he led the development of the company's most important partnerships and distribution relationships.
For more than two decades, Krish Panu has built successful technology businesses that have helped to create multi-billion-dollar markets, and he has led companies through explosive revenue growth and global expansion. His investments in private companies, investments of both financing and mentoring, have helped build companies such as Prysm, Altierre, Teknovus (sold to Broadcom), Stratalight (sold to Opnext), Dilithium Networks (sold to OnMobile), ReachLocal (went public in May, 2010), enLighted (sold to Siemens), PINC Solutions, Silverback Learning Solutions, Deem (sold to Enterprise Holdings, Inc), Lavante (sold to PRGX), Prevedere, Nod, Movius, and Insilixa.
With extensive operating experience under his belt, Krish Panu founded PointGuard Ventures with the vision of combining growth financing, strategic guidance, and global expertise to build and scale the most cutting-edge technology companies. As Managing Director, Krish works tirelessly with founders and teams to achieve their goals and put them in the best position to succeed. Through his many experiences in building successful technology businesses, Mr. Panu has developed a broad network of relationships in venture capital, investment banking and entrepreneur communities. Additionally, Mr. Panu serves as President of Panu Foundation, a nonprofit corporation which provides grants to educational institutions and supports healthcare research and other charitable activities around the world.
Chandar Pattabhiram is a seasoned marketing executive who brings to Coupa more than 23 years of experience in both fast-paced and large technology companies including Marketo, IBM, Badgeville, Cast Iron Systems, Jamcracker, and Andersen Consulting (now Accenture). Prior to joining Coupa, Pattabhiram recently was CMO at Marketo where he was responsible for all aspects of marketing and in charge of positioning Marketo as the digital marketing industry's innovation leader and the best solution for high-growth and enterprise businesses.
Previously, Pattabhiram was head of worldwide marketing for Badgeville where he was part of the team that won multiple industry awards for innovative storytelling including the Best Platform-as-a-Service for 2013. Prior to that, Pattabhiram was vice president at IBM Cast Iron Systems where he was responsible for all product marketing and channel marketing efforts. In 2010, IBM acquired Cast Iron as a centerpiece of its Cloud strategy.
Pattabhiram also spent years at Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) as a strategic advisor to Fortune 500 companies in the high-tech, retail, and oil and gas industries. He has authored and has been quoted in more than 1000 articles and is a frequent keynote speaker at leading software industry events. In June 2017, he was named by LinkedIn as one of the top 5 CMOs in the world to follow for thought-leadership in the digital marketing domain.
Nat D. Natraj serves as Senior Vice President of Sales & Marketing at Calypso Technology, Inc. Nat is responsible for global sales and marketing initiatives to meet Calypso's long-term strategic goals. He co-founded mobile-worx Inc. and serves as its Chairman of the Board. He served as an Executive Vice President of Worldwide Field Operations at Arcot Systems, Inc.
Nat founded eFORCE Global Inc. in 1999 and served as its Chief Executive Officer and President. He served as Senior Vice President of Sales at CA Technologies. Nat has over 10 years experience in delivering enterprise solutions to global organizations such as Fleet Bank, Fidelity Investments, Bank of America, ING Bank, Barclays Bank, Mellon Bank, Visa, John Hancock Insurance, and NationsBank. He served as Vice President and General Manager of the Financial Services Division at Siebel Systems (now Oracle). He also held technical, marketing, sales, and general management positions at Scopus Technology, IA Corp., and TRW Financial Systems(now CSC Financial Services), Alysis Technologies (now CSC Financial Services) and Wang Labs.
He has an extensive background in financial services and enterprise software. He was part of the management team at an early CRM software pioneer company acquired by Oracle. He managed Oracle's financial division after the acquisition. He serves as Director of eFORCE Global Inc. Mr. Natraj served as a Member of the Advisory Board of GlobalLogic, Inc. since May 2008.
Lena is a serial entrepreneur with 27 years of experience who co founded Healthcare Triangle, Inc. (HTI), a healthcare cloud and data analytics firm. HTI is one of the top tier healthcare partners of AWS and GoogleCloud (clients include 100+ hospitals and several global pharmas). He supports strategic partnerships, launch of new solutions and investments/M&A efforts for HTI. Lena is also the COO of SecureKloud Technologies, Inc. As a visionary thought leader in cloud and identity space, Lena leads and directs the business operations and technology solutions for SecureKloud in financial services, media and manufacturing verticals. Under his leadership, the company made 6 acquisitions in cloud, mobile, healthcare analytics and EHR areas. Earlier he founded and sold FuGen Solutions, an Orange-FranceTelecom
Lena sits on the University of Chicago's California Advisory Council since 2015. He holds Master's in Electrical Engineering and Bachelor's in Electronics and Instrumentation.
Suja Chandrasekaran is the Senior Executive Vice President, Chief Information and Digital Officer for CommonSpirit Health. With more than 25 years of digital technology leadership experience, Ms. Chandrasekaran leads the development, design, and implementation of effective, sustainable, and transformative technology and digital strategies, programs, and services to enhance the consumer, physician, and employee experience. She also leads the integration and modernization of technology systems throughout CommonSpirit.
As an industry expert in digital marketing, customer experience, eCommerce, omnichannel, artificial intelligence, and scaled enterprise digital transformations, Ms. Chandrasekaran brings significant business, technology, people/organizational leadership, M&A, and global consumer and regulatory expertise to her roles. Prior to joining CommonSpirit, she was the chief of information and digital technologies at large companies, including Kimberly-Clark Corporation, Walmart Inc, Nestle S.A., and The Timberland Company. Ms. Chandrasekaran also serves as a non-executive director, board member on the boards of public companies - American Eagle Outfitters (NYSE: AEO) and Barry Callebaut (BARN: SW).
BV Jagadeesh is Managing Partner at KAAJ Ventures. He has successfully invested and guided companies such as Nutanix (IPO), Yodlee (IPO), Arkin (acqd: VMWare), Elastic Box (acqd: Century Link), NetMagic Solutions (acqd: NTT), Ocarina Networks (acqd: Dell) and Ankeena (acqd: Juniper) to name a few.
Before founding KAAJ, BV Jagadeesh served as a founding investor and CEO of NetScaler. NetScaler pioneered the concept of Application Delivery and was successfully sold to Citrix for $325M and served as Group VP and GM for Citrix's Application Networking division. Prior to Netscaler, he co-founded and served as CTO of Exodus communications in 1993 that pioneered the concept of Internet data centers. He was instrumental in the successful IPO of Exodus in 1998. Currently Jagadeesh is an active investor and serves on the board of several SiliconValley StartUPs. He is also an adjunct faculty at the Leavey School of Business, SCU.
Kumar Ganapathy is the CEO of Akridata. Prior to that, he was the Chief Business Officer and Co-Founder of Virdent Systems - a recognized leader in DSP, wireless and computing systems arhitecture. Virident was acquired by Western Digital. Kumar has years of leadership experience as an operating executive and entrepreneur in the high technology field.
Prior to founding Virident in 2006, Kumar was an Executive in Residence (EIR) at Artiman Ventures. Before that, he was the Chief Technical Officer and co-founder of VxTel, developer of VoIP DSP processors and subsystems, which was acquired by Intel in 2001. At Intel, Kumar was Director of Architecture and Engineering in Ultrawideband Networking Operation (UWB) and Edge Access Division (VoIP, 3G BTS) as well as in the CTO Office of the Intel Communication Group.
Before co-founding VxTel, Kumar was Principal Engineer and Fellow of Conexant and Rockwell Semiconductor leading the development of 56-kbit modems and GSM phones. He holds a Bachelor of Technology degree from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras where he received the prestigious Siemens Gold Medal. He received his Ph.D. from University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Kumar has published over a dozen papers and has been issued 75 patents.
Dr Ekta Dang has been a successful Corporate Executive, Speaker and Writer in Silicon Valley for almost two decades. She is currently the Founder and CEO of U First Capital which provides Venture Capital as a Service to mid-size and large Corporations. Ekta has solid experience both in Venture Capital and on Operating side at Intel. She has driven investment deals in several areas (eCommerce, Security, IoT, etc). She is a seasoned Industry Executive with over 15 years of experience in Product, Business Development and Venture Capital. She brings a stellar network from the Venture Capital and Corporate world to the startups. She is a startup enthusiast and is a mentor at Alchemist Accelerator, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Google Launchpad, etc.
She has been a member of Hillary Clinton's Technology Policy Advisory Committee. She is an invited Speaker at several top Venture Capital/Startup conferences, like TiECon, Silicon Valley Open Doors, etc. She has a PhD in Physics and is a graduate of UC Berkeley Haas School's Venture Capital program. She has published several research papers in IEEE and other reputed international journals.
Rajesh has co-founded multiple technology and publishing companies in the US and India. He has written and published fifteen books so far with his first book published at the age of thirteen.
He is an award-winning teacher at The Founder Institute.
Specialties: Startups, Business Models, Thought Leadership, Writing, Speaking.
Vinod Muthukrishnan is the COO of Cisco's Contact Center Business Unit (CCBU). In this role, Vinod leads the Business Unit's Go to Market strategy across sales, marketing, partnerships and analyst relations. He is also active in strategic marketing & communications and product offers while catalyzing teams across Cisco. He was previously Co-Founder/CEO of CloudCherry, a customer experience management platform, which was acquired by Cisco in November 2019. Prior to that he spent seven years at sea as a First Officer before running Global Sales at Market Simplified. Based in the Bay Area, Vinod enjoys cricket, sailing and expanding his library of leadership, philosophy and P.G. Wodehouse books.
Google for Startups
Vince Kohli, An Empathy Scholar, is a Silicon Valley Early-stage Venture Capital Investor, 6X Tech Entrepreneur, Serial Business Builder, Product Visionary, Inventor, Problem Thinking Doer, Public Speaker, and Author. Vince is a Global Impact Capitalist Maker, Exponential Impact Super Angel Investor focused on Hyperautomation, Enterprise Deep Tech, AI and ML impacting Enterprise and Social Enterprise Industries. Vince is special invited member of MIT Technology review Global Panel and business advisor at Facebook. Vince serves as a StartpUp Judge at MIT, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Google, Samsung, IBM, DraperU, Founder Institute, Founders Space, California State University, StartX, and NASA. Vince is a StartUp / ScaleUp Business Design Investor/Advisor/Mentor at Google4StartUps, Microsoft for StartUps, Singularity, Launch, IBM, StartX, AngelHack, Top Silicon Valley Incubators, Venture Builders, Venture Studios, and Accelerators at YC, Alchemist, and 500 StartUps.
Vince invented the revolutionary Rapid Prototyping Investor Pitching Method termed as "Seven Second StartUp and ScaleUp Value Pitch". He is a High Impact Venture Mentor Maker in Silicon Valley for Global StartUps and ScaleUps Ecosystem, SAP recognized and awarded SAP Mentor Award and pioneered the first ever Corporate Mentorship Award. Vince is an Innovation Catalyst at UCSF for digital health, hardware and software design for medical devices, Corporate Startup Innovation at Honda Innovation, Samsung Tech Impact, Corporate Ventures with HP Ventures, and Samsung NEXT Ventures, Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Venture Lab - IE Business School, Plug and Play, Silicon Valley.
Vince is a life changing coach for business founders and on a Massive Transformation Mission to exponentially Impact Billion Entrepreneurs with Global Professional Business Venture Mentorship initiative and execute with Pilanthropreneurologist mindset to Impact the Post COVID World with Empathy + EQ. Vince regularly speaks on UN SDG's, Corporate Innovation, 5G, AI/ML, Quantum Technologies, Edge Computing, Blockchain, Scaling Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Global Resilience - Scaling the Innovation Economy.