This past Saturday, I had the good fortune of being a judge at the Toronto TiEQuest Finals. TiE is The Indus Entrepreneurs organization (www.toronto.tie.org), which provides mentoring, education, networking and a lot more to entrepreneurs with or without an Indian background. There are chapters literally all over the world where the Indian diaspora exists.
The judges reviewed 19 candidates, from which 3 moved on to the international TiEQuest Finals.
I was amazed at the quality of the opportunities that were presented. While many of the companies were lacking in some important factor for success (which is why they were presenting to TiEQuest), for the most part each contestant had some combination of product validation, experienced management and advisory boards and customers or beta customers. Some were pre-money start ups looking for financing to get them over the hump until their expected cash flow kicked in. Others needed someone with entrepreneurial management experience to compliment the technology background of the founder.
While I don't want to disclose the companies at this stage as they haven't heard whether they made it to the final round, stay tuned for the results as they become public.
Monday, April 2, 2012
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