Kanwal Rekhi arrived in America with $8 in his pocket.\u00a0 It was 1967, and the Indian government had restricted the amount of money departing citizens could take with them to prevent capital flight, but the 22-year-old electrical engineering graduate left anyway and landed in Michigan. Six decades later, the man Fortune magazine called \u201cThe Godfather [\u2026]<\/p>\n
Kanwal Rekhi arrived in America with $8 in his pocket.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It was 1967, and the Indian government had restricted the amount of money departing citizens could take with them to prevent capital flight, but the 22-year-old electrical engineering graduate left anyway and landed in Michigan. Six decades later, the man Fortune magazine called \u201cThe Godfather of Silicon Valley Indian Mafia\u201d visited Ottawa to launch his memoir, \u201cThe Ground Breaker.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The event was held last week at Irish Hills Golf & Country Club in Carp. It brought together founders, investors and business leaders for a gala organized by TiE Ottawa together with the Technology Innovation Management program and the Sprott School of Business. The visit marked the fourth time Rehki has travelled to Ottawa to support the local chapter of The IndUS Entrepreneurs (TiE), the global network he co-founded in Silicon Valley in 1992.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rekhi said the staying power of the Ottawa chapter proves something about the local entrepreneurial community.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe chapter has sustained itself for 25 years,\u201d he told OBJ in a sit-down interview. \u201cMany chapters form and they fade, but there\u2019s a community here, a bunch of people who are committed to making it happen. And the only reason you do it is because you\u2019re seeing the results.\u201d
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\nOttawa ranks among the top technology concentrations in North America, particularly in cybersecurity, telecommunications and defence-tech. TiE Ottawa was founded in 1992 and holds at least two events per month. Rekhi flew to Ottawa 25 years ago to help found the chapter. Today, it runs the TiECon Canada national conference, where Rekhi once shared a stage with HubSpot co-founder Dharmesh Shah.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But Rekhi\u2019s path to Silicon Valley greatness was not guaranteed. He went through many failures, which he now counts as essential education. He was laid off from three consecutive engineering positions after earning his master\u2019s in electrical engineering from Michigan Technology University in 1969.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t get comfortable,\u201d he said. \u201cEver. There\u2019s going to be something that throws you off your job. Always try to stay a step ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n
He described entrepreneurship as similar to surfing. \u201cYou paddle out, you catch a wave, and every wave brings you back to the beach,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd then you\u2019ve got to paddle out again. Learn to paddle out, don\u2019t be afraid of the waves. Learn to ride them.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also had advice for founders who reach early success.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you climb the mountain, personally you reach the mountaintop,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s the time to move on, because if you stay at the mountaintop, you\u2019re going to start sliding down. The next stop is always down. So you better find a higher mountain to climb.\u201d<\/p>\n
He earned those lessons directly from his experience building Excelan Inc., a networking hardware company he co-founded in 1982. He stepped in as interim CEO during an internal crisis and restructured the company\u2019s pricing, bundled its products with money-back guarantees and bypassed slow-moving distributors to sell directly to corporate buyers. He offered prices around $14,995, compared to competitors charging upward of $30,000 for comparable products. His strategy transformed Excelan into a profitable business, and he took the company public on NASDAQ in 1987 at a $120-million valuation. He became the first Indian founder and CEO of a venture-backed company to list on a U.S. stock exchange.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Two years later, Excelan merged with Novell Inc. in a $210-million transaction. Rekhi joined the new entity as executive vice-president and CTO. He helped create the NetWare operating system that gained 70 per cent market share in local area networking. Novell ranked as the second-largest software company in the world at the time, behind Microsoft.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He later pivoted to angel investing. He has a guiding principle for evaluating founders.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you are honest and you have a product, you have to know what you\u2019re saying,\u201d he said. \u201cIf I start to learn more from an entrepreneur than I already know, I invest.\u201d<\/p>\n
He co-founded Capital Partners in 2007 to support early-stage ventures bridging Silicon Valley and Indian tech companies, and has backed more than 200 companies with exits including IPOs and acquisitions. He co-founded TiE, which now counts nearly 20,000 members across 62 chapters around the world. Companies founded by TiE members have generated more than $250 billion in collective wealth.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rekhi said TiE\u2019s durability reflects an organizational philosophy he has held since the beginning.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt should be values-driven,\u201d he said. \u201cIt should not be controlled centrally, where chapters are being told what to do. Chapters should be free to grow themselves. There\u2019s a lot of innovation that comes from the chapters.\u201d<\/p>\n
TiE Ottawa is the perfect example of this philosophy. The local chapter has more than 200 members and says many are founders responsible for $635 million in GDP impact and more than 4,000 local jobs. Rekhi said every time he comes to Ottawa, he notices something bigger than networking.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cTiE has become an integral part of the Ottawa ecosystem,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is a selfless volunteer effort. For me, at least, and for many, it is a spiritual movement. You\u2019ve seen the impact, you\u2019re seeing the good that is being done. Many chapters open and fail. TiE Ottawa has a rare resilience thanks to the type of people who live here.\u201d<\/p>\n
When it comes to AI, he said the anxiety about technological disruption follows a familiar pattern he\u2019s seen before.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to learn,\u201d he explained. \u201cLearn to ride with it. AI, like every other technology \u2014 the steam engine, the internet \u2014 you can see it as the new way. Your business models, your jobs, half the work will be obsolete. But history tells you AI can find a new, cheaper and better way of building things, and if it destroys jobs in one area, it creates jobs in another.\u201d<\/p>\n
His book is a memoir that addresses the partition of India, his family\u2019s displacement from what is now Pakistan, his early years in America, his investments and the passing of his wife, Ann, less than a year before the book\u2019s publication. His son, Ben Rekhi, has directed a documentary called \u201cBreaking The Code\u201d that premiered at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles and will be on streaming platforms later this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kanwal Rekhi arrived in America with $8 in his pocket.\u00a0 It was 1967, and the Indian government had…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":725750,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194295],"tags":[49,48,20739],"class_list":["post-725749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ottawa","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-ottawa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=725749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725749\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/725750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=725749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=725749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=725749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}