TIE Exceeds Expectations with Raj Jaswa

I had the pleasure to attend the monthly meeting of TiE Arizona this evening. The guest speaker, Raj Jaswa, brought over an hour of insight and advice on entrepreneurship to the gathering of 50 entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs at the ASU SkySong complex.

Raj was the founder of two wildly successful technology startups in Silicon Valley -- OPTi (semiconductor chipsets) and Selectica (enterprise software), both of which he led as President / CEO and took public on the NASDAQ. Raj was named to Forbes' list of "Top CEOs: America's Most Powerful People" in 2000.

In a fireside-chat interview format, Raj walked the audience through the pitfalls and triumphs of building two public companies. While there were many take-aways for the audience I'll share Raj's three skills for entrepreneurial success:

Learn how to network. An entrepreneur will require the services of many types of people from janitor to investor, lawyer to marketing professional. According to Raj, the time to meet and get to know these people is before they are needed.

Never stop learning. Keep reading and exposing yourself to great material from a broad range of sources. Read all you can and use CDs and tapes to educate yourself. Through these media you can expose your self to the best business minds. This also help you calibrate the level of ideas and capabilities of those people you meet networking. How do their ideas fit with those of the best in business?

Build a mentorship system, whether one or two mentor or a strong board of advisors. There is too much for one person to know everything. Mentors will help not only with the big picture strategies but also with details like how much stock to issue to a new vice-president, .5% or 3%, for example.

Raj is now President at The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), Silicon Valley. He made a special trip to the valley for this meeting. TiE in Phoenix is a respected business group with a focus of encouraging and enabling entrepreneurship in Arizona. TiE will also sponsor the Audacious Ventures: Case Studies on Entrepreneurship conference.

See more of Raj Jaswa here: