Vibrant Entrepreneurs of TiE-Boston community spoke at its monthly dinner meeting held at Burlington Marriott on November 9, 2005.  The panel consisting of Murali Aravamudan, Founder & CEO, Veveo.tv,  Ash Ashutosh, Founder & CTO, AppIQ, Jit Saxena, Founder & CEO, Netezza and Sanjeev Verma, Founder & VP Marketing, Airvana was moderated by Noam Wasserman, Professor, Harvard Business School.

The panelists discussed their experiences involved in becoming successful entrepreneurs. They talked about the inspirations that led then to attempt a start-up, highs and lows of entrepreneurship and how their lifestyle fits into family life.  They also discussed the challenges of assembling a team and raising venture capital.

According to the panelists, one of the major reasons for doing a start-up was their belief in the idea and their jobs didn’t allow them to pursue it.   Their love for the work and go beyond what they did at their regular jobs fueled the entrepreneur in them. 

They shared ‘todos’ and not ‘todos’ from their experience as entrepreneurs.  “When we did our first start-up in 2004, cash was freely flowing,” said Aravamudan, Founder and CEO of Veveo, “but it was difficult to find coders, we went to Bangalore to recruit coders.  That decision appeared to be smart one two years later.” “ The business you call Hi-tech business is not about the Technology, but it is about the people. Building the product was the easy part, but building the organization and an organization that is sustainable and scalable  is the difficult part. That was the lesson,” said Jit Saxena. All the panelists had founded the company with a co-founder and felt it helped in building the companies.

Verma emphasized on the importance investors in case of Airvana and said it would not have existed without the funding they had received.   “We never felt that investors were the people who were giving money, but another component of partnership,” said Ashutosh, Founder and CTO of AppIQ.
Finally, the panelists motivated the audience to become entrepreneurs.  The said that opportunities exist in all places and entrepreneurs can make things happen and build successful business.

More information about TiE and its upcoming events can be found at http://www.tie-boston.org/

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