Prat Moghe is the newly elected President of TIE Boston. Prat Moghe was most recently Senior Vice President at Netezza, a leader in data analytics, when it was acquired by IBM for $1.7B in 2010. He currently leads Strategy, Products, and Marketing for IBM Netezza appliances.

Prat has a long and accomplished record of entrepreneurism, having started his career at Bell Labs researching systems management and networking, after earning his Ph.D. from UCLA. Soon thereafter, he founded two companies: StreamCenter and Tizor (acquired by Netezza).

Prat has been a part of the TiE community for more than 16 years and is an active member of TiE-Angels.

Congratulations on becoming the President of TIE- Boston.  What is your vision for TIE-Boston in the upcoming year?

TIE-Boston is already a leading entrepreneurial organization with a solid foundation of several hundred Charter Members, most of them experienced and leading entrepreneurs,  that have created one of the largest eco-systems of startups in the country. My vision is to leverage this organization to create the broadest possible impact on the Boston area. 

We'd like to help entrepreneurs create and accelerate startups than ever before. Startups can be the rising tide...we need to invent our future.

Why did you decide to move the TIE office to Cambridge? 

Our vision going forward is to broaden our entrepreneur base. Cambridge is an excellent place to tap into the Harvard/MIT communities as well develop ties to young entrepreneurs and lean startups. 

You had a successful career at Bell Labs. What motivated you to quit that to become an entrepreneur?

That's a great question...hard to quantify, but entrepreneurship is a bug that keeps entrepreneurs restless unless they are actually participating and driving activities to create and deliver something new in the market. While Bell Labs was an incredible place to invent concepts, the start up opportunity to create and deliver value in the market is just a very different game. I had no choice but to take the plunge!

By the way, entrepreneurship is not just about startups...it can be practiced anywhere. It is a state of mind. Trying to deliver and scale a product-line in a large company from $100M to $1B is as entrepreneurial as doing a startup building $10M of revenue. The challenges are different, but as long as you are changing the status quo and taking risks in the process, I define it as entrepreneurship.

What were the factors that contributed to making your companies succeed?

More than anything, it is persistence and optimism...not being afraid to try something and learning from mistakes. That has been the constant theme through all my startups, as well as now at IBM! 

Secondly, people and teams who share the drive and passion to create new ideas and concepts, who share similar level of interest in customers.

How does the current economic climate affect entrepreneurship?

The current climate has definitely made it harder for entrepreneurs to raise capital. However, it has also thinned out the competition for capital and ideas, so a winning idea, execution, and team has a smoother time to market. Like I say, this is the best time to do startups, as long as they are done right.

What do you think are exciting areas of opportunities for entrepreneurs in the next few years?

Big Data is a huge opportunity, particularly its convergence with cloud and analytics. Another one is mobile platforms and figuring out how to make them effective for enterprises. Social media is just getting started - Facebook as a platform is as nascent as Netscape was for Internet in 1995. But along with these software and systems plays, we are also seeing automation of very stodgy industries like supply chain, warehouses, etc. Robotics is another very interesting area to check out, particularly on the east coast. 

You have been active with TIE Angels for the past one year. How effective has the group been in funding startups?

Very active...we have already done 3 deals within the last six months. For our first deal, we backed a company called Buzzient that does social CRM analytics - they can track social sentiment of products in the market and bring that information back to support and marketing groups.

Any special advice for people planning to do a startup?

Just do it. Don't over think or over strategize. Entrepreneurship is about action, first and foremost. Once you start, there will be plenty of changes you will have to make. Everything will change over time - ideas, markets, technology, teams,...the key is to get a strong foundation in a wide-enough space that allows flexibility of direction. Rest is execution.

I wish all would-be entrepreneurs good luck, and ask them to drop us at note at TiE-Boston. We are here to help.

Thanks so much for your time.

Thank you

|