Hello TiE DC Members – Happy New Year! Hope you were able to spend quality time with family and friends over the holidays! It has been great seeing so many friendly faces during our recent events – the (once again) Annual Gala in December and TiE GovCon in November. You have already heard from Pallabi about the incredible year we’ve had under her leadership and the 2022 Board’s contributions. The 2023 Board is now working actively on our plans for this year.
As we continue the momentum of the last few years, there are a couple of areas we will put some intensity of focus for 2023. I’ve summarized our 6 main areas below – and note that many of them come from the feedback you, our members, have been giving us – thank you for that!
IMPORTANT and ACTION: As you read these, please think about how your passions and interest intersect with these areas – a key element of our future organizational strategy will be to execute through our committees that focus on these initiatives, which will have a Board member assigned as Chair – but will be heavily driven by You – a bit of a “for the people, by the people” approach!
Initiative 1 – Organizational Efficiency and Efficacy – led by Sri Vasireddy, [email protected] – as we’ve continued to scale our programs and organization, it has become critical that we “eat our own dog food”. Many of us deliver these types of services to our clients – and all the heavy lifting of the past Boards has put us in a great position to document what we do, how we do it, how to “rinse and repeat” easily with the resources we have and our intent to move our Board to one with staggered terms – a continuous refresh strategy. That makes it critical that we convert the knowledge in our heads into our supporting systems and processes – again nothing any of us don’t already do for our clients.
Initiative 2 – Membership Engagement – led by Raji Bezawada, [email protected] – we continue to grow our membership and the different categories of members we are engaging – from Charter Members, Emerging Entrepreneurs, Service Entrepreneurs, Young Entrepreneurs, general membership, etc. As we continue to move towards an operating model where the strategy and execution of programs are delivered more through an active committee of only a few Board members per program pillar – and more from You, our members – we want to also do this in the context of a more proactive model for engagement – answering the questions around what you need and want from your association with TiE, looking at the lifecycle of engagement and membership, etc.
Initiative 3 – Scaling Education Programs – led by Srini Bayireddy, [email protected] – the incredible work done by our Board over the years for TYE (thank you Mahesh Joshi and Infinite (Sanjay Govil and Ashoka Tankala)) and more recently TiE University (led by Ravi Puli and Mahesh and supported by many sponsors) has put us in a great position. Last year we started to expand our reach by partnering with underserved communities and reaching a larger audience – a critical element to not only showing the power of our diaspora – but making sure that our giveback strategy includes a more diverse, equitable and inclusive group of next generation students. We are doing that even more this year – impacting a wider group of kids with the intent to expand our geographic reach also to include more of the DMV school systems (for TYE). For TiE U, we have consistently worked both years with 17 universities in the region. Going forward – we want to deepen those connections so TiE Charter Members are actively sought by the University startup ecosystem (and especially the highly investable, IP-based companies that come out of those universities).
Initiative 4 – Angels/Investor Expansion – led by Rajesh Rai, [email protected] – as many of you know, we have been very active in our Angels program and partnered with numerous local organizations as well as other TiE chapters. We want to look at how we scale this even more – from the people we partner with, the expansion of quality sources, the processes and infrastructure to cultivate the journey through advising and board work (on top of the financing, of course), etc. The goal here is we intend to put ourselves in the middle of the DMV ecosystem for cultivating the next Unicorn/Exit/IPO, etc. With all the capability you all represent – it is clear we should be putting additional effort to create an ecosystem that allow all of you to be part of the TiE DC story we write – between Angels and TiE U – EVERY success story from this region should be able to connect back to some support from one of you under the auspices of a TiE DC initiative.
Initiative 5 – Reimagining TiE GovCon – led by Sumeet Luthra, [email protected] – our focus on GovCon in the past few years has helped us gain tremendous exposure as a chapter. We plan on taking all our lessons learned from the last 5 years, including the inputs we received from the GovCon 2022 surveys, and will look to reimagine the programming to focus on connecting entrepreneurs across their GovCon services journeys – from early stage, through emerging, scaling and exits – and ensure that the tremendous success of our membership is brought to bear on the next generation – the cornerstone of why TiE exists. We want to do that in a more persistent and consistent manner throughout the year – so we’re relevant to you at the time of need.
Initiative 6 – Expansion of Partnerships and Collaborations – led by Nicole Washington, [email protected] – the main goal will focus on building relationships in the entrepreneurship & innovation ecosystem for the purposes of impacting growth. We will look for partnership opportunities that resonate with the investment interests and expertise of our charter members. For example, we have an incredible landscape of entrepreneurship occurring in IP-based/product companies in this region – and in areas that many of you are already playing in personally. This includes the area of healthcare/life sciences/biotech – strengths for our region both independently, and through associations with IP emanating from academic and government collaborations. Another area that I think half of us are also tinkering in is the area of real estate/development entrepreneurship. Many of you are already investing through your personal vehicles in this space. Since there is likely overlap between the interests of key partnerships and other TiE initiatives, this committee will work closely with other chairs as appropriate.
OK – I know this email has already gone a little long – but we felt it important to give you a taste of what we’re planning, highlight our desire to have You be a part of the solution, and ultimately, solicit your support to work one of these initiatives with our Board leads. We don’t expect every one of these efforts to be “complete” in 2023 – we just want to start resourcing them to start the journey.
ACTION: I encourage you to reach out to the Committee Chairs directly for any areas you wish to help us drive.
Again, hope everyone had an amazing Holiday season and the Happiest of New Years!!!
Sumeet Shrivastava
TiE DC President
