Ritu Jha-
Held May 1 through 3, this conference led by Indian Americans in Silicon Valley and held at the Santa Clara Convention Center in California, drew more than 2,400 participants. It attracted IT professionals, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, startups, students, overseas delegates, corporate entities, academics, and non-profits.
The conference was hosted by TiE Silicon Valley, a non-profit established in 1992, to foster entrepreneurship and networking, today has expanded to 60 chapters in 17 countries.
Built around the theme “AI Ubiquity,” TiEcon2024 took a deep dive into the future of AI, exploring its potential to redefine industries and everyday life. From company founders to students, a variety of people shared their vision about AI.
Tara Sadjadpour, a student at UC Berkeley shared her vision about making robots to help seniors wear clothes and asked to have a dirty laundry list when building a product. This will help to analyze errors on where your failures are.
Ken Goldberg, Distinguished Chair, Chief Scientist at UC Berkeley and Ambi Robotics, Jacobi Robotics as well as the co-founder of the Berkeley AI Research (BAIR) Lab, agreed with her student Sadjadpour, shared he has made it compulsory for his students to add a dirty laundry list in research papers, because, “Failures has so much important information.” [Above, second from left].
When Jagdeep Singh Bachher, chief investment officer at the University of California, asked Goldberg about the ethical and societal implications of AI and jobs, he replied, “We should not worry about robots eliminating the human race. We know AI are not that powerful and threatening. Some say jobs (are at risk), I want to push back on that. Robots and AI are complementary. We have made progress, but we are not going to replace truck drivers. AI will make us better.”
TiE SV founder and industry veteran Kanwal Rekhi came in holding a walking stick to the conference and silently observing the results of his vision.
Rekhi was a little circumspect about the conference.
“They are doing well, but I was expecting this place to be a lot busier than it is right now. I sense that the new leadership is pretty good right now, so maybe they will build it better. We have changed with the times, and so has TiE.”
Anita Manwani, president of TiE Silicon Valley and host of TiEcon 2024, told indica, “It was a phenomenal success. We had the best lineup of TiEcons in our history. This year our boot camps were extremely popular and the diversity quotient was much higher – 40% of all our speakers were non-South Asian and women. We had almost 70 startups from all over the world at the event. Our startup boot camps were over-subscribed, we had to stop registration for the boot camps almost five days before the event.”
Apart from the boot camps, participants were drawn to the tracks, especially those featuring Nvidia and Google.
“The events were supported heavily by students, aspiring entrepreneurs, and graduating students from entrepreneurship schools, and universities,” Manwani said. “The University of California sent 140 participants. We collaborated with the university, Canada, and several state governments in India.”
She said every day of the conference there were learning opportunities and important conversations for everybody. So besides AI-related deep conversations, there was also a good conversation with venture capitalists.
Discussing the diversity of the participants, she said, adding, “Smart Manufacturing had one panel that had VCs, and they were all women.”
The Day 1 opening keynote speaker was Jay Chaudhry, CEO and founder of Zscaler, a cybersecurity firm. He said that the combination of generative AI and predictive AI could be very productive in the security arena.
“Imagine if we could predict a breach,” he said, pointing out that “Breaches don’t happen in minutes; they often take days, weeks or even months.”
Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA., was the opening keynote on the second day of TiEcon 2024. In a fireside chat with him, Naveen Chaddha, managing partner of Mayfield, asked attendees to focus more on Jensen’s leadership style and core values.
Asked about how he tackles very hard problems so well, Jensen said, “There is a superpower in ignorance. So, I jumped in asking myself how hard it can be.”
Leo [Wants to go by his first name], a current master’s student studying business analytics at UC Davis, told indica they wished could meet Huang. Asked how they landed at TiEcon from UC Davis said, “We were informed that UC Investments office can sponsor us for the event, and get to attend the workshops at the TiEcon. There were two workshops on the first day, one hosted by Nvidia and another by Google Cloud. Both sessions touched on the hottest topic at the moment – Generative AI, and they were all extremely informative. We were able to have hands-on experience with how LLMs are fined-tuned using Nvidia’s NeMo technology and what Google’s Gemini is capable of. It was a great experience to learn and also build connections.”
[First, from right]Dr. Daniel L. Kraft, a physician, scientist, entrepreneur, and founder of NextMed Health was at the panel AI in Healthcare Delivery.
He told indica, “Every year we bring together about 800 people from 30 countries at NextMed Health to look at the future of healthcare, what’s now near and next. We focus on connecting the dots with AI, robotics, 3D printing, nanotechnology, genomics, wearables, CRISPR, and psychedelics.”
Asked why the healthcare industry is so secretive while also sharing data with partners, Dr. Kraft said, “I think HIPAA is antique and old-fashioned and needs to be reinvented.”
He said, “Today data is free and we need to share data to help give new insight and new knowledge, to narrow the opportunity and … not wait 20 years to get some new knowledge. So, we need to reshape the healthcare system.”
Another speaker at the panel, Dr. Ganesh Krishna, spoke about democratizing AI in the medical sector.
“Healthcare costs are likely to come down if there is democratization,” he told indica. “The technology should be available to the world and not to one sector of society or the other… That will drive healthcare costs down, streamline the healthcare process worldwide, and provide better healthcare for people everywhere…. The healthier the world is, the better the economic prospects of every country.”
Dr. Krishna, an interventional pulmonologist, who came from India 33 years ago, described ways to help medical systems in India.
“One of the things that I do is minimally invasive surgery in the chest,” he said. “We use natural orifices, such as the nose and mouth or small ports on the side of the chest to get into the chest cavity… The specialty is in its infancy in India. I have been to the Asia Pacific Congress and given a talk to introduce the system in India.”
Charles Thangaraj, one of the judges at the TiE U Global Pitch Competition for the 2023-24 season, told indica that it was hard to pick the best three of the six contesting teams.
“All of them were very good,” he said. “One contestant came to the TiEcon pitch on his graduation date. All the judges were impressed because the kid was committed enough to be at the conference when he should be getting his degree. One of them was a delivery driver who had developed an app. The kid who was delivering your product could be a CEO one day. Nobody can underestimate them, I have a lot of respect for them.”
The eventual winners were MabLab from New York, doorstep.ai from Atlanta and Kiwi Charge from Toronto.
The conference drew many delegates from India.
[First person from right]Siddhartha Anand, vice president of Karnataka Digital Economy Mission (KDEM) told indica this was the group’s second sojourn to Silicon Valley.
“We were here with a much bigger delegation last year at TiEcon 2023,” Anand said. “This time we are part of a more focused delegation from Karnataka. I represent KDEM, the state-sponsored investment promotion agency, and we have members from the investors’ committee and startups with us. We also have a representative from one of the newest chapters of TiE in Mangalore.
“Our objective was to find avenues for Silicon Valley, the largest startup ecosystem, to collaborate with the world’s third-largest startup ecosystem, Bangalore. We interacted with stakeholders like startups, investors, accelerators, and incubators.”
KDEM and the TiE Bangalore chapter will host the TiE Global Summit December 9-12 this year.
“The startup landscape is very mature in Karnataka,” Anand said, adding that the state’s startup predates the Government of India’s Startup India policy. Karnataka has 20,000 startups, 4,000 investors, and more than 140 accelerators and incubators. The city has raised more than Rs 70 billion worth of funding, he said.
Madan Padaki, president of TiE Bangalore and TiE Global Trustee, who was also part of the 15-member delegation from Karnataka told indica, “We are here to learn and also to prepare for the TiE Global Summit 2024. This event will be one of the world’s largest celebrations of entrepreneurship and we think it’s time for India to emerge from the shadows of the West. We have our own model of entrepreneurship; we want to spark off the movement and make India the most preferred destination for entrepreneurial ventures in the world.”
On what he expects from Silicon Valley Padaki said, “We are looking at the wonderful way in which the academia works with the industry and entrepreneurs to create innovative products. That is something that needs to be strengthened back home. We want to learn how to build that strong connection between academic research, IP creation, and market creation. The US has excelled in these areas, which are missing in India.”
Smita Bagla, past TiESoCal president, who has attended TiEcon for the past 25 years told indica, that Kanwal Rekhi was her mentor and was responsible of creating a startup ecosystem in southern California and Global Investor Summit when she was the president of TiESocal in 2017.
“We need to have more investors here so that more startups will come,” she said. “There was a VC connect but they should have managed networking sessions with VC. However, the panels are awesome.”
