TiEcon, Triangular Partnership and Mentoring

We are distributing “Professional Mentoring – Fostering Triangular Partnership”* (by Katy Dickinson and Ravi Gundlapalli) as a white paper here at TiEcon “The World’s Largest Conference for Entrepreneurs” at the Santa Clara Convention Center, in the Silicon Valley, California. The paper is eventually going to be published as a book chapter by MentorCloud customer People to People.

For those who missed the  Vinod Khosla mentoring session here at TiEcon yesterday, you can see pictures on my blog entry MentorConnect with Vinod Khosla at TiEcon. Here are my notes from the famous venture capitalist’s session:

• “I read 15 books a year: tek or industry trend papers, books, New Scientist. I go to technical conferences, not financial conferences.”
• “Be optimistic about what competitors can do, pessimistic about what you can do. Get field feedback.”
• “Baggage is what makes you old, not your age. Experience and age is valuable but need to know what you don’t know.”
• “Almost nothing in biz plans is true, Thoughtful analysis is more important, Entrepreneurs walk risk curve.”
• “Clever approach, clever marketing may get customers even to late-coming startups. Need thoughtful risk analysis.”
• “Know the space, try lots of experiments – new things, innovation in both technical and business model.”
• “Strategy for starting is different than strategy for permanence – at each step, gather resources, consider.”
• “Investors are the best advisors – giving honest thoughtful advice. Ask for rejection reasons.”

Today is the TiEcon Women’s Forum and I am looking forward to seeing the presentation of Jagruti Bhikha of the Anita Borg Institute.  Here is some of the team running the TiE Silicon Valley MentorConnect program at TiEcon:

More pictures are on MentorCloud at TiEcon: MentorConnect.

* The paper distributed at TiEcon was dated May 2013. The link is to an slightly revised version dated June 2013.

19 October 2019: Links updated. The conference book version of Triangular Partnership: the Power of the Diaspora is available for free download. For more about MentorCloud business practices, see Collecting a Labor Judgement (15 January 2016).

Images Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson