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Prashant Shah, Head TIE Angels @NoPanels Summer 2014. TIE is a global nonprofit started in Silicon Valley which helps educate & fund entrepreneurs. They now have 60 chapters around the world in 17 countries with thousands of members. The charter members are the mentors in the TIE network & consist of experienced, successful entrepreneurs; investors & corporate execs who donate their time & money to help the next generation of upcoming entrepreneurs. Most of the mentors that come from the TIE network tend to be Enterprise or IT software, not as much on Consumer although that is an area in which they are very interested. Also they have a very small but active group in the Medical Device & Web Sciences. He looks for an entrepreneur with a lot of passion & expertise in an industry that they’re pursuing. The problem space that they’re going after has to be very well identified & something that they feel has a problem that is actually growing in the market. Plus making sure that there is a technology area that they’re creating. All of this makes it a good investment for TIE. There’s a lot of things going on in the venture industry but the biggest shift is that its cheaper to start a company today. Many years ago it took about $4m to get a Series A done & start an enterprise software company. About 5 years ago that dropped to roughly $1/2m & today the cost is zero! You just needs 1 person who knows how to code & 1 person who knows how to sell. The rise of angel investors & accelerators really sorts out what is happening at the grass roots level before they go for venture firm for an A round.
