TiE-Boston held its Annual Gala Dinner on November 7th at the Microsoft NERD Center in Cambridge, MA. Over 140 people including Charter Members, Sponsors, and speakers from TiE events attended to celebrate another year of successful TiE-Boston activities. The evening’s agenda included an Investor Game, a celebration of Amar Bose’s work, a talk by Anil Singhal, and an Awards ceremony that honored the accomplishments of Charter Members, who have built great companies and created immense value for the community. It was a moment to thank all the sponsors, supporters, and volunteers of TiE-Boston for another successful year of fostering entrepreneurship.

Prat Moghe, TiE-Boston’s President, kicked off the evening program with a welcome address. Next, was a memorial to celebrate the Work and Life of Dr. Amar Bose. Bose founded his company in 1964 after he purchased a stereo system and was disappointed with its performance. Bose was one of the earliest Indian-American entrepreneurs in the area and has been an inspiration to many entrepreneurs in the TiE community. Today, Bose Corporation is one of the largest and best-known audio companies in the US and around the world.

Representing Bose Corporation was Kenneth Jacob, Senior Research Engineer at the company. He briefly talked about Bose as a teacher and mentor before letting Bose speak to the audience himself; Jacob showed never-before-seen footage of interviews and lectures by Bose. The videos gave the audience, many of whom never got the chance to see or hear Bose speak, an opportunity to see him in action and witness his brilliance at work.

Anil Singhal, Co-founder, President, and CEO of NetScout, gave a keynote about his journey with NetScout and important lessons he learned as an entrepreneur along the way. One of the points that Singhal discussed that seemed to resonate with the audience was the importance of being socially responsible to not only to the community and customer but also to the government (i.e paying taxes) and industry. Singhal summed it up well with “Do whatever it takes to win, but only as long as it doesn’t compromise your core values.” Singhal was presented with TiE-Boston’s Lifetime Achievement Award which is presented to a Charter Member who has created a lasting impact on the entrepreneurial community in Boston.

Charter Member Sushil Tuli and his son, Jay Tuli, from Leader Bank (a TiE-Boston Annual Sponsor) helped announce the other award winners to a room filled with suspenseful excitement and unexpected amazement.

Awards for 'Entrepreneurial Achievement' for successful exits went to: Shain Nair, founder of Nair & Co, a global integrated solutions provider helping companies expand internationally acquired by HgCapital; Deepak Taneja, founder of Aveska, which provides the most comprehensive Identity and Access Management platform. Aveska was acquired by EMC.

Asheesh Advani of Covestor, an online market place that connects high-net investors with portfolio managers, Vasu Ram of ContentRaven, which empowers enterprises to control intellectual property and other valuable content as it is shared externally, and Ash Ashutosh of Actifio, a radically simple copy data management, won the award for successfully closing a round of funding for their respective companies.

Awards were also given for to Gopal Subramanian for his contribution to the TyE program, Satish Tadikonda for his contributions to TiE Angels, and Vivek Soni and David Poltack for their contributions to TiE programs. John Chory of Latham & Watkins and Jim Boyer of KPMG were recognized for being Outstanding Partners to TiE-Boston Programs.

The Community Award went to Sushil Bhatia, President & CEO of JMD Manufacturing. Bhatia has been helping build Boston’s entrepreneurial community for a while. He has been involved with TiE-Boston since its inception and has been spreading entrepreneurship as a professor at Suffolk University’s Sawyer Business School since 2005. He started a green business plan competition in 2006 that was recently renamed the "Dr. Sushil Bhatia competition for Innovative Ideas" by Suffolk University earlier this year.

The program also included the TiE Challenge Innovation Showcase. 11 companies showcased their companies for 1 hour trying to get attendees to invest $300K in their company. At the end of the showcase, the “investments” were tabulated and the following companies were declared the winners. Mindful Scientific came in first place with $1.88M, followed by Rhoost and The Fluorosome Company tied for second with $1.85M, and Bounce Imaging in third with $1.8M. Click here to read about the showcase.

Congratulations to all the winners! TiE-Boston would like to thank its Sponsors, Charter members, Program chairs, and volunteers for supporting the entrepreneurial community in the New England area through their continuous participation and help in organizing our diverse programs.

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