Welcome to TYE, or TiE Young Entrepreneurs, the place for all-things-entrepreneurial. We had a tremendous turnout at our kick-off event a couple weeks ago. To start the new season, we've decided to blog about our journey. It has already started with questions like "What is an entrepreneur" and "Who needs revenue anyways?" but pretty soon we'll start to hear questions such as "Why does Apple (or insert company name here) have a good business model?" and "Is it really that good?" Who knows, you may even end up asking us "When can I pick up my check for $10,000 since I won the TYE business plan contest!?"

At our first event, we played a game called "Be a VC" (note: in case you already forgot, VC stands for venture capital). We asked all of the program participants to choose to fund, or finacially back, one of two hot new products. Our entire class was split into two camps. Each camp was asked to answer the question "If you had $5 million dollars, which product would you invest in and why?"

The first team selected the MyVu iPod video-projecting accessory glasses and the second team chose the Digit Wireless "Fasttap finger pad." The final showdown occurred when each team, in front of the entire audience of fifty+ parents, was asked to offer compelling reasons to invest in their chosen product. Both teams were able to provide comprehensive information on subjects such as market size, product innovation, competition, and pricing. The audience, our resident venture capitalists if you will, were shrewd and wanted to know everything we could tell them. The MyVu team won the vote by a narrow margin, but it was close. Next time we'll cover the analysis in a little more depth. Stay tuned...

A Call for high school students who dare to dream big!

Take your idea, build a team, win the TiE Young Entrepreneurs Business Plan Competition, and become a Leader!

TYE Thank You and Welcome Dinner

It gives us great pleasure to invite you to the 4^th Annual TiE Young Entrepreneurs $10k Business Plan competition program launch and dinner event

6:30pm on Friday, July 31, 2009

Reservoir Woods

930 Winter Street

Waltham, MA 02451

Program

6:30pm to 7:30pm    Registration, Networking & Dinner

7:30pm to 8:00pm    TiE and TyE Welcome Address Sponsor Presentation

                                      Keynote Speeches

8:00pm to 8:30pm    Larry O’Toole, CEO, Gentle Giant

8:30pm to 9:00pm    Eswar Priyadarshan, Co-Founder & CTO, Quattro Wireless

9:00pm to 9:30pm    Closing Remarks and Further Networking

Please rsvp to Suneha at suneha@tie-boston.org or call 781-272-3875

To learn more about TyE, please visit www.tieyoungentrepreneurs.org or http://tieyoungentrepreneurs.blogspot.com/

Speaker Bios

Eswar Priyadarshan

Co-Founder & CTO, Quattro Wireless

Prior to co-founding Quattro, Eswar was the co-founder and CTO of m-Qube, Inc. While at m-Qube, Eswar led technology research and development. m-Qube was acquired by VeriSign for $250 million in April of 2006. Eswar's previous positions include VP, Engineering at Open Market, Technical Lead at Adobe Systems, and various engineering positions with Sun Microsystems.  Eswar holds Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Computer Science from Boston University. Eswar also serves as the Co-Chair of the m-Commerce Committee for the Mobile Marketing Association.

Larry O’Toole

CEO, Gentle Giant

A native of Ireland and 1973 engineering graduate of Northeastern University, where he rowed competitively, Larry O'Toole was a rising executive at Eaton Corporation when he quit his job to "escape corporate slavery" and pursue his writing interests while investigating the possibilities of starting a light manufacturing company. On a quest for start-up cash, the 6 foot 6 inch O'Toole - the original Gentle Giant - was urged by his friends to add moving to his list of odd jobs.   In 1980, Larry O'Toole founded Gentle Giant with a friend’s borrowed truck and a $17 investment: a one-time ad in the Boston Phoenix. O'Toole felt strongly that Massachusetts sorely needed an infusion of quality into the moving industry, and in 1984 committed himself fully to that mission. As noted in the company mission statement, written by O'Toole himself, "We treat our employees with respect and compassion, and expect that they will extend the same courtesy to our customers".   His efforts have been rewarded, since O'Toole has been recognized for his excellence in leadership by The United States Small Business Administration as its 2004 Massachusetts Small Business Person of the Year and The Cambridge Chamber of Commerce as its 2004 Business Person of the Year.