CAMBRIDGE, MA– Pallavi Singh and Shaloo Savla, two of the chairs of last year’s TiE StartupCon, are back as Co-Chairs of TIE StartupCon 2016 as they hope to make this conference on April 15 even bigger and better than last year.
TiE StartupCon is organized by TiE-Boston, the second largest TiE Chapter in the world.
Last year’s conference focused on rebranding TiECon to TiE StartupCon to put startups at the core of the conference and to bring the focus to young entrepreneurs.
“Our panels focus on topics relating to the ideation and innovation stages for a startup and the execution and scaling of a company,” said Singh, founder and CEO of Beacon Innovation Group, an intellectual property and innovation firm which provides support to entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs.
TIE StartupCon 2016, which is known as the biggest conference for entrepreneurs on the East Coast, will be held on April 15 at Boston Marriott Copley Place Hotel, which is located at 110 Huntington Ave in Boston.
The conference has three tracks this year: (1) Ideate & Innovate, (2) Scale and (3) What is trending in Tech, Healthcare and Pharma.
The three keynote speakers are: Clayton Christensen, Desh Deshpande and Bob Langer.
Clayton M. Christensen
Christensen is the Kim B. Clark Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School; and is regarded as one of the world’s top experts on innovation and growth. Christensen has served as a director of many companies, and has advised the executives of scores of the world’s major corporations. These companies generate tens of billions of dollars in revenues every year from product and service innovations that were inspired by his research.
Christensen, an experienced entrepreneur, has started four successful companies. Prior to joining the HBS faculty, in 1984 he and three MIT professors founded CPS Technologies, which has become a leading developer and manufacturer of products from high-technology materials. He is the best-selling author of eight books and more than a hundred articles.
Desh Deshpande
Gururaj “Desh” Deshpande is the President and Chairman of Sparta Group LLC, a family investment office and is also the Chairman of Tejas Networks. He has pursued an entrepreneurial career for the last three decades. He is involved either as the founder, a founding investor or chairman of several companies including Cascade Communications, Sycamore Networks, Coral Networks, Tejas Networks, Cimaron, Webdialogs, Airvana, Sandstone Capital, A123 Systems and Curata.
Deshpande serves as a life-member of the MIT Corporation, and his support has made possible MIT’s Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation. Leveraging the experience gained at the MIT Center, the Deshpande Foundation has facilitated the set up of three other centers; Deshpande Center for Social Entrepreneurship in India, Merrimack Valley Sandbox in Lowell/Lawrence Massachusetts and Pond-Deshpande Center at the University of New Brunswick in Canada. Deshpande co-chairs a National Council to support President Obama’s innovation and entrepreneurship strategy.
Bob Langer
Robert S. Langer is the David H. Koch Institute Professor (there are 11 Institute Professors at MIT; being an Institute Professor is the highest honor that can be awarded to a faculty member). Dr. Langer has written over 1,300 articles. He also has over 1,080 patents worldwide. Dr. Langer’s patents have been licensed or sublicensed to over 300 pharmaceutical, chemical, biotechnology and medical device companies. He is the most cited engineer in history.
He served as a member of the United States Food and Drug Administration’s SCIENCE Board, the FDA’s highest advisory board, from 1995–2002 and as its Chairman from 1999-2002.
Singh said that about 1,000 entrepreneurs, investors, business executives and professionals are expected to attend the event.
“Last year, we had the largest number of attendees since our 2005 conference, a great lineup of panelists and keynotes, including the Forbes 30 under 30 panel and a great TiE Sharks program,” said Singh. “This year, we are excited to showcase 50 of the hottest startups in New England as part of the Startup Expo, a new program for StartupCon. We have had an incredible amount of interest from companies wanting to participate.”
Singh said that the organizing team of the conference is refining the mentor component into the mentor breakfast this year and that will allow new entrepreneurs to connect in a more focused way with serial entrepreneurs and investors.
Mentorship is one of the things that differentiates TiE from other groups in Boston and TieBoston is excited to showcase it the conference, said Singh, adding that the organizers have recruited a diverse range of panelists, including many women entrepreneurs such as Bettina Hein from Pixability, Diane Hessan from the Startup Institute, Jana Eggers from NaraLogic, and Liz Powers from Artlifting.
“We look forward to seeing you at TiE StartupCon! We are so excited by the lineup of keynotes and speakers and expect to sell out,” Savla said. “In particular, I am excited to hear the Shared Economy Keynote which has some of the Northeast’s hottest shared economy startups, such as Handy, Hourly Nerd, Spot and Fasten.”
Singh is the Founder and CEO of Beacon Innovation Group, an intellectual property and innovation firm which provides support to entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs at world-class organizations like Anaqua (raised over $125M from Bessemer and private equity), J&J, Georgia Tech, and Red Hat. She received a B.S. from Worcester Polytechnic Institute. She has been an active member of TIE since 2011, and a Charter Member of TiE Boston since January 2015.
As a Charter Member, she has been active in strengthening many of TIE-Boston’s flagship programs, including serving as Co-Chair of TiE StartupCon (f/k/a TiECon East), the largest startup conference in the Northeast, for two years, 2016 Chair of TYE (a powerful mentoring program for our high school entrepreneurs) and has performed due diligence for TiE Angels (TiE’s impactful investment arm).
Savla is a research analyst with Fidelity Investments in the Fixed Income Division of Fidelity Management & Research Company (FMRCo), the investment arm of Fidelity Investments. Prior to joining Fidelity in the Boston area, Savla worked at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in its Toronto office, where he specialized in business transformation projects, most notably with clients in the financial services and industrial goods practices.
Outside of these experiences, Savla has lived and worked in regions around the world including Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and South Asia. Savla received his MBA and MPP degrees from Harvard Business School and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 2013. Originally from Toronto, Canada, Savla received an HBA in Business Administration and a BSc in Health Sciences, which he received in 2006, both from the University of Western Ontario. In 2015, Savla was selected as a “40 under 40” recipient by the New Hampshire Union Leader. He is a charter member of TiE-Boston and has been Co-Chair of TiE StartupCon in 2016.
