Artifact Details

Title

Rekhi, Kanwal oral history

Catalog Number

102738694

Type

Document

Description

Mr. Rekhi was born in Pakistan in 1945. He attended IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) in Bombay, where he studied math and electrical engineering. From there he went to the US to study at Michigan Tech.

He then went to work for a number of minicomputer companies, all of which had business problems, resulting in him being laid off three times. Moving to California, he went to work for Singer Link, where he got heavily into complex system design for digital aircraft simulators. After about 8 years, he decided he wanted to move into a non-defense related job and joined Zilog.

In less than a year, Rekhi understood the power of networking, which was an evolving technology at that time. To meet that opportunity, he and two co-founders started Excelan. The company was quite successful and went public in February 1987. In 1990, Rekhi merged the company with Novell. He took a senior management position within Novell, but he left in 1995 after multiple disagreements on company strategy.

Kanwal was a co-founder of TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs), an organization founded by Indian/Pakistani entrepreneurs who had done well and were looking for ways to help other entrepeneurs like themselves. They wanted to offer education, mentoring, psychological support … and eventually investment in some cases. This organization has grown to become worldwide, with chapters in dozens of countries. While describing the founding and evolution of TiE, Kanwal is very open and frank about his own self doubts and development of a model of working with entrepreneurs that works for him.

Date

2017-12-20

Contributor

Hancock, Marguerite Gong, Interviewer
Katz, Jeff, Interviewer
Rakhi, Kanwal, Interviewee

Publisher

Computer History Museum

Place of Publication

Mountain View, CA

Extent

52 p.

Format

PDF

Category

Transcription

Subject

Excelan; Zilog, Inc.; Moore, Dick; Novell, Inc.; WordPerfect; TiE

Collection Title

CHM Oral History Collection

Credit

Computer History Museum

Lot Number

X8425.2018

Related Records

102738695 Rekhi, Kanwal oral history