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Resilience and renewal – 15 lessons from TiE founder Kanwal Rekhi’s book, ‘Groundbreaker’ >
by Madanmohan Rao [January 09, 2026]
The Groundbreaker: Risks, Rewards and Lessons from a Legendary Entrepreneur is a compelling new book documenting the inspirational story of TiE co-founder Kanwal Rehki.
The 25 chapters in the 265-page book share his personal and professional journey from India to the US. There are also 12 pages of photographs which bring readers closer to the author. In addition to being a business memoir, the book is packed with lessons for entrepreneurs and the broader ecosystem.
Kanwal was the first Indo-American founder and CEO to take a venture-backed company public on NASDAQ. He co-founded Excelan in Silicon Valley to commercialise ethernet and TCP/IP; the company went public in 1987.
Kanwal also co-founded entrepreneurship development organisation TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) in 1992, which now has chapters in dozens of cities around the world. As a TiE Bangalore charter member, it is a special delight and honour for me to publish this book review in the form of 15 key sets of takeaways for entrepreneurs.
1. Have a thirst for learning
2. Resilience is built layer by layer
3. Address customer pain points
4. Avoid distractions at the early stage
5. Focus on the numbers
6. Build a solid work culture
7. Understand biases and tackle them
8. Master the mindset and practice of entrepreneurial leadership
9. Learn how to work effectively with boards
10. Sometimes, it is all about luck
11. Nurture the entrepreneurial ecosystem
12. Engage with policy – and politics
13. Protect the family-work balance
14. Have a sense of humour
15. Health is wealth
Here are more details on these takeaways; we welcome readers to add some of their own takeaways in the feedback section below and enrich the discourse.
1. Have a thirst for learning
Right from his IIT Bombay days, Kanwal had a penchant for learning about emerging technologies, and later on about business and entrepreneurship. In the US, he took continuing education courses in Silicon Valley so that he could keep improving his understanding of areas outside his current expertise, such as marketing and law.
While choosing jobs in the US, he made sure to do adequate research on the company’s prospects – a lesson he learnt the hard way after being laid off for the first time.
2. Resilience is built layer by layer
“I often say tenacity and resilience must be in my DNA,” Kanwal writes. He traces his early family days as refugees from Pakistan to Kanpur in India during the partition, drawing inspiration from his mother’s dedication to the family.
His father’s motto was: Do your duty without complaining or boasting, and do it well. His father was in the military, and was disappointed when Kanwal chose a different career as an engineer.
“Being written off by father freed me from his expectations and allowed me to discover my true potential,” Kanwal explains.
Such contexts would help build resilience in him against all odds in his business journey. “You only lose when you have given up” he says. “When you blame others for your failures, you are looking in for excuses everywhere except the place it matters – you,” he affirms.
“Perspective is one of the hardest things to maintain, especially in difficult times,” he acknowledges.
3. Address customer pain points
“Every business is about solving a problem, so you better know how big the problem is and who you are solving it for,” Kanwal advises.
To attract investments, the company should also have a good story to tell about the customer and the product’s positioning in the marketplace. The story should be clear for insiders as well as outsiders.
‘If you want to close the sale, you’ve got to speak the customer’s language,” Kanwal adds. Upgrades to products should feel like gifts for the customer, and not a burden.
4. Avoid distractions at the early stage
In the early stages, startups often drift from their original course and try to build all sorts of products and features. Kanwal cautions against this YAFO phenomenon (‘yet another friggin’ opportunity’).
“YAFOs are what kill startups. YAFOs take away time, focus, energy, and precious resources,” he warns, drawing on Excelan’s own forays into other products like Nutcracker which he eventually terminated.
5. Focus on the numbers
Founders should stay away from vanity metrics and focus on key numbers like revenue, profit, cashflow, and growth. Ironically, Kanwal recalls that he himself slipped up here during the heady days of the ‘dotcom boom’ – one of his key portfolio companies, Exodus, generated millions in revenue but did not become profitable and was eventually sold for a mere dollar.
Similar misconceptions about growth before profitability seem to surface in other sectors as well, like quick commerce and AI these days.
Founders should have clarity on the difference between cost, price, value, and valuation. “Value pricing is a strategy that sets a price based on the customer’s perceived value,” Kanwal explains. “Every market has three segments – luxury, value and price sensitivity,” he adds.
“An asset’s value isn’t fixed – it changes depending on whose hands it’s in,” he describes, recalling Hotmail’s acquisition by Microsoft because it wanted email users even though Hotmail wasn’t profitable.
While choosing companies to work for, employees should always ask: How is the company doing? Is it competitive? What are its successes, challenges, and future prospects?
6. Build a solid work culture
Successful companies have employees committed to innovation, quality and customer focus. “Make yourself indispensable,” Kanwal advises. Do things beyond the call of normal duty, and assist others in their challenges.
Leaders should follow the ‘duck theory’ of management. They should stay calm under pressure, while paddling like hell beneath the surface. Leadership is not just about dealmaking but navigating the underlying human dynamics.
Good leaders give employees the ability to ideate, experiment and take initiative. At the same time, it is important to ensure that there is no conflict of interest or inappropriate behaviour.
“As a rule of thumb, it is not productive to mix business with friendship, a lesson I would learn the hard way later down the line,” Kanwal explains.
7. Understand biases and tackle them
Every country has its biases and prejudices, and Kanwal experienced some of this in a different form in the US when he landed there at the age of 22 for graduate studies and work. Many Americans in those times were dismissive of India’s status, its education system, and Indians’ ability to become entrepreneurs or business leaders.
To blend in better, Kanwal decided to transform his appearance. “The turban was gone, my hair was short and Americanised by a Houghton barber, and my face was clean-shaven,” he writes.
Kanwal also jokes about how India and the US differ in terms of which side of the road people drive on, and how switches flip in opposite directions. At the same time, there is lots of room for synergy since Indians and Americans share similar values of education, hard work and family, and both countries are democracies.
8. Master the mindset and practice of entrepreneurial leadership
In 1981, Kanwal quit his engineering career at companies like Zilog to launch Excelan. Entrepreneurs are not just skilled at their work, but are ambitious, he explains. They do not fixate on the comfort and stability of day jobs – they are willing to take risks to pursue their visions and chart their own destiny.
“Success demands movement, but not reckless moves. It requires strategic thinking,” he affirms, describing the later stages of his journey.
“Leadership demands growth – professionally, intellectually and spirituality – especially in a startup environment,” he affirms.
“Staying ahead as a leader means mastering the balance – between abstraction and action, between today’s realities and tomorrow’s opportunities,” Kanwal describe.
However, entrepreneurship has to be experienced first-hand – people need to discover themselves whether a startup journey is truly meant for them.
9. Learn how to work effectively with boards
As a startup raises funds, its board begins to take more control over the company. Some such decisions are tough for a founder to stomach, such as being told to step aside and make way for another CEO.
Kanwal experienced this the hard way when his board made him only an interim CEO during times of change. Other challenges can arise during merges and acquisitions, as Kanwal learnt during merger discussions with companies like Novell.
10. Sometimes, it is all about luck
It was during the space race between the Soviets and the US that President Lyndon Johnson signed the Hart-Celler Act in 1965. It prioritised qualification-based immigration into the US, effectively opening the door of opportunity to engineers from India and China.
Such luck helped Kanwal plan his move to the US. Other fortuitous tech and socio-economic developments for him were the rise of the internet and smartphones; the central place of Silicon Valley in the innovation ecosystem; the dramatic growth of India’s IT sector; and the liberalisation of India’s economy in the 1990s. Being in the right place at the right time and in the right position certainly helps.
“Unexpected connections shape us in ways we can’t predict,” Kanwal adds. This applies to personal and professional life as well.
11. Nurture the entrepreneurial ecosystem
In a superb masterstroke, Kanwal and other successful Indian-origin founders launched TiE (The IndUS entrepreneurs) as an entrepreneurship support organisation via networking, mentoring and funding for aspiring founders. This model would eventually be replicated in dozens of cities across continents.
Successful professionals “paid forward” with fees for such institutional development of TiE chapters, along with their precious insights, networks and wallets. The success story of Indian entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley would pave the way for similar dreams elsewhere.
“TiE wasn’t just an organisation – it was a movement – the freedom movement of my youth,” Kanwal writes. Entrepreneurs spark chain reactions in society, and can create jobs not just in dozens but even millions; they see things others may not, and drive change and progress.
As notable entrepreneurship initiatives in India, he cites the Kalkatiya Sandbox, where entrepreneurship education is combined with room and board for aspiring village founders.
12. Engage with policy – and politics
In the 1960s, many Indians began as techies in areas like Silicon Valley and then expanded to domains like sales and finance – eventually becoming entrepreneurs, CEOs and investors themselves. Some would even go on to lobby government for support and progressive policies, and become politicians themselves.
Kanwal and his TiE team engaged with Indian policymakers in the 1990s to call for better telecom regulation to grow the Internet market, and to promote entrepreneurship in India through virtuous cycles like the TiE model.
“The parallel transformation of India and Indian Americans was nothing short of miraculous,” Kanwal writes, when India began to shed its old baggage and make progress. He also tried to promote TiE in Pakistan, but bilateral geo-political tensions reduced the opportunity for such collaborations.
13. Protect the family-work balance
Kanwal would end up marrying his pen friend, Ann Douglas Holt, whom he always feels indebted to for her belief in his potential. “She grounded me while lifting me higher,” he writes.
“Ann and I made a deal. She would be the CEO of our household while I was starting my business. I saw her as a full partner, carrying equal weight and responsibility,” he describes. One’s sense of purpose should be not just about work but family, community and nation as well.
14. Have a sense of humour
Though he does not mention it as such, it is clear that Kanwal’s sense of humour served him well. He mentions an incident when he tried to kill the ants in one of his offices which became infected – but his colleague preferred to gather them up and throw them outside. That’s the difference between a Sikh and a Jain, he jokes.
“IPO is short for ‘instant Porsche ownership,’” he jokes again, referring to his car purchase after Excelan went public.
15. Health is wealth
Kanwal suffered from sleep apnea and a speech difficulty, but did not let them get in his way. He sought professional help for addressing both these challenges as his career took off.
He took further stock of his health only later in life when he realised how obese and unfit he had become. He asked himself: “How could I lecture people when I wasn’t smart enough to take care of myself?”
He then followed a stricter regimen which included regular exercise. Unfortunately, his wife suffered from conditions of depression, which could not be completely treated.
The book concludes by showing how technology and globalisation have made entrepreneurship more accessible now then ever before. “Growth never stops. Life keeps teaching,” Kanwal says.
“Growing older is not the enemy. The real danger is growing stale,” he signs off.
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