From Partition to NASDAQ: Kanwal Rekhi on Breaking the Silicon Valley Glass Ceiling

Kanwal Rekhi was two years old when he stood alone in a flood during the Partition of India, separated from his family in a temple. Decades later, he would stand equally alone as the first Indian-American to take a venture-backed company public on NASDAQ. In this conversation with host Jitesh Vaswani, Kanwal traces the full arc: the glass ceilings he hit as an engineer, the moment a former employee became an entrepreneur and dared him to do the same, and what it really took to build Excelan and co-found TiE. His memoir is called 'The Groundbreaker.' This episode will remind you why it is not a shame to fail as an entrepreneur but it would be a shame never to try.