Business World
December 9, 2002
Charles Assisi

The venture catalyst mulls over what it will take to turn Bangalore into Silicon Valley

Can you deliberately build a Silicon Valley kind of ecosystem that fosters entrepreneurship? An ecosystem that encourages original ideas? More importantly, can Bangalore, India’s IT capital, 10,000 miles from Silicon Valley, evolve into that ecosystem? That’s a question Randy Komisar has been asking himself for a long time now. It’s a theme he seems to be obsessed with – whether he’s delivering a talk at MIT Media Labs Asia’s conference room in Mumbai or digging into a chicken quiche at the Orchid, a plush hotel near Mumbai’s Santacruz airport.

For Komisar, the question first presented itself while he was in Myanmar sometime in February 1999 when he was motorcycling across an arid expanse. The final destination: Bagan, an ancient city with more than 5,000 temples and stupas in 30 square kilometers. This was an annual ritual. Not Myanmar, but traveling for at least a month every year, “It expands the mind and reaches you to be compassionate.”

Defining Komisar is rather difficult. He hates to be called a venture capitalist even though he mentors start-ups. He prefers being known as a venture catalyst (that, he says, is not mere semantics). His visiting card reads ‘Virtual CEO’. Over the past 15-odd years, he’s put in time with Steve Jobs at Apple, as CFO at Go Corporation (one of the few dotcom start-ups that survived the carnage and lived to tell the tale) and co-founded Claris Corporation (now called File-Maker), a software firm that makes workgroup databases and solutions. Anyway, Komisar first shot into the lime-light when he partnered George Lucas (of Star Wars fame) and took over as CEO of LucasArts Corporation. Obviously, places like Stanford University got interested in him. He now teaches entrepreneurship there.

But given half a chance, he latches on to entertainment companies, like Tivo, where he is a director on the board. Tivo pioneered the idea that “everyone, no matter how busy life gets, deserves to enjoy the television entertainment of their choice, at their time”. The service currently has 460,000 subscribers and revenues of $47 million.

But that’s digressing. Point here is the ride to Bagan. In the distance, Komisar saw a taxi – a rickety Chinese contraption with 30 people clinging on to its sides. On the rear bumper was a young monk, holding on as tightly as he could. As Komisar passed by, the monk gesticulated. Would he give the monk a ride? Why not, thought Komisar?

In some sense, it took Komisar back a few years. To the time when he was 22, still wet behind the ears. Technology hadn’t touched him nor Silicon Valley claimed him. Those were the days when he studied law in the morning, taught economics to undergraduate students in the evening and managed a rock band by night. “ Those were the best days of my life,” he says, sounding like Bryan Adams in the Summer of ‘69’. But U2 is what he really, really, likes. Well, one thing led to another and before he knew it, he wasn’t managing a rock band. Instead, he disappeared into the cultural consciousness of Silicon Valley – like the monk riding behind him.

When Komisar pulled over at Mount Popa – an ancient Buddhist temple built on a mountain of rock – the monk behind him took off into the temple. An older monk approached Komisar. “I’m Mr. Wizdom, the abbot of Mount Popa Monastery,” With the noble hospitality of one who has nothing, he motioned Komisar to sit down. “I picked him up 150 km ago,” Komisar said pointing to the young monk. “I have no idea where I’m taking him. Is this where he wants to go?”

That was pretty much the same question Komisar asked himself in 1997. Is this where I want to go? Jerry Yang and David Filo of Yahoo! had just made their presence felt. They promised to take the Internet, the exclusive domain of hardcore techies, to the masses. Then there was Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com, who, with his unique model of e-commerce, turned the world of retailing on its head. The world loved them and soon a few million dollars poured into their war chests. But their early success sent out wrong messages. Hordes descended on the Valley in search of the proverbial port of gold at the end of the rainbow. Komisar, until then an ‘insider’ in the Valley, was horrified. “This isn’t entrepreneurship,” he screamed from every platform. “Wealth creation is the tail of the dog. It is not the dog,” In a world where Mary Meeker and Henry Blodget called the shots. Komisar was suddenly a pariah. The only thing that mattered to everyone was an IPO in Internet time. Komisar’s world, like that of other Valley veterans, threatened to come down. “In 1999, I thought it was all over. There was fast money and conspicuous consumption. Silicon Valley was never like that.” What, in the world, was going on?

To Komisar’s mind, there were no answers, either from Silicon Valley, or from Mr Wizdom – only more riddles. A simple question addressed to Mr Wizdom about why the younger monk disappeared, was met with an intriguing smile. As Komisar walked towards his bike, the young monk was waiting, smiling. “He wants to go back to where you picked him up,” Mr Wizdom said, “But he just got here. I drove him all afternoon…. Now he wants to go back. What’s the point?” Komisar asked. Mr Wizdom shrugged: “I cannot easily answer that question. But let me give you a riddle to solve. Don’t try to answer it now. Imagine I have an egg. And I want to drop this egg three feet without breaking it. How do I do that?” Komisar couldn’t care. He and the monk began the ride back to Bagan.

There’s a thing about rides. The faster you ride, the harder you fall. Sure enough, the Nasdaq collapsed. The gold rush was over. Internet companies went bust. And in Bangalore, a few thousand dreams shattered. If Silicon Valley fell, Bangalore would have no raison d’etre.

Komisar has spent three weeks traveling in India. His mandate from the Wadhwani Foundation, a US-based NGO focusing on mentoring entrepreneurship in India: identify the problems that impede entrepreneurship and create the framework for an ecosystem that catalyses entrepreneurship and innovation. “The problem, says Komisar, “is that most entrepreneurs have seen only that part of Silicon Valley which existed from 1997 to 1999. No one understands the story that played from 1930 to 1990. In that sense, they are not different from the hordes that descended on Silicon Valley… to make a quick buck.”

This translates into a strange dichotomy in the Indian context. On the one hand are people who understand sophisticated technologies created in the West. On the other, “ the elite from the Indian IT community are too focused on how to make money out of these technologies.” Which is why they offer services around these technologies and bag increasingly lucrative contracts. “That’s a short-term view. There are two things that Indian companies ought to do. First of all, build new technologies. And second, build technologies that will cater to the Indian market, … and other emerging economies with the same compulsions as India.”

And that, Komisar says, is the best part. Because, like he wrote in his best selling The Monk and the Riddle, the journey is the reward. There is nothing else. Reaching the end is well, the end. As for Mr Wizdom’s riddle, if the egg must fall three feet without cracking, simply extend the trip to four.