His father once hid Kanwal Rekhi from guests, perhaps believing that the child struggling to communicate would not do well in life. Born with a stammer, he faced three consecutive layoffs early in his engineering career and dozens of rejections from venture capitalists when seeking funding for his networking company. That same individual is now an investor with $9.9 billion in assets — the first Indian-American entrepreneur to have a listed company on Nasdaq.

Taking Silicon Valley by storm, he now has businesses worth more than $75 billion. And it all began with $8 and a degree in engineering from India’s premier institute, IIT. At the time, $8 was a strict legal limit set by the Indian government to discourage brain-drain. As a result, only $8 in currency was permitted.

Speaking on Simi Arora’s podcast, Kanwal Rekhi, founder of TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs), the largest entrepreneurial network for Indian founders, broke down his personal journey from having a father who was nearly ashamed of him to becoming one of the biggest Indian-American founders in Silicon Valley.

The ‘Godfather of Silicon Valley’

Once termed the ‘Godfather of Silicon Valley‘s Indian mafia’ by Fortune magazine, Rekhi first arrived in the US in 1967. Little did he know that he would be backing the technology that would build the Internet, with $8 to his name and a relatively lesser-known IIT degree.

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“I can’t even imagine how far I’ve come in life, from where I started,” he told Simi Arora and added, “And I’m still doing it.” While his father was not very supportive, Rekhi’s mother stood by him at all times. She was proud of his intellect, and that proved to be his silent motivation

And the underestimation was everywhere. His speech impediment led his educators and peers to believe that he was low in intellect. But it only became his silent superpower, how he used the underestimation and proved them wrong. His first of many such achievements was getting into IIT Bombay.

And he slowly became the example and not the exception. While Rekhi learnt to ignore the narratives about him, he also relied heavily on self-awareness. It was when his peers came to him to ask for help in academics that he gained some external motivation.

Moving to the US

It was not like IIT was widely recognised as a premier institute globally in the 1960s, and neither was $8 an amount that could sustain Rekhi. Choosing not to do a PhD, he went on to pursue higher studies at the Michigan Technological University. Not attracted by research, “I wanted to make things happen,” Rekhi said.

In 1982, Rekhi co-founded Excelan, the networking technology that eventually brought the Internet to the world. But six years later, he made history as it rolled out its IPO on NASDAQ, becoming the first venture-backed, Indian-American-founded company on the stock exchange. Launched at $12 per share, it jumped to $15 and was valued at nearly $150 million in 1987. Later, it was acquired by Novell in an all-stock deal.

However, this short-lived stint raised him through the ranks in Silicon Valley, as Rekhi went on to serve on the board of Novell. Today, as an active angel investor, Rekhi also leads TiE and continues to be a managing partner in several firms. He told his son, as he shared on Arora’s podcast, “My best years are still ahead of me.”

The Kanwal Rekhi mindset

As a person who has faced rejection from nearly every room he walked into, finding confidence was never an external factor for Rekhi. Believing in himself and his abilities was all that he had. And to nurture this mindset in his later years was his wife, Ann. They wrote each other letters and had not even met through the initial years of their relationship, but she provided the unconditional support he always craved from his family.

Only two years into moving to the US, he tied the knot with Ann. While that was his most positive risk, he started stepping out of his comfort zone and did things he was not expected to do. But corporate success was not something that motivated him from the beginning; he wanted to do more.

This attitude led him to realise that it was doing the uncomfortable that made him a CEO, from an engineer. “As an entrepreneur, you have to become more generalist than Passionist,” said Rekhi, advising future founders to broaden their horizons and learn more than what they already know.

In the end, he said, “Life is like paddling on the beach. You row, you work hard, and test the wave. But every wave brings you back to the beach,” conveying that the true power was rooted in humility and removing that stagnation that comes after achieving your goals.