A few of the magical ingredients of what makes Silicon Valley unique is the easy access to mentors and investors. I turned to Yogen Dalal an engineer-turned entrepreneur-turned venture capitalist to find out the answers to many unanswered questions. Yogen came to Silicon Valley in the early 1970s to study at Stanford University. He is the Managing Partner at Mayfield Fund, Menlo Park.

In Part-2 of the interview Yogen talks about innovation, digital lifestyle, his mentors and his old high school headmaster Jack Gibson of Mayo College.

In case you missed you might want to listen or read the transcript to Part-1 of the interview with Yogen.

If you like, you can listen to a podcast of the interview.

This is Kamla Bhatt. We bring you part two of our conversation with Yogen Dalal, Managing Director of Mayfield Fund, a venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley. In this segment, Yogen talks about innovation, Mayfield’s investment strategy and his mentors. Here is Yogen.

Kamla: How are you fostering innovations through your investments?

Yogen: Well, it’s a tricky line you know. Our goal here is to invest our limited partners’ money to make money for them and so successful investments are those that are just a little bit ahead of their time. So that when the company has a product that is ready to be launched, it fits in with the needs of customers, whether they be businesses or consumers.

So you know our job is to take risks. So we’re on the cutting edge of figuring out what is likely to be a good outcome but as you know; if you’re a little too early well they tell you about the pioneers who’re the ones with the arrows in their back.

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Invariably when a first time visitor drives down highway 101, the main artery to Silicon Valley their first question is: Where is Silicon Valley? I don’t see any tall buildings? Well, there are a few tall buildings you can spot, but for most part Silicon Valley consists of low, mostly 2-storey nondescript office buildings that are home to many, many startups. It is not the buildings, but it is a mind-set, a willingness to try new things and fail, and try again that makes this place so different. It is a chance to get an unfounded idea up and running and make it big. There are so many stories of how companies started small and made it big in Silicon Valley.

How do you describe the magic of Silicon Valley? What is the magic that pulls people from all around the world to come and work here and make their dreams come true? What is the digital silk road? I turned to Yogen Dalal, engineer turned entrepreneur turned venture capitalist, who came to Silicon Valley in the early 1970s when computer software was just starting to take off here. In this 2-part interview we talk on a wide-range of issues including magic of Silicon Valley, Vint Cerf innovation and his alma mater Mayo College in India.

Can these elusive magical qualities of Silicon Valley be reproduced in other parts of the world? What are the missing ingredients that make it difficult to recreate that magic? What was it to be one of the first graduate students of Vint Cerf, the Father of the Internet? What has surprised Yogen the most about the growth of the Internet? What was it like to work with Apple? What are his thoughts on IPv6 and the new wave of innovation, esp social media and the questions about privacy? Tune it to find out.

If you like you can listen to a podcast of the interview with Yogen Dalal.

This is Kamla Bhatt. Today my guest is Yogen Dalal, who is Managing Director, at Mayfield Fund, a venture capital firm located in Silicon Valley. Mayfield currently manages over $ 2 billion and has invested in 500 companies out of which 100 went public. Mayfield is also active in India and has invested in a handful of companies there.

Yogen has been in Silicon Valley since the 1970s and worked with Vint Cerf, the father of Internet at Stanford and co-authored the specification for Internet Transmission Control Program or TCP. Yogen was a founding member of the Claris Corporation and Metaphor Computer Systems and prior to that, he worked at Xerox Parc. He’s currently on the boards of Naunce, Revenue Science, Audiofeast and others.

Yogen has a PhD from Stanford and has an undergrad degree from IIT, Mumbai. Welcome to the show, Yogen.

Yogen: Thank you Kamla. Always nice to talk to you and get your perspectives on the world.

Kamla: Today I’m going to get your perspectives and the valley. What is the magic of Silicon Valley?

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AR Rahman won 2 Oscars in 2009 for his music composition and song in Slumdog Millionaire.

If you like, you can listen to a podcast of this interview .

This is Kamla Bhatt. We bring you the second part of our conversation with Oscar-nominated music composer AR Rahman. AR has been nominated for three Oscars for his music composition in Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire.

In this episode AR talks about his journey as a music director and the role that his mother played.
Kamla: Welcome to the show AR.
A R Rahman: Hi, nice to be here.
Kamla: How has your journey been from Kodambakkam to Hollywood?
A R Rahman: My journey. Very unpredictable journey actually. When I was a child I never thought that I could probably perform properly. I was famous from the age of 11 because I was in a children’s show on TV every Sunday. So, they asked me to play film songs and I used to play that and people used to recognize me. Fame was not an unusual thing even then. But my confidence level and the level of probably delivering something all those things suddenly feel surreal. When you come here and you meet the people in America and Los Angeles. All the movies you have seen. Last night I saw Oliver Stone and one of my favorite movies of his is ‘Born on the 4th of July’. So it is really a big trip isn’t it from there to here?

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This is a 2-part interview with Oscar winner AR Rahman. An intensely private person, AR was pretty candid in this 2-part interview where he talks about his journey as a musician. AR entered the Indian film industry as a young boy, and through sheer hard work and determination rose to become one of the top film composer in India. In 2009 AR became the first Indian music composer to win 2 Oscars - for music composition and best song Jai Ho in Slumdog Millionaire.

If you like, you can listen to a podcast version of this interview with AR Rahman.

This is Kamla Bhatt and today my guest is AR Rahman, who is being nominated for three Oscars for his work in Slumdog Millionaire. He is the first Indian music composer to be nominated for three Oscars. In 2005, Time Magazine listed the musical sound track from his first film Roja as one of the top 10 movie sound tracks of all time. AR as he prefers to be called is also one of the top selling recording artist in the world.

Kamla: Welcome to the show AR.
A R Rahman: Hi, nice to be here.

Kamla: So, when you won the Golden Globe, who was the first person you called?
A R Rahman: I text from my agent Sam Schwartz’s Blackberry to one of my friends to tell my wife. Because we were sitting there and phones were not allowed and I think they saw it on TV.

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This is Kamla Bhatt and today my guest is Danny Boyle who is director of Slumdog Millionaire, the surprise movie of 2008 that has won four Golden Globe awards and has won 10 Oscar nominations. The New York Time Magazine called Slumdog Millionaire “The ultimate Danny Boyle movie”. The film had a shoe string budget of less than $15 million and has grossed over $52 million at least until early January. Danny directed the critically acclaimed “Trainspotting”, “28 Days” and more recently Leonardo Di Caprio in a big budget Hollywood film called “Beaches”. But what Danny likes making are films that are lower down on the radar or as he puts it, not on the radar at all.

Danny won an Oscar for best director for Slumdog Millionaire. The movie went on to win 8 Oscars in 2009.

If you like, you can listen to a podcast of this interview.
Kamla: Welcome to the show.
Danny: Thank you very much. Nice to be here.

Kamla: How did you manage to put Slumdog Millionaire, the cast and crew, right in the middle of the radar?
Danny: “With lots of help” to be honest is the short answer. We had an extraordinary time making the film and with a huge kind of talent and application of the caste and crew — all of whom are really, apart from Dev Patel and a couple of people that I brought from London with me. Everybody is, basically from the Bollywood film industry. And it is a tribute to them really. And more widely to everybody in Mumbai who helped us make this film whether knowingly or unknowingly, in a way. Once we made the movie, we were very proud of the movie. There is whole different universe you enter, which is trying to get the movie on the radar as you put it. For that you need the support of your distributors and in Europe that is Path , a company called Path and in America, it is called Fox Searchlight. Fox Searchlight in particular, have done an extraordinary job since we first premiered the film in Telluride and in Toronto in September and had grown very very slowly and let it work by word of mouth, by not huge advertising, but by a kind of word of mouth, you know. And people talking to each other about the movie — that they are finding a movie that they want to recommend to friends. You cannot buy that kind of word of mouth. It is the only thing, it is the only really free, democratic thing that remains in this huge film industry and it is extraordinary the way it works. We have benefited from that enormously and when you appear in the award season and that one thing leads to another if you are very lucky. But you need a lot, a lot of help all along the way.

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(A version of this article was originally published in Open Magazine, June 6, 2009.)

(Charlie Chaplin is an icon in India. Curiously in the state of Uttar Pradesh in North India Chaplin is often referred to as “Chaliss Chaplin.” Like many kids I grew up watching Chaplin movies. Every time my dad saw Chaplin he would invariably comment: “This is a bioscope.” I filed away that piece of information and did not realize that one day I would be living close to the area where Chaplin shot his famous film The Tramp and that it was in the San Francisco bay area that he met his leading lady  Edna Purviance.)

The large white letters spelt ‘N-I-L-E-S’ reminded me of that other famous sign: ‘H-O-L-L-Y-W-O-O-D’. I often wondered about the startling similarities between these two signs, both perched on hillsides, and if there were any deeper connections. I finally gave in to curiosity and took a detour to venture into a street that looked straight out of an old western. Niles Boulevard, the main street, had mostly antique stores on one side and a railway track on the other. And way above the track was the sign I’d come to know so well: N-I-L-E-S. My eyes caught the Charlie Chaplin figures on the lamp posts. Why Chaplin? Intrigued, I drove on, looking for clues, and found my answer. The sign read: ‘Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum’. It wasn’t open.

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