The conference boasts headline-grabbing speakers who inspire techies and budding entrepreneurs with the lore of company-building the Silicon Valley way. But the business of TiEcon is, well, doing business.

"The magic of TiEcon is networking," announced TiE President Raj Jaswa at the conference opener.

There was just as much buzz in the hallways and around the chai tea carts as in the assembly hall. That's where business cards are swapped and deals are sealed - or at least discussed.

Networking opportunities in the valley are as common as stoplights. But there's nothing quite like TiEcon, where making the right connection has been streamlined to a science. Name tags of venture capitalists are color-coded green - for money - and TiE charter members, who are often angel funders, have the mark of blue.

Organizers offer 122 entrepreneurs the start-up version of speed dating: Company founders get to make quick pitches to representatives from elite venture capital firms. TiE also posts their video pitches at www.tiecon.org/home/bazaar under "Minute Plus Video Profiles."

"You have access to VCs without paying an arm and a leg," said Tan Nguyen, who came to pitch his start-up, Palo Alto-based MovieCrazy. The Netflix-type company partners with mom-and-pop video stores to offer latest films as well as hard-to-find niche movies. "We are looking for $1 million to $3 million. Half of that has been committed. I'm here to close the other half."

TiEcon underscores the global nature of the valley. A Japanese camera crew followed every move of legendary venture capitalist Kanwal Rekhi. Conventiongoers flew in from Europe and Asia. Foreign consulates - such as China and the Philippines - dispatched staff to attend.

"They want to know about the entrepreneurial ecosystem," said Ajay Chopra, a TiEcon organizer and general partner at Trinity Ventures.

The conference began with the cerebral Peter Thiel, who recalled the early days of PayPal, the company he co-founded in the late 1990s amid the wreckage of others who had tried similar online payments companies. Intuit Chairman Bill Campbell, renowned coach to start-ups and friends to the likes of Steve Jobs and Bruce Chizen, gave insights about the intangibles of successful start-ups. Former Pakistan Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz spoke the night before about the universal dreams of entrepreneurial success found in the world's poorest pockets of poverty.

TiE, whose founders are from India, has two chapters in Pakistan, and a third is being formed. The networks span more than business disciplines, said Aziz, Pakistan's prime minister from August 2004 until November 2007.

"They can help lower the temperature and build trust, which is needed to resolve disputes," he said of TiE effect on the political animosity between India and Pakistan.

For many, though, TiEcon serves a more personal purpose.

Shital Mehta, who had "zero interest in being an entrepreneur," attended her first TiEcon as a 19-year-old college student in 2000. A panel of female entrepreneurs gave her a new calling and determination to avoid a conventional corporate career.

"I didn't want to sit in a cubicle farm," Mehta said. So after graduation, she started a marketing and PR firm.

"Within a year and a half, my firm grew to $1 million in revenue," Mehta said. "And three-quarters of my leads came from people involved in TiE in some way."

Now 27, she has founded her second company, Generation Orange, an online retailer of non-toxic baby and children's products.