An idea that is developed and put into action is more important than an idea that exists only as an idea. And Promod Haque, CEO, Norwest Venture Partners is one such individual who has made many ideas work in real life. After he joined Norwest Venture Partners in 1990, he brought into focus the client-server revolution and made his first big scores on Tivoli and Forte Software. In fact, Haque's dad wanted him to be a doctor; he instead became a millionaire financier. That was how Forbes described Promod Haque when he topped the Midas list of the magazine in 2004.

Born to a bureaucrat father and a schoolteacher mother in Delhi, Haque received a bachelor of science in electrical engineering from the University of Delhi. Later, he did his postgraduate work in the Siemens' medical which whetted his appetite for medical instrumentation design work. He then moved to United States to get a PhD in electrical engineering at Northwestern University with only a $4,000 loan from his dad. "I knew that at the end of the first year if I didn't make enough progress, I would be out of cash," he said later.

Nonetheless, he overcame it and followed with an MBA from Northwestern's Kellogg Graduate School of Management, where he serves on the advisory board. For 18 years, Haque worked at a string of medical instrumentation companies. He worked in various operational roles ranging from product development, marketing, chief operating officer and chief executive officer at various public and private companies including Siemens International, Thorn EMI, Emergent Technologies and Dimensional Medicine.

He was an early investor and a board member of Cerent Corporation (acquired by Cisco), Siara Systems (acquired by Redback Networks), OnDisplay (acquired by Vignette) and Winphoria Networks (acquired by Motorola). He seeded Extreme Networks in 1996. Haque focuses on investments in enterprise software and communications technologies. What makes him different from other venture capitalists is his aggression and optimism even in the most dismal situations. He as Forbes wrote about him "stuck it out rather than cut and run as many VCs are prone to do.

Now Veraz is coming back: It has $60 million in annual revenue and runs ten global networks, in Russia, India, Southeast Asia and elsewhere." Today, Haque, is keen on investing in the booming BPO services sector in India and is looking for good BPO firms to invest in. So, how does he pick his investments? "Before investing in any new company we consider such critical factors as the size of the market, the domain expertise of the founders and engineers (do they have a proven track record), the sustainability of the technology and its unique value proposition, the passion and vision of the entrepreneurs, the efficiency of the business capital and the breakthrough nature of the project," he once said. So, do you have an idea to cash on?