AmBAR Selects A4Vision as the Most Promising Russian Software Company of 2004
Dec 23, 2003
PALO ALTO, California, December 15, 2004 - American Business Association of Russian Expatriates (AmBAR) recognized A4Vision, Inc., a Silicon Valley-based company developing biometrics solutions, as the winner of its First Annual Golden Lock Award to "The Most Promising Russian Software Company, 2004." The announcement was made during AmBAR's end of the year event in Palo Alto, California on December 14, 2004.
The contestants, pre-selected in several rounds of review from the list of over 500 companies, included privately-held small and medium size Russian/CIS software companies as well as European and US companies that have research and development in Russia. The companies were judged in terms of originality of the software products, existing revenues, growth projections, reputation of the executive teams, market potential, technological competitive advantage, intellectual property portfolio, and other factors. The distinguished jury consisted of seasoned venture capitalists, industry analysts, executives and experts from Hitachi Corporate Venture Fund, Canaan Partners, Alloy Ventures, EDventure Holdings, Dot Edu Ventures, Stanford University Computer Science Department, Veritas Software, Gartner Group, Ernst&Young and Coudert Brothers.
"It has been my pleasure to work with a number of Russian entrepreneurs over the last couple years," said Skip Glass, Partner of Canaan Partners. Each entrepreneur has been not only technologically innovative, but hard working. I suspect that if we look forward five years there will be a large number of successful organizations that were started by Russian entrepreneurs working jointly with American investors. AmBAR was very forward looking in putting together this competition for Russian run startups at this point in time."
During the Award ceremony, Alex Miroshnichenko, Senior Director of the Advanced Technology Group at Veritas Software presented A4Vision with AmBAR's Golden Lock Award "recognizing the company's potential to achieve a lock on competition in its market." "It turned out to be a more difficult task than I had thought originally," said Alex. "We have seen some really interesting companies with great technologies and products. A4Vision impressed me as a company with strong intellectual property and a solid management team. It operates in a rapidly evolving market space where the mathematical abilities and creative ingenuity of computer scientists and engineers that come up through the Russian system will give it a strong edge."
In accepting the award, CEO Grant Evans concurred, "It has been a great honor for the company to be recognized by AmBAR. This award marks another successful milestone for A4Vision. Clearly our development center in Moscow gives us a significant advantage, and the talent of our engineering team is one of the strongest assets of our company."
We judged A4Vision as the strongest contender in terms of management, presentation, and exit potential; its challenge is to stay ahead of the competition in a market where there is already pricing pressure and high expectations in terms of accuracy," said Gary L. Benton, Partner at Coudert Brothers LLP.
A4Vision (www.a4vision.com) develops identification systems and solutions using 3D face recognition technology. The company was founded in 2001 by its current Chief Technology Officer Artiom Yukhin, a Russian researcher who in the past headed the 3D Machine Vision Research team at Moscow's Bauman University. Headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, the company has a large Research and Development office in Moscow, Russia as well as presence in Europe (Geneva, Switzerland). It recently received $18.5 Million in the Series B round of financing lead by Menlo Ventures.
The other top five contestants included: ABBYY Software House (www.abbyy.com), developer of document recognition, forms processing and linguistic technologies (recognized by the Jury as the company with "The Most Interesting Product"); JetBrains (www.jetbrains.com), provider of smart tools and applications for software development ("The Strongest Corporate Development"); SeeStorm (www.seestorm.com), a synthetic video communications provider ("The Most Attractive Technology Partner"); and Speereo (www.speereo.com), provider of voice recognition solutions for handheld devices ("The Best Market Potential").
Congratulating the winner and the nominees, AmBAR emphasized that the purpose of the award is to promote entrepreneurship and technology innovation in Russia, as well as to draw attention of the US capital to opportunities provided by the Russian technology companies.
About AmBAR
AmBAR is a non-profit American Business Association of Russian Expatriates dedicated to foster entrepreneurship and technology innovation in the Russian expatriate community and between Russia and the United States in general (www.ambarclub.org). Headquartered in the heart of Silicon Valley, AmBAR has more than 1,100 members. AmBAR hosts regular events at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and recently opened a chapter in Boston at MIT. AmBAR's past speakers include Sergey Brin, President of Technology and Co-Founder of Google; Maxim Levchin, Co-Founder of PayPal; Esther Dyson, Founder of EDventure Holdings, Inc.; Alexander Stepanov, Principal Scientist of Adobe Systems; and Anatoly Karachinsky, President of IBS Group. AmBAR's main sponsors are: IBS Group, Exigen Group, Mirantis, Inc., Boeing Corporation, and EPAM Systems.
The contestants, pre-selected in several rounds of review from the list of over 500 companies, included privately-held small and medium size Russian/CIS software companies as well as European and US companies that have research and development in Russia. The companies were judged in terms of originality of the software products, existing revenues, growth projections, reputation of the executive teams, market potential, technological competitive advantage, intellectual property portfolio, and other factors. The distinguished jury consisted of seasoned venture capitalists, industry analysts, executives and experts from Hitachi Corporate Venture Fund, Canaan Partners, Alloy Ventures, EDventure Holdings, Dot Edu Ventures, Stanford University Computer Science Department, Veritas Software, Gartner Group, Ernst&Young and Coudert Brothers.
"It has been my pleasure to work with a number of Russian entrepreneurs over the last couple years," said Skip Glass, Partner of Canaan Partners. Each entrepreneur has been not only technologically innovative, but hard working. I suspect that if we look forward five years there will be a large number of successful organizations that were started by Russian entrepreneurs working jointly with American investors. AmBAR was very forward looking in putting together this competition for Russian run startups at this point in time."
During the Award ceremony, Alex Miroshnichenko, Senior Director of the Advanced Technology Group at Veritas Software presented A4Vision with AmBAR's Golden Lock Award "recognizing the company's potential to achieve a lock on competition in its market." "It turned out to be a more difficult task than I had thought originally," said Alex. "We have seen some really interesting companies with great technologies and products. A4Vision impressed me as a company with strong intellectual property and a solid management team. It operates in a rapidly evolving market space where the mathematical abilities and creative ingenuity of computer scientists and engineers that come up through the Russian system will give it a strong edge."
In accepting the award, CEO Grant Evans concurred, "It has been a great honor for the company to be recognized by AmBAR. This award marks another successful milestone for A4Vision. Clearly our development center in Moscow gives us a significant advantage, and the talent of our engineering team is one of the strongest assets of our company."
We judged A4Vision as the strongest contender in terms of management, presentation, and exit potential; its challenge is to stay ahead of the competition in a market where there is already pricing pressure and high expectations in terms of accuracy," said Gary L. Benton, Partner at Coudert Brothers LLP.
A4Vision (www.a4vision.com) develops identification systems and solutions using 3D face recognition technology. The company was founded in 2001 by its current Chief Technology Officer Artiom Yukhin, a Russian researcher who in the past headed the 3D Machine Vision Research team at Moscow's Bauman University. Headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, the company has a large Research and Development office in Moscow, Russia as well as presence in Europe (Geneva, Switzerland). It recently received $18.5 Million in the Series B round of financing lead by Menlo Ventures.
The other top five contestants included: ABBYY Software House (www.abbyy.com), developer of document recognition, forms processing and linguistic technologies (recognized by the Jury as the company with "The Most Interesting Product"); JetBrains (www.jetbrains.com), provider of smart tools and applications for software development ("The Strongest Corporate Development"); SeeStorm (www.seestorm.com), a synthetic video communications provider ("The Most Attractive Technology Partner"); and Speereo (www.speereo.com), provider of voice recognition solutions for handheld devices ("The Best Market Potential").
Congratulating the winner and the nominees, AmBAR emphasized that the purpose of the award is to promote entrepreneurship and technology innovation in Russia, as well as to draw attention of the US capital to opportunities provided by the Russian technology companies.
About AmBAR
AmBAR is a non-profit American Business Association of Russian Expatriates dedicated to foster entrepreneurship and technology innovation in the Russian expatriate community and between Russia and the United States in general (www.ambarclub.org). Headquartered in the heart of Silicon Valley, AmBAR has more than 1,100 members. AmBAR hosts regular events at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and recently opened a chapter in Boston at MIT. AmBAR's past speakers include Sergey Brin, President of Technology and Co-Founder of Google; Maxim Levchin, Co-Founder of PayPal; Esther Dyson, Founder of EDventure Holdings, Inc.; Alexander Stepanov, Principal Scientist of Adobe Systems; and Anatoly Karachinsky, President of IBS Group. AmBAR's main sponsors are: IBS Group, Exigen Group, Mirantis, Inc., Boeing Corporation, and EPAM Systems.