The wonderful thing about entrepreneurs is that their passion for starting new companies transcends languages and geographic boundaries. I felt very comfortable at SVOD and recognized its participants as having the same type of DNA that made Silicon Valley what it is today."
Ron Conway, Founder and Managing Partner of the Angel Investors LP funds, early stage investor in Google and PayPal
"The progress SVOD has made over the past five years is to a great extent a reflection of the overall progress evident in Russia in the areas of entrepreneurship and venture capital. Even though much needs to be improved before Russia can become a consistently preferred destination for foreign capital, the overall quality of Russian companies and savvy-ness of the entrepreneurs participating at SVOD 2009 is an indication that the Russian start-up market, and the technology sector in general, is moving in the right direction."
Peter Loukianoff, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Almaz Capital Partners.
"AmBAR/SVOD is a unique organization serving as a communication platform for Russian speaking technology and business professionals, start-ups and service providers. It is also a successful non-profit startup that has grown meteorically over the course of five years driven by the grass-route participation and a committed management team. Were it not for its non-profit charter, SVOD would have made a very solid portfolio company for most VCs in the Valley!"
Alexei Andreev, Ph.D., Executive Vice President and Managing Director of Harris and Harris.
“When in 2002 we started AmBAR in Silicon Valley, we dreamt of creating a professional Russian-speaking community (a high-tech club with a Russian accent!) that would help the Russian expats start their companies, as well as making our experience useful to the fledgling high-tech industry back in the old country. I'm delighted to see this dream come true at the 2009 SVOD conference. Seeing so many promising startups with Russian technologies at the core gives me hope that in a few years these entrepreneurs will become successful and take their turn to mentor and invest, giving back to the community. ”
Igor Plotnikov, Visionary Engineer and Executive
"If one were to stack up 1 billion dollars, the stack would be about 1 kilometer high. At the present time, Russia has several high-tech venture funds whose monetary “stack value” is higher than Everest. At the same time, a small university startup project has no viable venue to present its technology to a community of like-minded individuals. Fortunately for us, United States Civilian Research and Development Foundation (U.S. CRDF) had taken an active interest in our projects via its experts in Siberia and financed our students’ trip to Silicon Valley. We hope that our participation in SVOD 2009 will help us to commercialize our projects. Our heartfelt Thank You goes to U.S.CRDF and SVOD!”
Alexander Uvarov,Vice Rector of Computer Science and Engineering, Tomsk University of Radioelectronics
“Please accept our sincere "Thank you" for putting so much of your time, energy and heart to organize such a remarkable event. It is hard to overestimate its importance and uniqueness as well as a "make-a-difference" profile in building an innovative infrastructure promoting an active dialog between two halves of progress - Entrepreneurs and their partners - VCs, Private Equity, Banking, etc . By hosting this interaction, SVOD helps break-through technologies to be commercialized for the benefit of mankind. It was a pleasure and honor to be a part of it. ”
Elmira Ryabova, CTO, ADCO Engineering
"The SVOD-2009 conference was a wonderful event. Networking is very important for start-ups. The challenge for them is often not money: it is mentoring and finding people who can give good advice from experience. That’s why it’s important for RUSNANO to send people back and forth, so they can get more involved in the global start-up community. SVOD can help to attract more experienced advisors, entrepreneurs and investors to Russia, so that Russians and Americans can learn from their foreign counterparts."
Esther Dyson, Founder, EDventure Holdings
"I am delighted to participate in and sponsor SVOD. It is particularly gratifying to me at this stage of my professional career to be able to support this unique organization and give back to the Russian high tech community. Looking back, I regret not having the benefits of SVOD network and camaraderie early on, when I really needed it! However, it is wonderful to see the new startups taking advantage of this very special forum."
Mike Sandler, CEO of Epiphan
"I consider AmBAR and SVOD absolutely fantastic venues that help entrepreneurs in a very real way. When we started our first company, DB Best, we were able to find angel investors and a lead architect. Three years later we were acquired by Microsoft. I don't know if we were able to achieve that without dedication of the folks from AmBAR. Presenting our new startup www.Pikaba.com at the SVOD 2009 generated excellent contacts for us and I'm looking forward to report another "success story" in the very near future. So big THANK YOU to AmBAR and SVOD."
Dmitry Balin, CEO at Pikaba.com
"SVOD continues to be the leading annual event that brings Russian and Russian-American entrepreneurs together with the Silicon Valley venture capitalists."
Pitch Johnson, the founding partner of Asset Management Company.
"If the SVOD crowd is any indication of the Russian enthusiasm for high-tech and their sense of humor, I can't wait for my trip to Moscow in December!"
Guy Kawasaki, Managing Partner of Garage Technology Ventures
"As Stanford MBA students, we were exposed to a lot of VC firms both from the Valley and abroad. But our first real experience of presenting our project to a prominent group of potential investors was at SVOD 2008. It was the beginning of a six-month journey that despite the particularly tough times resulted in an extraordinarily group of investors backing our start-up. I'm not sure it would be possible without us doing this very first step - the presentation at SVOD".Maxim Faldin, CEO, Wikimart
"SVOD Expo was very useful. A CRM solutions company, which was looking for the product like Clienteq, found us - so we've got the first channel partner now."
Dimitri Lisitski, Founder, Clienteq (SVOD2008 finalist company)