Advisory Board

Esther Dyson

EDventure Holdings, Chairman; Release 1.0, Editor

After graduating from Harvard in economics, Dyson began her serious career in 1974 as a fact-checker for Forbes and quickly rose to reporter. In 1977 she joined New Court Securities as "the research department", following Federal Express and other start-ups. After a stint at Oppenheimer covering software companies, she moved to Rosen Research and in 1983 bought the company from her employer Ben Rosen, and renamed it EDventure Holdings.

Dr. Galitsky is an internationally renowned entrepreneur and investor with a proven track record and executive operational experience in the US, Russia and Western Europe.

During the past decade he founded and led as a CEO five successful companies including ELVEES, a leader in the field of multicore chip development, DSP processors and intelligent video surveillance systems and ELVIS+,a leading Russian technology company, which renames nowadays a leading Russian system integrator in the field of information security. He pioneered with ELVIS+ and Sun Microsystems in patented WiFi 4 Mps PCMCIA card technology back in 1992-1993, which was acquired later by US government in 1994; in PC based VPN and Firewall security SunScreen E+ product line in 1994 – 1996, which was acquired by Sun Microsystems in 1996. ELVIS+ became a leading Internet Service Provider in Russia since 1991and pioneered in Russian by creating own Web site back in 1993 and first industry media portal InfoArt back in 1995. In 1996, Alexander made a spin-off of ELVIS+ Internet Division into new company ELVIS Telekom and investment was brought from the leading Russian cell-phone provider Vimpelcom (Beeline) and in 2000, the company was sold to Telenor/Nextra. In 1998, n the base of his success with ELVIS+, Galitsky founded a new security company, which was focused on the Network Security Management. Company was named a Technology Pioneer by World Economic Forum in 2000 and was acquired by the Hamsard Group in 2002 (AIM:HMSD).; He also founded and invested in Dutch based EzWIM, a leading mobile services cost management company, which is successfully growing on the European market.

In 2005, Dr. Galitsky joined Russian Technologies as a venture partner and led the investments into SJ Labs and EverNote. In 2006, he was made a partner of the fund and led the Information & Communications Technology investment practice. In March 2007, as a board member of SJLabs, he orchestrated a successful exit from SJLabs though company acquisition by US telco company Ymax (www.ymax.com). In April 2007, he left Russian Technologies with an idea to create a new venture fund.

Dr. Galitsky has authored over one-hundred international publications and over thirty patents, including in WiFi area. He has been a featured speaker at numerous international conferences, including Interop, the World Economic Forum, Catalyst, High-Tech Forum, RSA, Infosec , ETRE, SVOD and he has been interviewed and profiled in numerous publications including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Financial Times , San Jose Mercury News, Business Week, Times and the New York Times. He has been named by independent agencies as the most influential person in the Russian IT and Internet industry during 1994-98 and again in 2000-2001. He was named “Technology Pioneer” by the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2000, where the technology achievements of his company TrustWorks were also recognized and received the award for ‘Technology of New Millennium’.

Vladimir Jacimovic

Managing Director, Continuum Capital

Prior to joining Continuum Capital, Vladimir was Venture Partner at New Enterprise Associates. He joined NEA in 2005 and focused on investments in information technology, including software, communications and technology-enabled services. Since starting his venture career with Robertson Stephens Venture Capital in 1996, Vladimir was involved in investments in over 20 companies, including Cendura (acquired by Computer Associates), CenterRun (acquired by Sun), Equinix (NASDAQ EQIX), IMLogic (acquired by Symantec), Metapath (acquired by Marconi), OnDisplay (acquired by Vignette), Saba Software (NASDAQ SABA). Previous board memberships include, among others, AmberPoint and NewScale. Before joining NEA, Vladimir was a Managing Director at Crosslink Capital, a fund established after a management buyout from Robertson Stephens. Previously, he was a Management Consultant with McKinsey and Company in San Francisco and Milan, Italy. Prior to that, Vladimir worked at Intel and Ingres. Vladimir received his MBA from Harvard Business School and a BS in Computer Science from the University of San Francisco.

Anatoly Karachinsky
President & Chief Executive Officer of IBS Group

Prior to founding IBS Anatoly was Technical Director of Intermicro Joint Venture; Director of PROSYSTEM, an Austrian company; and a Computer Engineer of Computer Center at the All-Union Research and Development Institute for Railroad Transport.

Ten times was Anatoly Karachinsky awarded the title of one of the most competent authorities of the Russian computer business community (DATOR Top100 and TOP-PROFI ratings). Anatoly Karachinsky was the first Russian businessman to be rated among the top fifty European leaders in the forefront of positive change (‘The Stars of Europe’ rating by Business Week, 2002).

Anatoly is a Member of the Management Board of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs; the Competition and Entrepreneurship Council under the Government of the Russian Federation and others.

Anatoly Karachinsky graduated from the Applied Cybernetics Department (computer science) of the Moscow Institute of Railroad Engineers, majoring in Systems Engineering in 1981.

Max Levchin

Founder and CEO, Slide; co-founder and former CTO, PayPal

Max Levchin cofounded PayPal in late 1998. It was acquired by eBay for $1.5B in 2002, only six months after going public in February. At PayPal Max was a member of the board of directors and chief technology officer, responsible for the areas of technology development, network and information security, and the fight with transaction fraud and identity theft. Prior to PayPal, Max cofounded and ran NetMeridian Software and SponsorNet New Media, which built some of the early Internet marketing services and tools.

Since leaving PayPal late last year on the fourth anniversary of its founding, Max has founded Slide, a media-sharing startup, and is currently its CEO. He is also the chairman of local review site Yelp.

Originally from Kiev, Ukraine (then part of the Soviet Union), he moved to Chicago, Illinois in 1991. Max graduated from University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign in 1997 with a degree in Computer Science, specializing in computer security and music.

Peter Loukianoff

Almaz Capital Partners, Managing Partner

Prior to co-founding Almaz Capital Partners, Mr. Loukianoff was a partner at Alloy Ventures from 2001-2008, one of the more successful and longest-established venture capital firms in Silicon Valley. Prior to joining Alloy, he was on the founding teams of Autonomy, Inc. (US), a pioneer in Internet search and categorization, and Ubiquinet, Inc., a location-based services software company. As the Cold War was ending, Mr. Loukianoff was one of the first Americans to establish joint ventures with prominent Russian scientific institutions, including the Kurchatov Institute, Troitsk Triniti Research Center, and the Russian Academy of Sciences. These joint ventures served to facilitate technology-licensing arrangements with US companies, such as Apple, Sun Microsystems and General Atomics. In 1991, he organized a first-of-its-kind Russian-American symposium on technology transfer and commercialization, which featured President Gorbachev's chief technology advisor Dr. Evgeny Velikhov and Nobel Laureate Dr. Glenn Seaborg.

Mr. Loukianoff is a co-inventor of five patent-pending mobile messaging technologies that are enabling a new and exciting market in voice and visual mobile advertising. He is on the board of directors of Apptera and Ravenflow, and his past investments include Audiobasket, Versata (Nasdaq: VATA), Xactly and ZipRealty (Nasdaq: ZIPR).

Mr. Loukianoff earned an MBA and BS Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. 

Alexander Stepanov

A9.com, Senior Principal Engineer; inventor of the C++ Standard Template Library

Prior to joining A.9, Alex was Prinicipal Scientist at Adobe. Before Adobe, Alex was Vice President and Chief Scientist at Compaq. Before Compaq, Alex was working on technology directions as VP and Chief Architect at AT&T Laboratories and as CTO of Server and Supercomputer Business Unit of SGI. Alex spent 25 years doing research at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Bell Labs, and other organizations. In 1995 for his work on Standard Template Library he shared (with Linus Torvalds) the first Dr. Dobb's Excellence in Programming Award.

Rob Theis
Managing Director, Scale Venture Partners

Rob Theis invests in technology infrastructure and applications companies at ScaleVP. Prior to joining ScaleVP in May 2008, Rob was with venture capital fund DCM - Doll Capital Management, where he was a General Partner for 8 years, and invested in leading companies, including JasperSoft, NeoPath Networks (acquired by Cisco), PGP Corporation, Roamware, VanceInfo (NYSE: VIT) and Wikinvest.

Rob's investing career builds on his global experience driving technology startups' sales, marketing and partnership success. As executive vice president for New Era of Networks (NEON), Rob grew the company to $200 million in revenues and was instrumental in leading NEON through a successful IPO. Prior to NEON, Rob spent 10 years in varied executive roles at Sun Microsystems, where he drove growth in a series of new strategic initiatives, including Sun's success in the Financial Services Industry sector. Rob's previous experience includes launching Silicon Graphics' initial workstations and selling timesharing services for McDonnell Douglas (now Boeing).

Mr. Theis was awarded the Honors Scholarship at the University of Pittsburgh, where he earned a B.A. degree in economics.

Evgeny Zaytsev,M.D., Ph.D.
Founder and General Partner, Helix Ventures

Dr. Evgeny Zaytsev co-founded Helix Ventures, a Life Sciences venture capital firm in 2008, and brings nine years of venture capital and nine years of operations and research experience to the firm. Since 2001 Evgeny has managed the life sciences portfolio in two venture capital partnerships at Asset Management Company, one of the oldest venture capital firms in Silicon Valley. Evgeny focuses on early stage investments in biotechnology and medical device companies. He is a Board Member of a number of private life sciences companies in Silicon Valley.

Evgeny is an active business community leader. He is a founder of the US-Russia Technology Symposium at Stanford University and the annual Silicon Valley Open Doors technology investment conference. Evgeny is a past president of the American Business Association of Russian Professionals (AmBAR).

He received his M.D. (cum laude) in 1991 and his Ph.D. in physiology in 1993, both from the Altai State Medical University. He earned his M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2002.