Managing Partners

Michael Averbach

Michael is a serial entrepreneur and a seasoned executive with 18 years of experience in running corporate operations, building and managing sales and product management organizations with expertise in handheld devices, wireless industry, e-commerce systems and software development.

Michael spent nine years building and managing sales and marketing operations for Ectaco, Inc. - electronic publishing and linguistic solutions company. He was responsible for company's IP licensing program, technology acquisitions and R&D initiatives including Machine Translation and Speech Recognition technologies.

Following his tenure at Ectaco he founded a startup focused on development of distributed ERP solutions, which was acquired by a strategic investor in 2002.

In 2003 Mr. Averbach co-founded DynoPlex, Inc, a mobile application development company that soon after its launch became one of the leadingapplication developers for BlackBerry platform, and in the following five years served as its CEO, leading the company to a successful acquisition by Quickoffice, Inc. in 2008.

Sergey Fradkov

Sergey Fradkov brings 20 years of Information Technology experience developing software in large and small enterprises. As an entrepreneur, Mr. Fradkov has founded several hi-tech software companies, whose products were sold to multiple clients worldwide. As a software executive, he conceived and executed development of innovative software products and solutions.

He was a co-founder and Chief Technology Officer at w-Technologies. Mr. Fradkov was responsible for the overall strategy and development of w-Technologies' wireless application software products for the company's Fortune 500 clients, which include FedEx, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and First Union, among others.

In 2003 Mr. Fradkov co-founded DynoPlex, Inc., developer of an award winning document management software for BlackBerry, iPhone and Android, and led the company up to its acquisition by Quickoffice, Inc. in 2008. He designed and managed the development of the company's products – leading wireless document management solution for RIM BlackBerry and other devices.

Mr. Fradkov's work has been featured in leading industry publications, and he is also a frequent speaker at conferences and events. He holds a joint BS/MS from Hebrew University in Jerusalem and St. Petersburg Electrotechnical University.

Mentors and Advisors

Esther Dyson – Board of Advisors

Esther Dyson is chairman of EDventure Holdings, the name with which she does business. Her primary activity is investing in and nurturing start-ups, with a recent focus on health care and aerospace. She recently (October 2008 to March 2009) spent most of six months training as a backup cosmonaut in Star City outside Moscow Russia. While there she had the pleasure of spending time not only with the cosmonauts, but also with some of the US's finest astronauts. She has chronicled some of her EDventures on Flickr and at Huffington Post.

Apart from this brief sabbatical, she is an active board member for a variety of startups, including 23andMe, Airship Ventures, Eventful, Evernote, IBS Group (advisory board), Meetup, NewspaperDirect, Voxiva, WPP Group (not a start-up!) and Yandex. Her past investments have included Medstory (sold to Microsoft), Flickr and del.icio.us (sold to Yahoo!),Brightmail (sold to Symantec). Her current investments include Icon Aircraft (light sport aircraft), Space Adventures (which organizes programs such as hers for space tourists), and XCOR Aerospace. She also sits on the boards of several nonprofits, including the the Eurasia Foundation, the Sunlight Foundation, the Personal Genome Foundation and StopBadware.org.

Stepan Pachikov - Board of Advisors

Stepan Pachikov, Ph.D. in computer Science, a founder of ParaGraph, ParaScript, Evernote. Dr. Patchikov holds Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Academy of Sciences of USSR, the subject of Mr. Pachikov's dissertation was the use of fuzzy logic.

In 1986 Stepan Pachikov with a group of enthusiasts had founded Moscow Children Computer club.

In 1988 he founded ParaGraph JV, one of the first Soviet-American Joint Venture.

In 1991 ParaGraph has signed a multimillion contract with Apple and became a leader in developing digital ink software. ParaGraph's handwriting recognition technology and patents had been acquired by Microsoft and now is an essential part of every Pocket PC.

In 1993 Stepan brought to the market an ambitious vision to develop a virtual time machine which allows children travel in past and two initial targets were Syracuse 212 BC and Roma 80 AD. This project called Alter Ego focused the company on 3D VR technology and ParaGraph became one of the leaders in VRML industry.

In 2005 he started a company Evernote and serves the company as a board member.

Anatoly Karachinsky - Board of Advisors

Anatoly Karachinskyis the President of the IBS Group and the Chairman of the IBS Group Advisory Board.

Mr. Anatoly Karachinsky is a co-founder, and President of the Company since its incorporation, responsible for the development of the Company's strategy. Prior to co-founding the Company, he held various executive positions at several IT companies.

Mr. Karachinsky is well known as one of the key experts for both Russian and international IT markets. He participated in the establishment, and currently is Member of the Board of the International Child Computer Club He is a member of the Board of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs. He is also a member of the Council for Business Competitiveness, the Expert Council for Information Technologies, the Communication and Expert Council for Electronic Education and the Education and Science Committee of the State Duma of the Russian Federation.

Mr. Karachinsky graduated from Moscow State University of Railway Engineering, the Applied Cybernetics Department, majoring in systems engineering.