American Business Association of Russian Professionals

AmBAR Golden Lock Award: To raise Silicon Valley’s awareness of promising technologies and companies with founders originating from the former Soviet Union countries, AmBAR hosts its Annual Golden Lock Award competition. Over two years since its inception the event has grown in size and prominence. Over 500 companies participated in the selection process, conducted by senior partners from Asset Management Company, Hitachi Corporate Ventures, EDventrue Holdings, Canaan Partners, New Enterprise Associates, Alloy Ventures, and Gartner Group.

Silicon Valley Open Doors Technology Investment Conference (SVOD) – www.svod.org. As importantly, AmBAR has expanded its scope and reached beyond the Silicon Valley’s Russianspeaking community. The SVOD conference is the first and only non-profit event of its kind, bringing dozens of selected high-technology companies from Russia, Ukraine and other FSU countries together with the US sources of capital. It provides an unparalleled opportunity for such entrepreneurs to present their business plans to leading venture capitalists, learn the US venture fundraising practices, and create partnership ties with the Silicon Valley ecosystem.

The inaugural SVOD-2005 attracted over 250 attendees from innovative technology companies, prominent Silicon Valley venture capital firms, leading technology and business media, and top US technology companies such as Amgen, Adobe, Cisco, Google, Oracle and Sun Microsystems.

SVOD-2006 was organized in partnership with the Russian Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (St. Petersburg, Russia), and Center for Innovations Development (Kiev, Ukraine). The Conference was supported by Asset Management Company, one of the oldest venture capital firms of the Silicon Valley, and Draper Fisher Jurvetson, the only venture capital firm with a global presence through a network of affiliated funds and with offices in more than 30 cities around the world. The highlight of SVOD-2006 was a business plan competition and presentations of a selected group of private technology companies founded by entrepreneurs originating from the former Soviet Union countries to a prominent Panel of Judges of the Silicon Valley venture capitalists, such as Alloy Ventures, Asset Management Company, Doll Capital Management, EDF Ventures, 3i, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Institutional Venture Partners, Opus Capital, Trinity Ventures. The program also included companies' exhibits, keynote addresses and seminars conducted by leading venture capitalists, Stanford University professors, US lawyers, and other experts in the areas of finance, business development, and general management on creating high technology ventures, developing business plans, structuring deals, and transferring intellectual property.

Among speakers were John P. Morgridge, Chairman Emeritus of Cisco Systems; Franklin ‘Pitch’ Johnson, Founding Partner of Asset Management Company; Timothy C. Draper, Managing Partner of Draper Fisher Jurvetson; Dan Avida, General Partner of Opus Capital; Tom Byers, Professor Faculty Director of Stanford Technology Ventures Program; Shlomo Caine, Managing Director of Strategic Investments at Intel Capital; Philippe Cases, Partner of Partech International; Ira Ehrenpreis, General Partner of Technology Partners; Edward Kozel, President and CEO of Skyrider and board member of boards of Yahoo! Inc., Reuters PLC and Network Appliances; Peter Loukianoff, Partner at Alloy Ventures; Lydia Mazzie, Senior Program Manager at Google; Jake Seid, General Partner at Lightspeed Venuture Partners; Beth Seidenberg, Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers; Leon Shklar, Head of Technology at Reuters Media; and Rob Theis, General Partner of Doll Capital Management