Thursday, Mar 22 2012 8:30AM to 11:00AM
Victor and Igor Jablokov, Co-founders of YAP
Goodmortgage.com
3325 South Tryon Street
Charlotte, NC 28217
“Pathfinder Roundtable Discussion with YAP”
(for BIG members only)
Date: Thursday, March 22, 2012
Location: Goodmortgage.com, 3325 South Tryon Street, 28217
http://www.goodmortgage.com/directions/
Parking: Plenty of free parking at goodmortgage
Time: 8:30 am – 11:00 am
An informal roundtable discussion with Victor Jablokov and Igor Jablokov, co-founders of YAP.
BIG will be holding quarterly roundtable discussions with successful entrepreneurs who are interested in sharing their experiences with our members.
The story of YAP is a good one! YAP pioneered the world’s first high accuracy, automated speech recognition platform for various scenarios such as voicemail to text, voice activated mobile messaging, and phone transcriptions.
They were a UNC Charlotte Five Ventures Winner in 2006, a Tech Crunch finalist in 2007, went through several rounds of funding, and an exit. They encountered the challenges and hurdles that most entrepreneurs face in Charlotte with a new technology and fast growing company (and without a robust entrepreneurial/ tech ecosystem!).
These discussions are meant to be an informal, interactive exchange with the entrepreneurs to learn from their failures as well as their successes.
Victor Jablokov - Co-Founder, President & COO of Yap Inc.
Yap was founded in 2006 and developed the first fully automated voice messaging and voicemail-to-text platform for mobile devices. The company raised over $10 million in funding since its inception and was a driving force in the development of mobile speech recognition technologies. Prior to Yap, Victor performed advanced R&D and product development at ATI and Siemens for a myriad of industries. He performed fundamental research at the Los Alamos National Lab, authored a number of peer-reviewed technical articles, has filed more than a dozen patent disclosures and has 2 issued patents. He holds B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Materials Engineering from the Pennsylvania State University and an MBA from Wake Forest University.
Igor Jablokov - Co-Founder, CEO, Yap Inc.
Igor served as CEO of YAP, an institutionally funded venture that pioneered cloud-based speech recognition. His firm first envisioned blending that with messaging experiences, something now prevalent in devices powered by Apple and Google. In recognition for their innovations, the Company was a finalist in Silicon Valley’s elite TechCrunch event and was awarded North Carolina’s Early Stage Company of the Year. Igor was also a founding member of the Speech Technology Consortium, to allow companies and research institutions a more open working environment.
As Program Director of IBM’s multi-modality initiatives, he led a worldwide team focused on leading edge UI technologies, ultimately culminating in the creation of the world’s first ever speech-enabled web browser. Additionally, Igor served as a business mentor for IBM’s Extreme Blue internship program and as chairman of the VoiceXML Forum, an industry group driving an open standards-based vision of speech computing.
Previously, he held positions with IBM’s Pervasive Computing, PartnerWorld, Global Industries and Microelectronics divisions. With over a dozen patents granted and pending, Igor was named an industry luminary by the editors of Speech Technology magazine. He holds an undergraduate degree in computer engineering from Pennsylvania State University and an MBA from the University of North Carolina.
Agenda:
8:30 am – 9:00 am Registration and Networking
9:00 am – 11:00 am Pathfinder Informal Roundtable Discussion
Program Cost: For BIG Members only, free.
Registration: RSVP to terry@bigcouncil.com or register below.
Dress Attire: Business casual