Immigrants are increasingly important in driving growth and innovation in America, as evidenced by the role played by foreign-born founders and key personnel in the nation?s breakthrough companies. New research from the National Foundation for American Policy found immigrants have started nearly half of America?s 50 top venture-funded companies (as rated by VentureSource) and are key members of management or product development teams in more than 75 percent of our country?s leading cutting-edge companies. A great example of the jobs and innovations brought to America by immigrant entrepreneurs is Vidyo, based in Hackensack, New Jersey.
Ofer Shapiro believes the place he was born shaped the way he views obstacles.? Ofer was born in Nahalal, a type of Plymouth Rock for Israel. According to Ofer, the settlers of Nahalal, founded in 1921, needed to make a livable place and build a community out of virtually nothing: ?My grandfather?s generation said, ?We have to live there, so let?s figure out how to drain the swamp.?? Ofer notes the first building the settlers constructed was a library.
Around 2005, after working for an Israeli company in the United States and taking some time off, Ofer Shapiro decided to tackle the problem of delivering high quality video conferencing over the Internet. He saw it as the wave of the future but also admitted to potential investors that everyone said it couldn?t be done. ?Constraints make you think outside the box,? said Ofer. And he believed the only way to make high quality video available over the Internet was to think about the problem in a new way.
To help think outside the box Ofer worked with Israeli-born Avery More to secure an initial round of venture capital and later added to the mix Alex Eleftheriadis, a Greek-born professor, along with other experts. Alex and Ofer assembled a small team and literally got in a room and thought about how to solve the problem. That was in June 2005. By October 2005, less than four months later, the company had a prototype.
?Internet videoconferencing has been around for a few years, but the calls typically are characterized by jerky, low-resolution video. More-realistic, high-resolution videoconferencing systems generally require dedicated communications lines and expensive equipment, limiting their use,? explains The Wall Street Journal. ?Vidyo uses a new video-compression standard to produce a high-definition videoconferencing product that can work on desktop or laptop computers, tablets and smart phones and travel over the Internet or 3G and 4G cellular networks.?
Using ?telepresence? systems, a 3-hour video conferencing call from three sites or locations could cost a group of users $3,600. Via the Internet and mobile applications, Shapiro said his company Vidyo can deliver the same quality for pennies on the dollar. Its chief competitors are much larger companies, Cisco and Polycom.
Independent research backs up Vidyo?s role as a company that has changed the video conferencing market. ?We believe the video conferencing market is approaching an inflection point of more widespread commercial adoption driven by much lower-cost, high-quality enterprise solutions based in software,? recently reported Baird Equity Research. ?We believe this architectural shift will prove disruptive for hardware-based providers Cisco and Polycom, who currently enjoy dominant market share.?
Baird Equity Research labels Vidyo ?a disrupter,? writing, ?Vidyo is a five year-old start-up offering SVC-based [software-centric, advanced compression technology] solutions at significantly lower price points than traditional solutions. The company is winning large competitive deals in both hybrid (desktop and conference room) and room-only accounts. Vidyo also recently announced a solution that allows service providers to virtualize its VidyoRouter architecture, enabling massive deployment through a Video-as-a-Service model.? Baird Equity Research argues that we are seeing the ?beginning of the end? for the traditional way of videoconferencing and foresees other companies ?ultimately being forced to embrace software-intensive solutions.?
Vidyo is growing fast, increasing from 140 to 200 employees worldwide during the 2011 calendar year. It also is receiving recognition, winning a 2010 ?Technology Innovation? award from The Wall Street Journal. The product encompasses primarily a business to business or business to consumer market, though it is possible to use their product consumer to consumer via Google Hangout.
Vidyo differs from Skype in two ways: the quality of the transmission for users, and it gives the enterprise or service provider the option of full system control and security, making it ideal for business to business ? or business to consumer ? applications, according to Vidyo. About one-third of the company is employed in research and development and the company has been granted 12 patents, with more than 40 pending.
Ofer is bullish on America as a place with a great business culture. ?The business culture is honest, open with a good infrastructure and it?s relatively easy to start a business,? he said. Like other entrepreneurs he is concerned about how U.S. immigration laws operate, particularly given today?s global economy. ?We have people, but if we can?t add other people because of immigration restrictions that hurts the local economy because we could create even more jobs in the United States.?
Following his grandfather?s generation?s lesson to persist in the face of difficult odds, Ofer and his fellow immigrant founders have managed to create 170 jobs to date in the United States and established a valuable technology for businesses and consumers.
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