Management team

Amnon Aliphas, CEO

VentureOnLine was founded by Dr. Amnon Aliphas for the purpose of facilitating the process of entrepreneurship for the high-technology community.

Dr. Aliphas founded an industry Signal Processing Conference and in 2005 he created TV2Mobile dedicated to the mobile TV industry. In 1990, he founded the International Conference on Signal Processing Applications and Technology (ICSPAT) and DSP World.

It was while organizing DSP World that Dr. Aliphas recognized the Internet as the ideal medium to help the electronics engineering community keep pace with their rapidly changing industry through on-line education and information. Dr. Aliphas founded TechOnLine in 1993 as an on-line information and educational resource for the electronics engineering community and developed the "Virtual Lab" for which he holds a US Patent.

Dr. Aliphas taught at Boston University and worked at Draper Laboratory, where he worked on fault tolerant computing. He was Principal Signal Processing Scientist for Kurzweil Applied Intelligence and Wang Laboratories (1982-1986).

Aliphas received a Ph.D. and M.S. in electrical engineering from Stanford University and a B.Sc. from UNAM, in Mexico.

Oleg Pohotsky, Business Development

Oleg M. Pohotsky serves as a business development advisor to VentureOnLine.

Mr. Pohotsky is a corporate finance and investment management professional with over twenty-five years of diversified experience gained both in industry and in financial markets. Through Right Bank Partners, Mr. Pohotsky provides services as an independent corporate director and as an advisor on corporate strategy and governance.

Currently, Mr. Pohotsky serves on the boards of two NYSE-listed closed end funds that represent over $700 million in capital invested in both publicly traded securities and venture capital companies in the healthcare and biotechnology industries. Mr. Pohotsky serves as chairman of both the audit and valuation committees of both funds and is their designated SEC "financial expert". Mr. Pohotsky's other directorships have included for-profit companies, both private and publicly traded, and non-for profit organizations. Industries in which he has been involved include healthcare, information technology, professional services, education and oil & gas.

Through the 1990s, Mr. Pohotsky served as Senior Vice President of First Albany Corporation where he was responsible for underwritings, private placements, and mergers and acquisitions. Previously, Mr. Pohotsky spent nearly seven years in investment management, specializing in the acquisition and growth of private companies. Mr. Pohotsky was one of two individual General Partners of John Hancock Financial Services affiliate Capital Growth Partners, a $300 million mezzanine capital fund dedicated to providing expansion, acquisition and recapitalization funding for middle market, private companies. Prior to joining and assisting in the formation of Capital Growth Partners, Mr. Pohotsky was associated with Idanta Partners, the Fort Worth, Texas based venture capital affiliate of the Bass Brothers interests.

Earlier in his investment banking career, Mr. Pohotsky was a Vice President in the corporate finance department at Bear Stearns & Company, where he was responsible for public offerings of both equity and debt securities, structuring of asset-based financings, and mergers and acquisitions representing both acquirers and sellers. Prior to Bear Stearns, he was a Principal at specialty corporate finance firm Coolidge & Company.

Mr. Pohotsky began his career in the industrial sector with A. Johnson & Company, Inc. the U.S. holding company for the Axel Johnson Group (Sweden). From 1968 to 1974, he held a series of technical and marketing positions with A. Johnson's process equipment subsidiary, serving for two years as product manager for the chemical and food industries. From 1974 through 1977, he was counsel for A. Johnson's oil refining and marketing subsidiary.

Mr. Pohotsky holds a BSChE degree from Clarkson University. He has also earned his JD degree from the University of Miami and MBA from the Harvard University Graduate School of Business Administration. He has also been awarded an honorary doctorate by Clarkson University. He is admitted to the bar in Florida and Massachusetts.

Bernardo Yagoda, Director of Engineering

Bernardo Yagoda has an extensive managerial experience with start-u companies. Proven track record of management of multidisciplinary teams dedicated to innovative product development.

Emano Tec, Inc - Co-founder and VP of Engineering. Responsible for the development of MedTab, a bedside documentation tool for the healthcare industry.

SMaL Camera Technologies - Director of Video - Responsible for implementation of various video products based on SMaL Camera wide dynamic range CMOS image sensors.

Sound Vision - Co-founder. Responsible for the design of CLARITY, a family of ARM based SOC, developed specifically for the digital still camera market Bernardo obtained a M.Sc. in EE from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel and a B.Sc. in EE from the Universidad Iberoamericana, México City, México.

Loring Wirbel, Technology & Business Editor

Loring Wirbel has been involved in technology journalism for more than 25 years. He worked at EE Times as director of communications coverage and director of market intelligence, and also was a science editor for Scripps-Howard publications, where he won an internal award for coverage of missile-defense technologies. He is a two-time winner of Sonoma State University's Project Censored award, and is the author of a book on space militarization plans during the Bush era.