Technovate

EMPOWERING ENTREPRENEURIAL TALENT FOR GLOBAL SCALE

Technovate is a global venture studio and early stage investment vehicle. With a primary focus on technology startups, we are unlocking entrepreneurial talent in developing countries across the globe. We aim to source opportunities early and partner with founders from Day 1 to help them navigate the key hurdles and obstacles in the startup journey. With key business & product milestones, Technovate ensures every startup has access to capital, talent, and global vision to fulfil their complete potential.

In a rapidly expanding digital world, the landscape is shifting for new entrepreneurs and businesses to be launched from anywhere. But the focus for the majority of venture capital and startup resources is highly concentrated in just a handful of cities and nations. At Technovate, we believe in the simple premise that founders are equally distributed and we are aiming to discover and unlock the overlooked talent. With a deeply local and collaborative approach, our unique startup recruitment process allows us to find immensely powerful ideas and leaders. Our first wave of outreach includes launching local coworking spaces, leveraging startup competitions, and collaborating with local leaders. By sourcing qualified founders and ideas, we invite participants to join a fully funded 6-12 month residency program to hit key product-market fit milestones alongside our team of executives and advisors.

We believe in the enduring journey and aim to position all of our investments for global scale. This starts with venture capital and talent access to help fuel the growth of our founders' vision. Technovate has built deep relationships with angel and venture investors in the United States to help connect the dots. With our local offices based in the Greater Sacramento Region, we are a stone's throw away from 500+ Venture Firms in the Bay Area while also having unique access to engineering and startup talent locally. Greater Sacramento boasts significant resources including access to a deep educational network from UC Davis, CSU Sacramento and some of the best community colleges in the nation. Lastly we help founders land in the US as we support the entire process including immigration, accounting, residency and much more. Technovate is a true partner to all of our portfolio founders.

Global Venture Studio and Early Stage Investment firm

Farid Ismayilzada was born on January 1st, 1984 in Sheki, Azerbaijan. After graduating from English Language Gymnasium in 1999, he moved to Turkey to study at Bilkent University. There he received a BA in International Relations. At the age of 19, after graduation from Bilkent University as an honor student, Farid decided to change gears and move to Silicon Valley in the United States to study at San Jose State University. His specialization was “Business Administration with a concentration in high tech companies.” During his stay in San Jose, Farid was president of AIESEC San Jose--a local branch of the largest student-run organization in the world. Upon graduation in 2005, Farid moved to New York to be a Business Development Manager of AIESEC USA. In 2006, he decided to move back to his home country to set up the Azerbaijani branch of the American company, Silverkey Technologies.

In 2007, Farid launched Azerbaijan’s first online payment service provider company: GoldenPay. Today, GoldenPay is the country’s largest online payment service provider. He also founded “hesab.az,” which is the largest online services platform in Azerbaijan. In 2011, he worked as a Chief Strategy Officer at Komtec which is in business of electronic payments. In 2013, Farid founded eMobile which built the most used loyalty program in Azerbaijan called “Ulduzum” for Bakcell. From July 2018 and to July 2019, Farid worked at Azerconnect as Chief Innovation Officer.

Farid is involved in many social activities as well. He is the chairman of the Board of Advisros of AIESEC Azerbaijan and an active member of the US-Educated Azerbaijani Alumni Association (AAA). Farid was also Vice-Chairperson and Chairperson of AmCham Azerbaijan’s ICT Committee and served as a member of AMCHAM Board of Directors between 2013 and 2017. Since November 2017, he also serves as Supervisory Board member for AZINNEX - Consortium of largest 10 IT companies of Azerbaijan.

Currently, he fully dedicated himself to Technovate Incubation Center and sometimes does small consulting projects.

Arif was born on 26th of April, 1996 in Baku, Azerbaijan. He holds a bachelor’s degree on computer engineering from Baku State University. In 2015, he began to work on a smart wearable device to create a good habit of good posture on people. Later named as Spinal, the project won the second place at international innovation competition by Microsoft “Imagine Cup 2015” which took place in Seattle.

Since then project got patents in Europe and USA and is about to launch its sales as product Lia by Smart Spinal Solutions, Inc. Arif is CTO at the company.

Besides that, Arif is Advisor to Founder to the manager of Technovate on Operational issues.