Polaris’ Simeonov Strikes Out on Own—Forms Advisory Firm While Looking for the Next Big Thing
Robert Buderi4/7/09Leave a CommentFollow @bbuderi
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I m going to join this full time, as founder and CTO.’”
Even though Biscotti didn’t happen, Simeonov says he was bitten by “the bug to do something new—and that’s why I’m moving on.”
FastIgnite looks to be merely the first step in this, as Simeonov hunts for something to do full time. Simeonov says he isn’t sure if he will launch his own company, join another firm that sparks his passion, or what. But in the meantime, he says, with FastIgnite he will be able to continue doing do what he did at Polaris, which is to help entrepreneurs shape their business plans, build presentations, and raise money, and to work with later-stage firms to help them reinvent themselves. “Essentially, what I believe in is partnering with entrepreneurs in a very active way,” Simeonov says.
FastIgnite’s first customer is Tollbit, a stealth firm that is in the process of raising seed funding. “I’m helping them develop the plan and build a board and build an advisory board,” Simeonov says. He wouldn’t go into much detail about the firm, except to say it is in the cloud virtualization space, that its CEO is getting his MBA at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, and that “it has a very interesting initial go-to-market strategy, which I think has an opportunity to really shake things up.” But a brochure from Wharton’s 2007-2008 business plan competition, in which Tollbit was a semifinalist (click here for the pdf version) names the team lead as Alexey Chalimov. It also says that Tollbit aims to provide online backup and storage services using distributed network architecture (Indeed, the company’s advisors include David Cane, a founder of Connected Corp., one of the first successful online backup firms, which was bought by Iron Mountain in 2004). Simeonov says, however, that much else has changed from what’s described in the pdf as the company refocuses towards cloud virtualization.
Simeonov only had good things to say about Polaris, where he will still have a desk, at least for the short term. “I have really enjoyed working there. I think it is doing great, both in the way it engages with entrepreneurs and in fund performance. I would hope the partnership would be involved with the firms I work with.”
Bob is Xconomy's founder and editor in chief. You can e-mail him at bbuderi@xconomy.com, call him at 617.500.5926, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/bbuderi.
