Almaz is currently an entrepreneur-in-residence at NYCA Partners where he is responsible for driving new product initiatives. He is a versatile innovator with successful exits in various industries that span finance, retail, IoT, and software services.
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Almaz is also the founder of Virtual Visions, where he is currently innovating with Smart Glass Technology to bring augmented reality to consumers, using smartphones and mirrors for the retail, home, and hospitality environments. Virtual Visions is responsible for all in-store technology experiences for retailers like Lululemon, Uniqlo, Nordstrom, CVS, Zales to name a few. They have built infrastructure for ordering online and pick up at stores at various brick-and-mortar businesses.
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He served as the SVP of Research and Innovation at Softvision Cognizant post-acquisition of his software services company Momentus Software, where he served as a mobile strategy expert for some of the biggest brands. Momentus software worked on award-winning applications like Reddit, HotelTonight, Starbucks, HomeJoy, American Idol, and FitPlan to name a few. The projects spanned various industries such as telecom, retail, and hospitality.
Almaz was also responsible for building an electric scooter share product that competed with Bird and Lime scooters and was eventually acquired by Razor Scooters. After the acquisition of the team and the IP he served as the CTO of Razor scooters. The Razor Share was one of the first scooters with swappable batteries and geofenced speed limits.
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He was also a co-founder at Aven Inc. which delivered the world’s first asset-backed credit card. He was responsible for building the credit card product and all the back-office automation to evaluate the property to offer a low-interest rate credit card.
He is passionate about innovation and product development. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.