A
passion for excellence and a winning attitude has
powered his drive to succeed.
In 1971,
he graduated valedictorian of his high school class
at Holy Angels College (now University) in Angeles
City. He completed the five-year Industrial Engineering
course at the University of the Philippines in 4-½ years,
graduating also at the top of his class.
After college, rather than land a good-paying cushy
job at a top 1,000 corporation, he chose to teach
at the university, to his mother’s chagrin. Peter
wistfully recalls, “I kept convincing my mother
that I took the teaching job to further refine my
knowledge of Operations Research, which was my passion
at that
time. Of course, she would not understand what I
meant by Operations Research.”
Industrial engineer Peter Valdes eventually got a
good-paying job as Operations Research Analyst at
Petron in Makati.
He continued teaching O. R., this time, at the De
La Salle University College of Engineering. He shares, “Teaching
has its own satisfaction, since you are able to share
knowledge with younger students. At the same time,
it reinforces your understanding of a particular
field.”
Two years later, he was offered a graduate teaching
scholarship at Syracuse University in New York. He
went on to finish his master’s degree in Industrial
Engineering and O. R. and an M. S. degree in Computer
at Syracuse, and then continued to complete all the
requirements for his doctorate degree.
From IBM to Tivoli
After getting his green card, he worked as a software
engineer for a start-up company that led to a software-architecting
job at IBM in Austin, Texas. During his stint at
IBM Austin, he met Bob Fabbio who was his supervisor
in the System Management Architecture group and
two of his friends, Todd Smith and Steve Marcie.
Sometime in 1989, the four of them decided to leave
IBM and founded Tivoli Systems.
Peter recalls, “We called the company Tivoli
because Tivoli means a fun place. We just wanted
to have fun doing what we wanted to do which is innovative
software development and hopefully make money along
the way.”
They took the risk of establishing a startup with
no assured revenues based on a vision that there
would be a need for software that would simplify
the management of a distributed set of computers
interconnected over a local and a wide area network.
Peter reasons, “We felt that we have the technical
expertise to solve that (massive enterprise system
management) problem. We also felt that there was
no way we could do it inside IBM given the bureaucracy
that we would have to go through. Plus, we figured
out that it would be much more fun and rewarding
doing it on our own.
To support themselves, the Tivoli partners took a
bootstrap approach by taking a couple of software
consulting jobs in other companies and did them under
Tivoli. These consulting projects enabled the start-up
firm to pay its owners a basic salary plus rental
and maintenance for a small office in Austin.
Fresh funds
After more than eight months of working on a prototype
of the core product, Tivoli attracted the interest
of a famous venture capital firm based out of Silicon
Valley. The venture firm has funded a number of
successful startups including Sun Microsystems
and Google.
The infusion of fresh funds enabled Tivoli to expand
operations and accelerate product development. In
1994 and after two more rounds of venture capital
funding, Tivoli had a successful IPO on the NASDAQ
in the U.S.
A year later, IBM, on a buying spree for software
companies that would complement its product offerings,
grabbed the opportunity and bought the entire Tivoli
company for $743 million. Tivoli is considered one
of the most successful software startup companies
not just in Texas, but in the entire United States
and possibly worldwide.
Peter’s Philippine-based company, Vinta Systems.
licenses Intellectual Property rights from Vsoft,
his U.S. IP holding company. Vinta Systems develops
innovative software products for the banking and
media industries. These software products embed artificial
intelligence algorithms to help optimize risk decisions
in a bank and to enhance the effectiveness of media
planning in an ad agency.
MOAS, for instance, automates the media planning
process and significantly improves the development
of media plans. Valdes claims that with MOAS, a media
planner can put together an optimal plan under five
minutes, which traditionally would have taken hours
or even days to complete.
MOAS is powered by artificial intelligence inside
named Vinta Intelligent Optimizer (VIO) that makes
all the difference. MOAS, which stands for Media
Optimization Administrative System, has been instrumental
in helping a large ad firm capture one of the biggest
accounts in the industry. It helped slay one of the
bigger names in the field.
No shortcuts
Vinta itself is in the thick of a major bid to supply
credit risk software for Malaysia’s largest
government-owned savings bank with more than 300
branches nationwide. The proposed computer application
would help bank personnel manage the risks in extending
loans and significantly reduce losses arising from
bad debts without sacrificing potential revenues.
The company is also in the process of implementing
an innovative business intelligence layer for a major
bank in the Philippines. For its innovative products,
Vinta has started to catch the attention of major
business software developers in the Asia Pacific
region.
Peter Valdes has been named one of the 10 Most Inspiring
Technopreneurs in the Philippines in 2006 for his
achievements. He and STI’s Gus Lagman have
provided funding for a scholarship program for IT
students in U.P. Valdes is also one of the first
technopreneurs to support the Brain Gain Network,
an online networking tool that connects talented
professionals and students interested in helping
increase the global competitiveness of the Philippine
high-technology industry.
Peter tells this lesson learned well: “Despite
the huge success of Tivoli, there were no short-cuts
or magic formula that can be learned from books.
We encountered difficulties and failures along the
way. If we did not have the determination and passion
in executing our vision, we could have easily given
up even very early in the process. We took the risk,
trained ourselves technically, stayed focus on our
goal, and never gave up when faced with obstacles.
If we didn’t have the support of our families,
we could have also failed.” |
