Aivars Lode
Bio
Aivars is a global entrepreneur and Founder of IT Capital. Aivars is best known for his skills in identifying new business opportunities and re-engineering existing businesses to make them profitable. His ability to identify patterns in business cycles as they occur across the globe led him to start blogging in 2006 about global economics and he accurately predicted the 2008 financial crisis. He is the author of three books on the future of global economics (available at aivarslode.blogspot.com). Aivars continues to identify best practices, people, processes and technology deployed elsewhere in the world and bring them to the USA.
In the early 2000s Aivars founded Avantce, a private equity firm, in order to invest in software companies. Aivars was instrumental in a number of investments including Robocom Systems International, Select, Radcliffe, ADT, Aviva Solutions and ROI. In addition to his own investments Aivars has been retained by private equity firms CVC Capital Partners, Golden Gate Capital, Bain Capital and Welsh Carson Anderson & Stowe to advise on their acquisition strategies in Software. Aivars successfully participated in creating the strategies for companies like IBM’s EDI business, Inovis, Infor and Mincom. Further, Aivars created a consortium to acquire the major airline cargo space for optimization, this resulted in private equity firms Welsh Carson and General Atlantic investing in 3rd party logistics providers.
Prior to founding Avantcé, Aivars was Group President of Descartes Systems Group, a publicly traded supply chain solutions company, based in Canada. As Group President, Aivars led the company's global expansion efforts, achieving profitable growth as well as completing the successful acquisition and consolidation of two EDI businesses, TDNI and TranSettlements.
Prior to joining Descartes, Aivars was with Oracle heading up Applications Software for Australasia. He led the organization’s change from a direct aggressive customer relationship model to that of a consultative business partner.
Aivars first entered the technology industry in 1991, when he joined Dun & Bradstreet Software. Prior to that he held various management positions, including COO, CFO and CIO roles in both public and private corporations.
Throughout his career Aivars has lived in Australia, Canada, Singapore, Hong Kong and has conducted business in most of the industrialized countries in the world. Aivars holds a Bachelors of Business, Accounting from Swinburne University in Melbourne Australia. Aivars is an Ambassador for The Transparency Task Force, a collaborative, campaigning community dedicated to driving up the levels of transparency in financial services, around the world. Aivars is a past member of the Board of Directors at First Bank and Trust of Illinois.
