BCBusiness

ROBERT KENNEY JULY/AUGUST 2017 BCBUSINESS 101 lexander Fernandes takes issue with the proverb that you can learn from your mistakes. "I don't see that as wis- dom," says the 48-year-old founder and CEO of Avigilon Corp. His preferred alternative: "Don't make the same mistake twice." With an almost schol- arly knowledge of the bromides and mantras of business texts by authors ranging from Dale Carnegie to Napoleon Hill, Fernandes makes a convincing case that his alternative edu- cation has served him well. Since launching Avigilon in 2004, he's over- seen its rise from a ˆedgling security camera out- ‰t to B.C.'s fourth-largest technolo‹y company by revenue. The digital surveillance hardware and software provider has lost some of its lustre of late: its stock was trading at about $15 in late May, well below a high of $34 in 2013, and overseas upstarts have eaten into its market share. But the Vancouver-based company remains a top performer on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Rev- enue jumped 33 per cent last year, and dividends have been climbing. Born in Montreal, the son of an accountant, Fernandes was obsessed with per- sonal ‰nance as a child. By age 12, he knew The Wealthy Barber well enough to pick apart its ˆaws. "I ‰gured out at a young age that I'd be a multimil- lionaire," Fernandes says. To get there, he spent ˜ ive years in the Canadian Armed Forces, studied computer and telecommunications electronics at Vancouver Community College and went on to work at a series of startups. After several exits—he always took equity instead of pay when possible—he reached his goal. "I woke up in my mid-20s, and I was a multimillionaire," Fernandes recalls. "It happened much faster than I expected." In 1999, Fernandes founded his ‰rst company, QImaging, which built cameras for medical and industrial use. Three years later, he and his part- ners sold the B.C.-based business for $20 million. Flush with cash, Fernandes set to work on his next venture. The idea was simple: digital video camera technolo‹y had moved at warp speed in the early 2000s, but the security industry—one of the largest markets for such technolo‹y—was still dominated by analogue cameras. Avigilon grew swiftly. By 2013, two years after the company's initial public ožering on the TSX, its market capitalization passed $1 billion. Then the growing pains kicked in. When Avigilon went public in 2011, its high-de‰nition cameras had a technological edge over legacy competitors like Canon Inc. and few new rivals that could cause concern. That began to change in 2012 as low-cost ožerings from Chinese players like Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technolo‹y Co. Ltd. ˆooded the North American market. Fernandes has met that pressure on price by emphasizing innovation. Since 2013, Avigilon has invested heavily in video analytics, secur- ing patents for automatic licence plate recogni- tion and face appearance search. The company has another advantage, too. With its Apple-like end-to-end product ožering and its factories in Richmond and Plano, Texas, Avigilon is well suited to meet the cybersecurity needs of ‰n- icky clients. "To my knowledge, not a single piece of our hardware or software has ever been hacked," Fernandes says. But as always, his focus is on the bottom line. Fernandes points out that by reaching $126.2 mil- lion in revenue in the ‰nal quarter of 2016, which puts Avigilon at a run rate of $500 million for the year, the company achieved a goal he set out in his personal post- IPO ‰ve-year plan. He's quick to share what he believes to be the recipe for suc- cess, learned all those years ago: "Perseverance and determination are two mandatory elements; most challenges are mental in nature." AVIGILON CEO ALEXANDER FERNANDES DOESN'T PLAN TO LET LOWER-COST RIVALS DERAIL HIS DIGITAL SURVEILLANCE COMPANY'S PUSH TO KEEP GROWING REVENUE LONG-TERM VISION Fernandes founded Avigilon to bring digital video to the security industry

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