A few weeks ago I was honored to accept recognition as a Top 40 Under 40 Entreprenuer by Silicon Valley Business Journal.  Although I’m not yet near my forties, it was great to receive the recognition and participate in a celebration of innovation with so many other CEOs from the valley.

It was truly a privilege to meet and greet with 2009’s class of innovators including Marissa Mayer of Google, Michael Madison of Cocoon Ventures and many others.  The honorees spanned across an array of industries and arenas including venture capital, social networking, finance and more in public, private and nonprofit sectors.

The celebration was a lot of fun.  Here is a video of the event and some of the honorees.

40 Under 40 Awards – Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal

Its hard to imagine that its been almost 25 years since my parents secretly smuggled many of our family members out of Iran due to brutal religious persecution.  Persecution that is unfortunately picking up once again in todays time.

A reader asked me to provide more info about this portion of my background and so I offered this short post.

The 1979 revolution of Iran put in place a theocracy that among many other horrific things, directly executed over 200 Bahai’s, destroyed Bahai holy places, burned thousands of homes, denied everyone access to higher education and spread mass propoganda labeling all non Muslims, specifically the Bahai’s, as spies and terrorists.  As a result Iran’s lower class was stimulated into a dangerous mob that resulted in many more killings and threatened increasing harm in addition to the harm already offered directly by the new Islamic Government.  So, in fear of our lives, we were forced to secretly flee the country, as simply leaving was not a friendly option.

I was about 4.5 years old when my parents, Ahdieh and Anush, were brave enough to initiate the smuggling of our family out of the country through the desert, at night, by jeep and camel into Pakistan.  Although the smugglers were able to successfully and safely put us past the border, they stole every valuble thing my family had.  We lived in Lahore Pakistan for 18 months before we attained our Visa into the US and into Alaska.  After 18 months in Saint Petersburg Alaska, my parents moved us to Central Valley California, where I grew up. 

I wish I could say the rest is history, but its not.  Over the last 2 years Iran’s government has begun similar behavior to its past by systematically kidnapping, imprisoning, and scheduling for execution more and more minority groups nationwide without any access to a lawyer.  The situation in Iran is once again growing progressively worse and everyone who is intimately aware of the events of the past is once again gravely concerned.

I just wrote a piece on the recent increasing persecution of the Baha’is of Iran.  Most recently, several key community members of the Baha’is of Iran were kidnapped, charged without any evidence, imprisoned without access to a lawyer and now, one year later, scheduled for a staged trial that will determine their fate.  In 1980, the last time a similar event occurred, all who were kidnapped were executed… 

Read more at TourDeChange.org

I just wrote a piece on progressive governance at MaxStartup.com.

Too often startups make the mistake of applying too much brakes and governance to alleviate the growing pains and challenges they face.  Managers instill too many protocols, policies, procedures that weigh down a business during a time where speed and agility are everything.  It is supremely important for managers to detect the problems and apply the exact amount of governance necessary without comprising the climb of a business.  

Read more at MaxStartup.com…

You can’t help hearing about Twitter these days.  Twitter this, twitter that, tweet this, retweet that.  It’s a phenomenon that even the holiness the Dalai Lama has joined in on.  Heck, if the Dalai Lama is going to Twitter then maybe there is something to be said about everyone using Twitter.

So recently I’ve been using and playing around with Twitter and to my own surprise I find it stimulating and actually supremely valuable to business in all sorts of ways.  So I’ve officially taken it up and have big plans for making it a big part of what I do and what we do going forward.

So if you want to stay in touch and follow our progress, join me at Twitter.com/BenBehrouzi!

Best,

Ben Behrouzi

No Click Search Technology Delivers Instantaneous Results as You’re Typing

PLEASANTON, Calif., Jan. 15 /PRNewswire/ — LeapFish, a multi-dimensional search engine that combines the best of the web in a single search, today announced the release of its new click-free search interface that delivers search results as you type. The brand new search engine that captures not just relevancy but also the variety of the web, now offers one of the world’s fastest search services with instantaneous results as each character of a search term is entered.

LeapFish pushes search to 2.0 and states “out with the search button.” LeapFish’s revolutionary new click-free search interface gives life to a fast, fluid and dynamic search experience that extracts the variety of data from major online destinations such as Google, YouTube, Ebay and others in a single search query. Consolidating a knowledge base of relevancy and variety from major online authorities, LeapFish effectively renders more comprehensive results than those returned by its providers.

“This technology is truly evolutionary in the context of today’s Internet,” said Behnam Behrouzi, president and CEO of LeapFish. “Desirable data continues to be lost at an accelerating rate due to the information overload and filter failure of search engines. The LeapFish click-free search functionality and aggregation capability offers users a convenient solution for users to maintain control over this data.”

The inspiration behind LeapFish has been the opportunity to provide an answer to the information overload and the fragmentation of accessibility that is naturally occurring online today. “If relevancy, the currently defined search formula, continues to be limited by the virtual real estate allotted by page 1 of the major search engines, then the variety and accessibility of the breadth of the web is being lost in the information overload,” says Behrouzi. “LeapFish works to capture this variety in a new multidimensional, and now instantaneous, click-free search interface.”

For users who don’t have heavy Internet usage, LeapFish promises to conveniently surprise them with information they wouldn’t have normally been aware of if they used a traditional search engine.

The revolutionary new search service uses proprietary hyper-threading technology to communicate with a growing list of over 200 online authorities, currently under development, to deliver more than just relevancy to users. LeapFish launched its search platform in November 2008 and is currently seeking patents for its new offering.

To try the new click-free search engine for yourself, visit http://www.leapfish.com.

About LeapFish

LeapFish is a multi-dimensional search engine that captures the variety of the web in a single click free search interface. The search engine delivers instantaneous results from major Internet destinations while you type. LeapFish Inc. is a privately held corporation headquartered out of CARR America Corporate Center in Pleasanton California. For more information, visit http://www.leapfish.com.