Jasomi Networks was a pioneer in the development of Session Border Controllers (SBCs), computer network devices that enable, control, and monitor the flow of multimedia data streams across carrier networks, corporate networks, home networks, and the Internet. History and evolution The concept for Jasomi was conceived in a meeting between Cullen Jennings and David A. Bryan, who introduced the concept to Dan Freedman, resulting in the founding of the corporation in 2001. Funded by the founders and early employee Benjamin Freedman, the company quickly created a demonstrable SBC, and began to market it as the PeerPoint product line at the Fall 2001 VON trade show organized by Jeff Pulver. Strong early interest encouraged Freedman and Jennings to commit additional bootstrapping funds from themselves and friends and family. An R&D center was established in Calgary, Alberta, Canada in early 2002, and Alan Hawrylyshen joined the team. 2002 was spent turning the early demonstrator into a more full featured and supportable product. Ryan Kereliuk and Johnson Wu joined the company in mid-2002, and in late 2002, Jasomi adopted a hybrid coopetition model of software development, keeping certain advancements proprietary while releasing others to the public through the reSIProcate open-source SIP stack. David A. Bryan left the company and Alan Hawrylyshen became CTO in late 2002. Between 2002 and 2004, the company advanced the state of the art in SBC technology, providing customers for the first time with the ability to perform VoIP through existing NAT-enabled firewalls so that residential subscribers could be supported without placing any hardware on their premises. An early customer making great use of this facility was Jeff Pulver's Free World Dialup, which provided free calling services worldwide amongst its subscribers using the SIP VoIP protocol. In 2005, the company was acquired by Ditech Communications (itself later acquired by Nuance Communications) in a deal valued at $24.55m. Investment Jasomi was unusual (although not unique) in that it shunned venture capital, relying initially on self-funding by the founders, and later on money invested by friends and family. A total of about $2.8m was raised, much of that in the few months preceding the company's acquisition. The company's main competitors were Acme Packet and Kagoor Networks that had each raised about $40m, and Netrake that had raised about $70m. By comparison, virtually all of Jasomi's operating funds came in organically from customers in the form of revenue - a true bootstrapping