Who is the entrepreneur of the year? According to the national panel of the Creative Young Entrepreneur Award (CYEA) it is Valentino Pediroda, an engineer born in Monfalcone in 1972, but who grew up in Trieste.  Pediroda earned the title due to his work at modeFinance, a start-up assisted by Innovation Factory, the business incubator based in AREA Science Park.

Transparency, innovation and international growth are the factors that convinced the CYEA panel to present the first prize for 2011 to the young Triestine entrepreneur, a researcher at the University of Trieste and co-founder several years ago, together with his friend and colleague Mattia Ciprian, of modeFinance Srl, a firm that evaluates companies' creditworthiness and performance.

The CYEA award confirms the growth of the company started up by the Triestine entrepreneur, which has monitored around 70 million companies worldwide over the last few years, from Italy to as far away as China, without forgetting Russia and the rest of the East. Pediroda is now also in the running for a global entrepreneurship Oscar in the under 40s category, which will be awarded in Brazil in September.

modeFinance assigns a rating to millions of companies around the world. The innovative MORE (Multi Objective Rating Evaluation) methodology enables the company to evaluate the level of risk of bankruptcy associated with any business, be it small or multinational.

modeFinance services and products can be used to monitor competitors, clients, suppliers, market areas, geographic and political regions, etc., in order to establish the economic, financial and structural strengths and/or weaknesses so as to evaluate and make the best possible decisions. In addition, through the expansion of its economic and financial database, it also provides market research, making it possible to work only with the best and most well-established concerns.