The Path to Avistar

"At Entrepreneur Alley 2025, Ivan Rahman led a masterclass on speed and survival in the AI era. At the one year mark leading Avistar, we sit down with Ivan to reflect on the experiences and proof that fuel the company’s mission to secure the future of digital infrastructure with operationally grounded systems."

 

“My first language is broken English,” says Ivan Rahman. The founder and CEO of Avistar calls it an inside joke with his siblings, but it serves as a thesis for a journey shaped by translation. Growing up in New York City with a Spanish-speaking mother and a father from Bangladesh, Ivan spent his early years navigating the gap between cultures and parents who could not always communicate easily with one another. This early exposure to the mechanics of risk was deepened by watching his father’s entrepreneurship path in California. The first attempt failed. By the time Ivan was a teenager, he was working for his father’s second business, a shop that provided a pathway out of financial plight. These early experiences taught Ivan that systems are not just theoretical; they are the mechanics of survival and opportunity.

At UC San Diego, his international studies got him hooked on how large-scale systems shape outcomes. He later earned a master’s degree in graphic communication from Carroll University, giving him the tools to render those abstract structures so others could act on them. This combination of systems and design thinking unlocks Ivan’s superpower: the rare ability to zoom out to map incentives like a geopolitical problem and then effortlessly zoom in to sketch a prototype.

The Blueprint of Action

In 2008, Ivan’s commitment to community brought him to Milwaukee through AmeriCorps. Between 2011 and 2014, he expanded that community-service work at Milwaukee Community Service Corps and La Casa de Esperanza. “I was actually a certified energy auditor and asbestos inspector,” he says. This role required turning dense policy and regulatory requirements into functional reality. “I gained a lot of those skills, created courses, and then taught job training so people could go out and do work in the community.”

The bridge into tech came next. “I ended up fostering my love of design and technology with Acts Housing, helping them revamp their marketing and digital presence,” he says. While finishing up grad school, he offered free or low-cost design and marketing services to the budding Milwaukee startup scene. Ivan proudly recalls producing the first marketing video for The Commons and renting equipment from Carroll University to make it happen. His bend-to-be-useful mindset was consistently powering a simple approach: identify a structural gap, build the solution quickly, and ship it.

The Enterprise Proof

In 2016, this mindset led Ivan to Northwestern Mutual, where he initially managed digital infrastructure for over 7,000 financial advisor websites. He eventually moved to the company’s innovation team, supporting deal diligence for Cream City Ventures and helping startups inside the portfolio. Looking back at this role at the company, Ivan calls it “the most memorable job” he’s ever had. “It was an incredible experience, helping startups think about what insurance looks like in a world where technology becomes more and more pervasive.”

Inside a 160-year-old enterprise, Ivan gained a rare view into how massive organizations operate at scale. Well before the pandemic, he piloted remote collaboration tools inside the company. Formal approval came in February 2020, and then adoption exploded a month later when offices closed. “Overnight we went from like 20 people using the tools, to 200 people, to 2,000 people,” he remembers. In his final years at the firm as Assistant Director, he led a 25-person engineering group supporting core finance, risk, and accounting functions. He directed modernization efforts enabling the secure API-based processing of over 300 million daily records valued at more than $67 billion. “It was a meaningful role that allowed me to sharpen my skills and see how the organization functioned at a granular level,” he says. This tenure sharpened his understanding of identity sprawl and the growing gap between who is authorized to act and who—or what—is actually acting within a complex system.

The Logical Outcome: Avistar

When organizational changes ended his role at Northwestern Mutual in 2024, the transition to founding his own company was not a pivot of circumstance, but a move by design. After pressure-testing prototypes with trusted engineers, choosing a name that would later change (Sentinel IQ), and placing in the top 50 of the Wisconsin Governor’s Business Plan Competition, Ivan incorporated Avistar in early 2025 and joined the Mucker Capital accelerator in Chicago.

“At the end of the day when you strip away all of the hype, marketing, and PR around AI, you still have to give permissions to an agent.”

That’s how Ivan starts the conversation about the problem the company solves. Avistar is a control plane for machine identity and agent behavior. Ivan refers to it as the "dongle" for the AI era. A device that discovers service accounts, API keys, and automations operating outside centralized governance. By tying every action to a verified identity and enforcing policy-driven guardrails, Avistar allows mid-market and enterprise companies to adopt AI quickly without "flying blind." Currently, the company is focused on perfecting its proprietary CypherScore™ and building partnerships with organizations ready to secure their machine-driven futures.

Looking back at Ivan’s journey to Avistar, it’s clear to see why he’s so focused on AI systems and the operations that agents are grounded in. It’s also no surprise that, as a founder, he’s intellectually and experientially well-equipped to solve the problem with Avistar’s approach. Throughout his life and career, he’s lived both inside and in-between the complex systems where big risks quietly compound. With a generalist skillset and a mind that is always translating, Ivan Rahman is not only able to connect the dots that most don’t see, he’s also consistently acting on those connections – whether it’s between people, systems, or the non-human agents that are operating inside modern enterprises.