When Recognia President and CEO Rick Escher founded the company in 2000, he brought with him a wealth of practical experience as a self-directed trader, active investor, mathematician and successful entrepreneur. Under Mr. Escher's guidance, Recognia began executing the vision to bring world class investment analytics to self-direct investors, traders and investment professionals around the world. With a foundation based solidly on the teachings of Edwards and Magee, Schabacker, Murphy, Martin Pring and Dr. Chris Satchwell, Recognia set out to automate and simplify the established practices of technical analysis including, chart pattern recognition.
From this early vision, Mr. Escher has led and grown Recognia into a leading global research provider, not just of chart pattern recognition and technical analysis, but also sophisticated analytics involving fundamental and value investing methodologies, Elliott Wave recognition, quantitative analysis and sentiment methodologies.
Prior to founding Recognia, Mr. Escher successfully launched and managed two start-ups, both of which were subsequently acquired. Most recently, Pricedex Inc., has grown to be the leading supplier of price management software throughout North America and Europe. Prior to Pricedex Mr. Escher founded and subsequently sold MacSys Inc., a custom software development and professional services firm. Formally trained in space physics, Mr. Escher worked for Canadian Astronautics as a space physicist, where he designed and implemented materials processing experiments for space flight and worked with the Canadian astronauts to test the equipment aboard NASA's KC135 "vomit comet".
Although the majority of his time is devoted to growing Recognia, Mr. Escher is involved in several non-profit organizations. One of these, a drop-in center for under-privileged youth in the Ottawa-Carleton region called The Door/La Porte, provides guidance and mentors to help develop skills in areas such as entrepreneurship. Mr. Escher is also a founding member of the Software Developers' Network (SDN), a forum for software executives to discuss business management. He is also an associate member of the Sigma Xi scientific research society and a past member of the Young Entrepreneur's Organization (YEO).
