Martin Varsavsky
Martín Varsavsky (born April 26, 1960 in Buenos Aires ) is an Argentine entrepreneur. He is the managing director and founder of FON , a WLAN company. As a multiple founder , he founded companies such as Viatel and the Spanish communications company Jazztel . He also opened and supported two major Internet education portals in Latin America and is a member of the Advisory Board of the Clinton Foundation . Varsavsky is married and has 6 children.
The early years
Varsavsky was born in Argentina in 1960. When he was 16, his family fled to the United States after his cousin, David Horacio Varsavsky, was abducted by the new rulers . He earned a Masters of Arts degree in International Relations from New York University and a Masters of Business Administration from Columbia University .
Entrepreneurial activities
While still a student, he founded Urban Capital, a pioneering company in the construction of so-called lofts in New York City.
In 1987 he co-founded Medicorp Sciences, a biotechnology company specializing in the development of HIV tests .
In 1991 Varsavsky entered the telecommunications sector with Viatel . In order to avoid expensive long-distance call prices , his company invented the callback procedure. Viatel went from being a small company with the first call-back service in Colorado to being a pan-European telecommunications network. With its headquarters in London, Viatel operated a fiber optic network that connected over 50 strategically important points in Western Europe with the largest cities on the US east coast. In 1994 Viatel went public.
In 1998 Varsavsky withdrew from Viatel in order to devote himself entirely to his new company, Jazztel. Over the next two years, he sold most of his shares in Viatel. Jazztel concentrated its efforts on the development of fiber optic networks in Spain and was a direct competitor against the state-dominated Telefónica .
In 1999 he founded the Internet portal Ya.com , which was at times Spain's third largest Internet website and also an Internet service provider. Ya.com also owns Spain's second largest online travel agency, www.viajar.com. Ya.com was 70% owned by Jazztel, 10% by Martin Varsavsky and 20% by the staff. The company was sold to T-Online International in 2000 .
In 2000 he founded Einstein.net , a company based in Germany that was supposed to rent business software to companies. This should be accessed via broadband connections . The market was apparently not yet ripe for this idea, so that in 2003 it withdrew from this business with considerable losses.
Since 2005, Varsavsky has been concentrating on the market with wireless WLAN Internet access. He founded FON , headquartered in Madrid , a community-based company that enables its users worldwide to access the Internet via WLAN , either against payment or by providing their own bandwidth. The project receives support and funding from well-known names such as Index Ventures , Sequoia Capital , eBay and Google .
Varsavsky is also currently active as an investor in various start-ups such as Gspace , Joost , Menéame, mo.neytrack.in, Netvibes , Plazes , sevenload , Technorati , Vpod , Wikio , XING and Zudeo .
Outside the telecommunications sector, he is the main investor in the renewable energy sector in the El Moralejo and Proesa wind farms . He is also the owner of the fashion labels Sybilla and Jocomomola .
honors and awards
- World Technology (2006)
- Pickering, Columbia University (2003)
- Spanish Entrepreneur of the Year, iBest (2000)
- Global Leader for Tomorrow, World Economic Forum (2000)
- European Entrepreneur of the Year, ECTA (1999)
- European Entrepreneur in Telecommunications (1998)
- Entrepreneur of the Year, New York City (1995)
Other fields of activity
Varsavsky's Foundation has initiated two projects. On the one hand Educ.ar , on the other hand EducarChile.cl , two important educational portals for Latin America .
He was also the ambassador of his home country Argentina between 2001 and 2005 . He is also the founder of the Safe Democracy Foundation .
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Varsavsky, Martin |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Varsavsky, Martín |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Argentine entrepreneur |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 26, 1960 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Buenos Aires |