Martín Varsavsky

Martín Varsavsky (born in Buenos Aires in 1960) is an Argentine entrepreneur based in Spain.

Born to Carlos Varsavsky and Silvia Waisman, Varsavsky attended primary school at the New Model School and the Colegio Nicolás Avellaneda high school.

At the age of 16, he moved with his family to the United States as a refugee supported and assisted by B'nai B'rith, following the forced disappearance of his cousin, David Horacio Varsavsky. In 1981 he obtained a BA at the New York University, in 1983 he earned an MA in International Affairs and in 1985 an MBA at Columbia University.

Since July 1995, Varsavsky has been living in Madrid, Spain. Besides his business activities, he is also engaged in non profit activities.

Since 1999 Varsavsky has been teaching courses on entrepreneurship at the Instituto de Empresa Business School in Spain. He has written articles on business and international relations that have been published in several international publications including El País and Newsweek, and is a frequent speaker at conferences around the world. Varsavsky is also an active blogger.

Martín Varsavsky has three children from his first marriage to Patricia Aisemberg, Alexandra, Isabella and Thomas and has one child from his second marriage with Waya Quiviger, Leo. Martin is engaged to Nina Wiegand.

Entrepreneurial activities

In 1984, at the age of 24 and still in college, Varsavsky created Urban Capital Corporation, a real estate company in New York that was one of the early leaders in the Loft Movement. Urban Capital Corporation purchased industrial buildings and recycled them into residential apartments and offices, developing up to 50 thousand square meters in the Soho and Tribeca neighborhoods of New York City.

In 1986, together with Argentine scientist Claudio Cuello and César Milstein (Medical Science Nobel Prize), Varsavsky founded Medicorp Sciences, a biotechnology company in which he is still a shareholder. Based in Montreal, Medicorp Sciences pioneered the development of HIV and PSA tests.

Since the late 1980s Martín Varsavsky has founded seven companies, including Jazztel, EINSTEINet and Ya.com – all part of the new media industry.

In 1991, Varsavsky ventured into the telecommunications sector with Viatel. Viatel created and developed the call-back service, an innovative alternative to the high costs of traditional long-distance operators, similar to Econophone (later renamed Destia Inc). Viatel evolved from providing the first call-back service in Colorado to becoming an alternative telecom services provider in several European countries (such as France, Belgium, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom). In 1994, Viatel went public, and four years later (1998)Varsavsky divested from the company to dedicate himself to other ventures. Viatel Inc. filed for bankruptcy (Chapter 11) in May 2001. Investors, both shareholders and bondholders, lost US$ 1.5 billion - US$ 2 billion. Since then, the (much smaller) restart of Viatel, based in London, operates a fibre-optic circuit, connecting more than 50 strategically situated points from Western Europe to the US East Coast's largest cities.

In 1997, Varsavsky founded Jazztel Telecommunications (Jazz), the first alternative telecommunications access provider in the Iberian Peninsula. Headquartered in Madrid and with its own infrastructure, the company became the leading telecommunications operator offering bandwidth solutions for the residential and commercial markets. Jazztel then went public.

In 1999, Varsavsky created Ya.com Internet Factory, Spain's third largest internet web site/DSL provider that also includes the second largest Spanish language online travel agency, Viajar.com. Ya.com was owned by Jazztel (70%), Martín Varsavsky (10%) and the company's' staff (20%). It was sold in 2000 to T-Online International, Deutsche Telekom's Internet subsidiary.

In 2000, Martín Varsavsky created EINSTEINet AG, the largest application service provider (ASP) in Germany. Einsteinet was a company built on the premise that most applications were going to migrate from people's PCs to the internet. Yet the EINSTEINet did not materialize and the company was sold saving the employees jobs but providing no returns.

Varsavsky's current venture is called FON. Founded at the end of 2005, FON is a community-driven company dedicated to building the world's largest global WiFi community, spreading the power of WiFi around the world through an innovative user-generated infrastructure. Headquartered in Madrid, FON is backed by its equity investors and partners Google, Skype, Index Ventures and Sequoia Capital to WiFi enable the planet.

Currently, Varsavsky also acts as an investment partner in various early stage companies including Gspace, Joost, Menéame, mo.neytrack.in, Netvibes, / Plazes, Technorati, vpod.tv, Wikio, XING, Dopplr, Vuze and Hipertextual. Outside of the telecommunications sector, he is the majority shareholder of the wind park El Moralejo (a renewable energy generator) and Proesa, 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)

Philanthrophic activities

Martín Varsavsky is founder and president of the Varsavsky Foundation, devoted to improve the educational conditions in the world. The foundation promotes Educ.ar (Argentina) and EducarChile (Chile), aiming to democratize and modernize the educational systems in both countries.

He is also founder and president of the Safe Democracy Foundation, devoted to contributing to the ongoing debates on the leading questions in international affairs with innovative ideas and solutions. The foundation’s goal is to promote fair, transparent and safe democracies.

The Safe Democracy Foundation and the Club of Madrid organized the Atocha Workshop in March 2005 and the international Summit on Terrorism, Democracy and Security. The Secretary General of the United Nations and numerous heads of State met in Madrid to analyze how democracies should protect themselves against terrorism in a more effective way without compromising the spirit and safeguards of democracy.

Varsavsky is on the Board of Trustees of the William Jefferson Clinton Foundation and the One Voice Foundation.

References

External links