Founder, Fon
Blog : Martin Varsavsky
Martin Varsavsky is an Argentine entrepreneur, founder of five successful companies in the past 20 years.
In 1984, while still in college, he started his first business, Urban Capital Corporation, a NY-based real estate developer. This was soon followed in 1986 by Medicorp Services, a Canadian biotechnology company, that quickly became a pioneer in AIDS testing. His third business, Viatel Ltd., Martin’s first venture into the world of telecom, was founded in 1991 and still runs successfully today.
Martin‘s most well known ventures to date were all launched within the last 10 years. Jazztel Telecomunicaciones (Jazztel) was founded in 1997 in direct competition with Spain’s Telefonica and Ya.com, launched in 1999, has become Spain’s second largest Internet content company.
When not thinking of new business opportunities, Martin Varsavsky engages in a plethora of non-business activities. For the past 8 years, he has been teaching a popular course on new business creation at the Instituto de Empresa, Spain’s leading business school.
Martin Varsavsky is also President and founder of the Varsavsky Foundation, a private, independent grant-making organization dedicated to broadening access to, and improving the quality of education world-wide. It has donated funds primarily to Educ.ar (Argentina) and EducarChile (Chile) , two education portals that aim to democratize and modernize the educational systems in their respective countries. Because of his outstanding contributions to his country of origin, Varsavsky was awarded the title of Ambassador-at-Large of Argentina in 2001.
He is also on the Board of Trustees of the William Jefferson Clinton Foundation, and is board member of the Instituto de Empresa and the Peaceworks OneVoice Foundation.
Passionate about current affairs and global issues, Martin Varsavsky has written numerous articles on business and international relations that have been published in several international publications including El Pais and Newsweek. He is also a frequent speaker at conferences around the world, such as the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos.
Martin Varsavsky received his BA from New York University, and holds an MA in International Affairs and an MA in Business Administration from Columbia University.
He is the recipient of various honors and rewards, among them European Telecommunications Entrepreneur of the Year in 1998, ECTA´s European Entrepreneur of the Year in 1999, Global Leader for Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum in Davos, 2000, and Spanish Entrepreneur of the Year by iBest in 2000.
In his spare time, Martin enjoys cycling, piloting, cooking asados and sailing.
