Investment Strategy
Vardi is an early stage "angel." Since 1996 he has been active in founding young internet companies and internet startups. In 1996 he became the founding investor of Mirabilis (company) – the creator of ICQ, which is the first instant messaging application that was released to the web. Among the companies he invested in, or helped to build are Answers.com (went public), Gteko (sold to Microsoft), Airlink (sold to Sierra Wireless), Tivella (sold to Cisco), Scopus (went public), CTI2 (sold to Audiocodes), Foxytunes (sold to yahoo), Tucows (went public), wibiya (sold to Conduit), The Gift Project (sold to ebay), Epals (went public), and Starnet (sold to IAC/InterActiveCorp). Among his other investments are: Come2Play (a social gaming site,) fring, speedbit, Cellogic (developer of a content discovery platform for mobile publishers), BloggersBase (a discovery platform for premium UGC) and many others.
Mirabilis, which practically had no revenues, was sold to AOL just 19 months after it released its product for over 400 million dollars. The sale inspired a whole generation of young Israelis to open start ups. According the Forbes: "...Overnight, a new phrase "the Mirabilis Effect," became popular as young Israeli entrepreneurs yearned to copy the company's success".
After retiring from the civil service, Vardi served on the boards of Amdocs, Maariv, Elite, Scitex, Bezeq, Arkia, Elisra, Hamashbir Hamerkazi and others, and assisted Ormat Industries to identify and develop its geothermal activity. He is a member of Amdocs advisory committee.
In recent years Vardi is active in fostering a culture of innovation and creativity in Israel and abroad. He founded Kinnernet, an annual, three days gathering of creative people from all over the world at the shores of the Lake of Gallilee; together with Dr Hubert Burda he is co-chairing the annual DLD (Digital, Lifestyle, Design) conference in Munich; together with Sir Martin Sorrell he is co-chairing the annual Stream Unconference in Greece, he also co-hosting ICUC – internet cowboys UnConference ) in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
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