I was tickled to read the Economist’s profile of Yossi Vardi. Yossi is a Foo Camp regular and long-time O’Reilly friend, and it’s great to see him recognized like this.
Born in 1942 in Palestine, Mr Vardi started his career in fields that would be called low-tech today. At the age of 27 he was appointed director-general of Israel’s development ministry and then held a similar job at the energy ministry. Later he led or helped to found some 60 companies such as Israel Chemicals, the Israel Oil Company and ITL Optronics. Then, in 1996, he invested in his first internet start-up, Mirabilis, the company behind ICQ (“I seek you”). One reason was that his son Arik was one of the founders. But Mr Vardi also realised that instant messaging, then a novelty, would spread like a contagious virus. “Three major viral products emerged from this part of the world: the Bible 2,700 years ago, Jesus 2,000 years ago and ICQ ten years ago,” he jokes. Search for ICQ using Google and there are 675m matches, he points out, compared with 160m for the Bible and 178m for Jesus.