Yossi Vardi ICQ Founding Investor Yossi Vardi is one of Israel's high-tech veterans, with 35 years experience in founding and participating in building over 30 high-tech companies, in the fields of Internet, software, telecommunications, electro-optics, energy, and the environment. Several companies Yossi Vardi founded eventually went public, among them Advanced Technologies (Tekem - which became at the time the largest software company in Israel), International Technologies (Lasers), and Granite Hacarmel. He is the principal of International Technologies, which engages in private high-tech investments for its own account. Yossi Vardi is the founding investor and the former Chairman of Mirabilis Ltd, the creator of the highly popular instant messaging program ICQ, which pioneered the all-internet instant messaging phenomena, making it one of the most successful and popular Internet products of all times, with currently close to 300 million downloads. The company was acquired by AOL, to which he still serves as an advisor. He also serves as a strategic advisor to Amazon. Among his other recent high-tech involvements, he is an investor in Download Accelerator (which has over 80 million users and delivers millions of files daily), Airlink, a manufacturer of wireless data modems, Scopus, Gtek and a number of other companies. He is a Venture Partner and one of the initiators of Pitango - one of Israel's largest venture capital funds. He was co-founder of Alon, the largest energy distribution company in Israel. Yossi Vardi has acted as an advisor to the World Bank, the United Nations Development Program, the Mexican Government, and to the Chairmen and CEOs of Occidental Petroleum, Signal Corp, Allied Signal, Wheelabrator Frye, and Siemens-Albis. Vardi's entrepreneurial accomplishments have been chronicled by numerous local and foreign business publications. He has received many awards for his achievements, including Entrepreneur of the Year from Tel Aviv University, and CEO!'s Entrepreneurs Hall Of Fame. . Last Updated 18. February 2005