Yossi Vardi

In 2013, Vardi was one of a group of Israeli and Palestinian business figures who launched Breaking the Impasse (BTI), a forum in favor of advancing a diplomatic solution. BTI is supported by the World Economic Forum.

Vardi was selected by Wall Street Journal Europe for "Tech's Top 25", and won the TechCrunch Europe 2009 "Best investor personality" award. He received an Honorary Doctorate from the Technion and from Ben Gurion University, Honorary Fellowship from the Open University, twice received the Prime Minister Award for life achievements in the high tech area; the Industry Award, for his contribution to the development Israel's industry; the 1998 entrepreneur of the year, the 2010 Excellence in Global Entrepreneurship and Management Award, and the Hugo Ramniceanu prize for Economics, all from Tel Aviv University. He received the Heim Herzog prize for unique contribution to the state of Israel from the Hebrew University and the President Herzog Foundation. He also received the CEO's Entrepreneurs Hall of Fame from the Collegiate Entrepreneurs' Organization, and a Certificate of Merit for the pioneering of the software industry and Information Technology from the Israel Chamber of System Analysts, as well as the Innovation Leadership Medal from the European Alliance for Innovation.

He was nominated as one of The Most Influential International Executives by The Industry Standard, cited by Haaretz newspaper as one of the 50 "persons of the decade" for the first decade of the 2000s, was elected by Israel 21c to the top 10 icons of Israeli high tech - the pioneers, by The Algemeiner for the "Jewish 100 - the top 100 people positively influenced Jewish life" and by Wired magazine as number 9 of the Wired 2014 top 100.

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, and of the deeplink.me mobile deep linking platform), BloggersBase (a discovery platform for premium UGC), Wefi 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 to Forbes: "...Overnight, a new phrase "the Mirabilis Effect," became popular as young Israeli entrepreneurs yearned to copy the company's success".

Vardi began his entrepreneurial career in 1969, at the age of 26, as co-founder and first CEO of TEKEM (Hebrew: טכ"מ) (In Hebrew – abbreviation of "Technologia Mitkademet". In English: ATL-Advanced Technology Ltd.), one of the first software houses in Israel (later sold to Tadiran and then absorbed into Ness Technologies). In 1970, he was appointed Director General of the Ministry of Development. He served as chairman of Israel Chemicals of Mifaley Tovala, of Harsit and Hol Zach, and a member of the board of Israel Electric Corporation, Dead Sea Works, Dead Sea Bromine, Dead Sea Periclase, Haifa Chemicals, Chemicals and Phosphates, and others. He also chaired the Oil Explorations Concessions Council and Fertilizers Development Council.

Joseph "Yossi" Vardi (Hebrew: יוסי ורדי, born September 2, 1942) is an Israeli entrepreneur and investor. He is one of Israel's first high-tech entrepreneurs. For over 47 years he has founded and helped to build over 85 high-tech companies in a variety of fields, among them software, energy, Internet, mobile, electro-optics and water technology.