2006 1
Google Scholar and the Varsavskys
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
I was born in Argentina. My background is German, Ukrainian, Polish and predictably Jewish. When I was growing up in Buenos Aires there were mainly two main kinds of Jews, the businessmen and the intelectuals. The Varsavskys were clearly on the intellectual camp. My father Carlos Varsavsky had a PhD from Harvard in astrophysics and he exemplified the Varsavsky type. Now while being an intellectual was and still is very prestigious there was no money in it. In America scientists struggle but are not poor. In Argentina they were then and they are now. Maybe this is why I grew up thinking that men does not live by science alone and decided to make a living out of investing in science rather than practicing it. This was not easy. My grandmother on my mother side, Ora Waisman, before she died in 1994 made me promise that I would get a PhD. I did go half way and in 1996 I became a professor of entrepreneurship at Instituto de Empresa and have been teaching in the fall ever since. But that is as far as I went with academia. I used to think I could get away with this. That my work was very relevant as evidenced by the enormous number of citations that Martin Varsavsky got at Google. But then Google came up with Google Scholar and there all the other Professor Varsavskys beat me by a great margin and rightly so. I am sorry Ora! I did what I could. I just LOVE starting businesses. I hope you understand. Entrepreneur first, scholar second.
2006 1
Biodiesel Cars, Hybrid Cars or Hydrogen Cars?
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
My entrepreneurship efforts are in the field of Telecoms and the Internet where I founded Viatel, Jazztel, Ya.com, Einsteinet and now Fon. My investments however are in alternative energies. Together with partners I have built an 18MW wind farm that we are expanding in the process of expanding to 50MW and we are also in the process of asking permits for solar and wind energy for another aprox 150MW.
I invest in alternative energies for two main reasons, one is because I believe I can make money with them and two because I, like many others (but unfortunately not enough others), believe that burning fossil fuels is bad for the environment and bad for global peace. Today however I was presented with a potential investment in biodiesel and so far, while convinced that it can be a money maker, I have concluded that biodiesel production is not a sustainable and decided against the investment. Why? Mainly because in a world in which over a billion people go hungry how can we morally justify burning food to drive cars?
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2006 1
The True Test of Leadership
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Entrepreneurship with No Comments
I have been in business for 20 years. Lately I frequently run into former employees who have have become successful entrepreneurs. Indeed this morning I was cycling with a few of them and wondering why is it that I seem to be the last stop to entrepreneurship for so many corporate types. My answer is that, when I recruit, I look for candidates who will run with projects and get them done with little supervision. In many cases, I look for candidates who are better than me at their tasks and I am not afraid to delegate. Corporate executives come to me because they want to do what I do. They see companies that go from idea to global leaders, (Fon has now the largest wifi network in the world) in 6 months and they want to “learn the trick”.
Now my “trick”, I guess, is that they not only learn…they make it happen. And they make enough money through equity in my companies, that the next time they do it on their own, in some cases as much as $50 million. Some examples of very successful former employees now entrepreneurs: Alan Levy, Miguel Salis, Antonio Carro, Christoph Schmidt, Jon Berrojalbiz, Alvy Ibañez, Moises Israel, ex employees of Viatel, Jazztel, Ya.com. And this “learn and start my own” model, is not only true in the case of profit ventures. Rafael Rivera, a social entrepreneur, was one of the first employees of Educ.ar, a very large educational project started by my foundation, and then he went on to being one of the co founders of Red.es, a huge educational internet project in Spain. I once read in Forbes magazine that great leaders are the ones whose followers do well. I would slightly change that. I would say that great leaders are the ones whose followers do so well that they become leaders!