Martin Varsavsky started his first business, Urban Capital Corporation, a New York based real estate developer, in 1984 while he was still in college. This was soon followed in 1986 by Medicorp Services, a Canadian biotechnology company that quickly became a pioneer in AIDS testing. His third business, Viatel Ltd., was founded in 1991 and still runs successfully today.
Martin's current venture is FON, founded in November in 2005, which is a community-empowered company dedicated to building the world's largest global WiFi network bottom up, spreading the power of WiFi around the world, aiming to create one million hot spots by 2010. For the past eight years, he has been teaching a popular course on new business creation at the Instituto de: Empresa, Spain's leading business school.
Martin Varsavsky is also the President and founder of the Varsavsky Foundation, a private, independent grant-making organisation dedicated to broadening access to and improving the quality of education worldwide. Varsavsky was awarded the title of Ambassador-at-Large of Argentina in 2001 up to 2005. He is also on the Board of Trustees of the William Jefferson Clinton Foundation and is a board member of the Instituto de Empresa and the Peaceworks OneVoice Foundation
Martin received his BA from New York University, and holds an MA in International Affairs and an MA in Business Administration from Columbia University.