Yossi Vardi, godfather of Israel's hi-tech boom, has high hopes for China
The veteran investor recalled how a Chinese saleslady – through sheer persistence – convinced him to buy a shirt he didn't want.
Yossi Vardi, widely seen as the godfather of Israel’s hi-tech industry, thinks some cultures are better at running businesses than others – and from his first visit to China 20 years ago, he knew it was one of the best at it.
The veteran investor recalled how, while browsing a store, a young Chinese saleslady – through sheer pluck and persistence – convinced him to buy an item of clothing he didn’t want in the first place.
“I was looking at a shirt at a shop and the saleswoman was a very young girl who was about 18 and [was] about one-third of my weight. She opened her arms like a basketball player in front of me and said I must get the shirt,” Vardi recalled during a more recent trip to Beijing and Hainan province.
“Actually I didn’t really want to buy it, but she ran behind me, pulled and scratched my arms and was almost begging, so in the end I bought it,” he said. “After that, I knew something very special was to come in China. It was only a shirt in a small shop, and she was trying so hard. How could a nation like this not succeed?”
The 73-year-old Israeli has had a strong track record of spotting talents. In the past few decades he has invested in 85 start-ups – ranging from software or clean technology firms to mobile phones. Many of those finds he has sold to global tech giants, including Microsoft and Yahoo.
In my career as an angel investor, I have had to turn down many talented young people, and the last thing you want to do to them is to make them feel defeated
One of his most famous investments was in a company, co-founded by his son, which developed ICQ, a 1990s-era forerunner of instant messaging applications. It was acquired by AOL in 1998 for US$400 million.