Martín Varsavsky

Serial entrepreneur; founder of VAS Ventures (angel fund); Chairman of Inception/Prelude Fertility, Gameto, and Overture Life; CEO of Certuma at independent

Reviewed Updated May 1, 2026

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Location Madrid, Spain / New York, New York
Check Size ~€250K average (per Business Insider)
Last Verified Investment Gameto (Cumulative funding to ~$127M) — 2026
Social @martinvars LinkedIn
Stage Focus
seed series-a
Sector Focus
fertility healthcare digital-health biotech telecommunications wifi mobility autonomous-vehicles renewable-energy edtech fintech consumer

Background

Martín Varsavsky Waisman-Diamond is an Argentine-Spanish serial entrepreneur, angel investor, and professor born April 26, 1960, in Buenos Aires 1. His father, Carlos Varsavsky, was a Harvard-educated astrophysicist; at age 17, Varsavsky and his family fled Argentina as refugees during the military dictatorship 1. He earned a BA from New York University (1981), an MA in international affairs from Columbia SIPA (1984), and an MBA from Columbia Business School (1985) 1 2.

Varsavsky has founded more than ten operating companies across telecommunications, internet, renewable energy, fertility medicine, biotechnology, autonomous vehicles, and AI 1. The companies he founded or co-founded include:

  • Viatel (founded 1991) — pan-European fiber/telecom; sold in the late 1990s 1.
  • Jazztel (founded 1997) — Iberian telecom operator; IPO December 1999; ultimately acquired by Orange for approximately €3.4 billion in 2015 1.
  • Ya.com (founded 1999) — Spanish internet/DSL provider; sold to Deutsche Telekom’s T-Online in 2000 for approximately €650 million 1.
  • Fon (founded 2005-2006, Madrid) — global WiFi-sharing network; backed by Google, Skype, Index Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Atomico, Qualcomm Ventures, BT Group, and Deutsche Telekom; Varsavsky exited his shares in 2019 1 3.
  • Eolia Renovables (founded 2007) — Spanish renewable energy; sold for ~€1.1 billion 1.
  • Prelude Fertility (founded 2016, Atlanta) — largest US chain of fertility clinics, launched with $200M in private equity from Lee Equity Partners; merged into Inception Fertility in 2018 where Varsavsky serves as Chairman 4 5 6.
  • Overture Life (founded 2017) — IVF lab automation; backed by Khosla Ventures and Marc Benioff 1.
  • Goggo Network (founded 2018) — autonomous-vehicle delivery infrastructure; €44M Series A in December 2019 1.
  • Gameto (co-founded 2022 with Dina Radenkovic) — ovarian cell therapy biotech using induced pluripotent stem cells; cumulative funding reported at ~$127M 1 7.
  • Certuma — autonomous clinical-AI diagnostics; Varsavsky is CEO 1 2.

Varsavsky has taught entrepreneurship at Columbia Business School, NYU, and IE University in Madrid 1 2. He sits on the board of Axel Springer 2.

His angel-investing activity over more than two decades is organized through VAS Ventures, an early-stage fund he raised in 2018 (first fund: ~$15M) 7 8. His family office, Jazzya Investments, holds his post-exit personal portfolio.

Stated Thesis

VAS Ventures publicly describes its mandate in one sentence:

“We are looking for companies whose innovative founders think big and are courageous enough to shape the future.” 8

The fund frames Varsavsky’s “hands-on mentoring” as the differentiator versus other early-stage capital 8. Stage focus is described as early/first-round; the fund discloses no public check-size band 8.

Varsavsky’s public statements about how he picks people emphasize learning-oriented operators:

“I always like to work with people who not only learn from me but who are able to do the necessary tasks to get the company going.” 4

“A great leader is somebody whose followers thrive.” 4

Beyond that, no formal sector thesis is published. His Startupxplore profile notes “no pública” (not publicly disclosed) for investment strategy 9. The inferred-thesis section below is therefore the primary signal.

Inferred Thesis

Sample-size caveat: Public reporting names roughly 30+ portfolio companies across VAS Ventures and earlier personal angel checks, but only a subset is independently date-stamped. The percentages below are not computed from a complete, dated list; they are qualitative patterns drawn from the named portfolio. Where a count is given, the denominator is explicit.

Based on companies named across Business Insider, The Future of Health, VAS Ventures’ own site, Wikipedia, and Crunchbase write-ups 1 7 8 [^10]:

  • Healthcare and fertility is the dominant theme. Of approximately 30 named portfolio companies, at least 10 are in healthcare or fertility (23andMe, Forward, Daye, Companion, Aura Biosciences, Motiv, Jawbone Health, Braid Health, plus his own founded companies Prelude, Gameto, Overture). This is also the area where Varsavsky is personally operating — both Gameto and Overture are his own companies and Inception/Prelude is his chairmanship — so the angel checks compound his operating focus rather than diversifying it.
  • Mobility and autonomy is the second cluster. Ample (battery swapping), Voyage (autonomous vehicles, later acquired by Cruise), Mox, and his own Goggo Network and Levere Holdings SPAC all sit in mobility/autonomy.
  • A long tail of consumer, education, and fintech angel checks. Busuu (language learning), Pixowl (mobile games), Tumblr, Truecaller, Synthesia, MUBI, SmartThings, Teads, Elite Daily, Verse, Reclamador, Jüsto, Noken, Yada. These reflect his Madrid/NYC consumer-internet network from the Jazztel/Ya.com/FON era.
  • Geography is bi-coastal Atlantic: NYC + Madrid, with selective Latin America (Jüsto, Mexico) and one-off bets globally. Both Varsavsky’s residences and his fund’s stated locations are New York and Madrid 9.
  • Average angel check is ~€250,000 per Business Insider reporting on VAS Ventures 7. This is a meaningful, but not lead-sized, position — Varsavsky participates alongside larger institutional investors rather than leading rounds.
  • Notable returns include a reported 6,000x on Tumblr (per The Future of Health, citing the Yahoo acquisition exit) 7. Tumblr is publicly confirmed as a Varsavsky angel investment by David Karp’s own listing of early backers 10.
  • Active investor signal: strong. Varsavsky’s most recent operating company, Certuma, was launched in 2026 with a $10M initial investment, and Gameto reached Phase 3 trials in 2026 1. He continues to post publicly on Twitter/X as @martinvars and on Threads.

Notable gap between stated and inferred: VAS Ventures’ stated thesis is sector-agnostic (“founders who think big”), but the realized portfolio is heavily concentrated in healthcare/fertility and mobility — the same domains where Varsavsky himself operates. A founder evaluating him as an angel should expect his operating focus to bias which sectors he engages most deeply with.

Portfolio

The table below lists publicly named investments. Where exact year of investment is unknown, the company’s founding year or first-funding year is shown with a “~” prefix.

Company Year Stage Source
Tumblr 2007 Seed / Series A angel (alongside Spark Capital, USV) 10
23andMe ~2007 Early 7
Busuu ~2012 Early 9
Pixowl ~2013 Early 9
SmartThings ~2013 Early (pre-Samsung acquisition) 8
Truecaller ~2013 Early 8
Teads ~2013 Early 8
MUBI ~2014 Early 8
Elite Daily ~2014 Early 8
Aura Biosciences ~2015 Early 7 8
Forward ~2016 Early 7 8
Synthesia ~2017 Early 8
Voyage ~2017 Early (later acquired by Cruise) 7
Ample ~2018 Early (battery swapping) 7
Motiv ~2018 Early 7
Jawbone Health ~2018 Early 7
Daye ~2019 Early 7
~unknown Companion — Early
~unknown Mox — Early
~unknown Websense — Early
~unknown Verse — Early
~unknown Reclamador — Early
~unknown Shujinko — Early
~unknown Merlin — Early
Jüsto ~2019 Early (Mexico) 7
~unknown Yada — Early
~unknown Noken — Early
Braid Health ~2020 Early 7

Independently founded operating companies (not angel investments, but represent Varsavsky’s primary capital allocation): Prelude Fertility ($200M PE backing from Lee Equity, 2016) 5 6; Overture Life (Khosla Ventures, Marc Benioff); Goggo Network (€44M Series A, December 2019); Gameto (cumulative ~$127M as of 2026); Certuma ($10M, 2026) 1.

Pitchbook maintains a paywalled portfolio profile that could not be opened for verification 11. Tracxn maintains a public portfolio listing but its content was also gated 12. The table above is therefore the publicly verifiable intersection; the actual portfolio is larger.

In Their Own Words

On the founding insight behind Prelude Fertility (Vator interview, March 2017):

“I founded Prelude because I was convinced that there was a better way to have babies.” 4

On the biology/psychology gap that fertility tech addresses:

“What Prelude does is bridge the gap, it makes people’s biology meet their psychology.” 4

“Our fertility starts dropping drastically when we turn 35.” 4

“Around 30% of the people who try to have a baby through IVF never achieve that goal.” 4

On the Prelude method itself:

“You freeze your gametes when fertile, thaw them and create embryos when ready, genetically sequence the embryos, and then transfer one embryo at a time.” 4

On leadership and team-building (same interview):

“A great leader is somebody whose followers thrive.” 4

“I always like to work with people who not only learn from me but who are able to do the necessary tasks to get the company going.” 4

VAS Ventures’ single-line investment thesis statement (firm website):

“We are looking for companies whose innovative founders think big and are courageous enough to shape the future.” 8

What Founders Say

No independently sourced founder testimonials about working with Martín Varsavsky as an angel investor were found after dedicated searching. Most public commentary about Varsavsky frames him in the third person as a serial entrepreneur or fund principal rather than as a quoted reference from a portfolio founder. Portfolio companies’ funding announcements have generally credited their lead institutional investors rather than individual angels.

Connections

  • Tumblr — David Karp. Varsavsky was one of the named early angel backers of Tumblr alongside Fred Seibert, with the Series A led by Spark Capital and Union Square Ventures in October 2007 10.
  • Lee Equity Partners. Varsavsky’s $200M Series A for Prelude Fertility (October 2016) was led and structured by Lee Equity Partners, with the firm partnering with him to roll up Reproductive Biology Associates and My Egg Bank into the Prelude platform 5 6.
  • Khosla Ventures and Marc Benioff. Both are named investors in Overture Life 1.
  • Inception Fertility. Varsavsky is Chairman of Inception Fertility, the parent company that absorbed Prelude in 2018 2.
  • Axel Springer — Board member. Varsavsky sits on the board of the German publishing/media group Axel Springer 2.
  • Columbia Business School, NYU, IE Business School. Varsavsky has taught entrepreneurship at all three institutions 1 2.
  • Original Fon investor base. Google, Skype, Index Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Atomico, Qualcomm Ventures, BT Group, and Deutsche Telekom all backed Fon — placing Varsavsky inside the mid-2000s cap tables of nearly every major Silicon Valley and European telecom-strategic investor 3.

Sources

  1. Martín Varsavsky — Wikipedia, accessed May 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mart%C3%ADn_Varsavsky↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  2. “Martin Varsavsky ‘84SIPA, ‘85BUS, Serial Entrepreneur,” Columbia Entrepreneurship profile, accessed May 2026. https://entrepreneurship.columbia.edu/aboutprofile/martin-varsavsky-founder-prelude/↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  3. Fon (company) — Wikipedia (founding date, investor list), accessed May 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fon_(company) ↩↩

  4. “Why I founded Prelude Fertility,” Vator, March 7, 2017, accessed May 2026. https://vator.tv/news/2017-03-07-why-i-founded-prelude-fertility↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  5. “Lee Equity Partners with Serial Entrepreneur Martin Varsavsky to Form Prelude Fertility, Inc.,” Lee Equity press release, October 17, 2016, accessed May 2026. https://www.leeequity.com/news-article/lee-equity-partners-with-serial-entrepreneur-martin-varsavsky-to-form-prelude-fertility-inc↩↩↩

  6. Christina Farr, “$200 million start-up Prelude wants to stop your biological clock,” CNBC, October 9, 2017, accessed May 2026. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/09/200-million-start-up-prelude-wants-to-stop-your-biological-clock.html↩↩↩

  7. Martin Romero, “Inside Martin Varsavsky’s Health Tech Investments,” The Future of Health newsletter, accessed May 2026. https://www.thefutureofhealth.co/p/inside-martin-varsavskys-health-tech↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  8. VAS Ventures website, accessed May 2026. https://vas.ventures/↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  9. Martin Varsavsky investor profile, Startupxplore, accessed May 2026. https://startupxplore.com/en/investors/martin-varsavsky↩↩↩↩

  10. Tumblr (funding history listing early angels including Martín Varsavsky) — Wikipedia, accessed May 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumblr↩↩↩

  11. Martín Varsavsky investment portfolio, PitchBook, accessed May 2026. https://pitchbook.com/profiles/investor/105895-8↩

  12. Martin Varsavsky portfolio & founded companies, Tracxn, accessed May 2026. https://tracxn.com/d/people/martin-varsavsky/__ZlACX-fG_BDEptSf9ywDiEEG7umD_YFY0KgpDzFuILc↩