Ed is the Founding Partner of Gemini Israel Funds. He is widely recognized as one of the founding fathers of Israeli high-tech and venture capital.
In 1993, Ed was asked to manage the first VC fund to emerge from the Israeli government’s Yozma program. Aimed at prompting venture investments in Israel, Yozma transformed the domestic landscape of venture capital investments. Over a period of three years, the group established ten drop-down funds, of which Gemini was the first. Prior to founding Gemini, Ed served as Executive Director of the Israel-US Bi-national Industrial Research & Development Foundation (BIRD). During his tenure, he was responsible for investments of $100 million in more than 300 joint projects between US and Israeli high technology companies.
"In mid-1992 I looked around, and decided it was time to start a new career, as yet undefined. I was speaking with Dov Tadmor, then the Managing Director of Discount Investment Corporation (DIC), a big piece of IDB, one of Israel’s largest holding companies, about my plans. He suggested that I manage the VC fund that he intended to start. He explained that DIC had agreed with Advent International, a large Boston-based international private equity company, to form a venture capital company. The crucial third party to the negotiations was a newly established Israeli Government entity, "Yozma", which would invest $8M in the VC Fund – buyable back by the other investors at any time within five years for the cost of money – so long as at least $12M was forthcoming from those investors, preferably from outside Israel. A group headed by DIC had lined up $8M, leaving $4M to be raised. One of the missing elements, apart from the $4M, was someone to run the operation. And, of course, we’d need a name. My wife Sally, drawing rapidly on her extensive classical knowledge, came up with "Gemini", a name especially relevant to twin funds, one in Israel, one in the US – and so Gemini Capital Fund Management Ltd. was born, lacking only something to manage.
On receiving my acceptance of his offer, Dov promptly called Clint Harris, ‘his man (a Managing Partner) at Advent’, and arranged for me to meet him in Boston during my imminent trip to the US. We met; Clint talked; I listened; we shook hands; the deal was done – subject, of course, to Clint and I being able to raise the extra money. Not being bashful, we brashly targeted $20M rather than the paltry minimum of $4M – no easy task.
How to raise the money? During 13 years at BIRD, I had made 50 or more trips to the US on its behalf, many of those trips including presentations to often quite large audiences on why US high tech companies should establish development and manufacturing centers in Israel. I had visited close to a thousand high-tech companies, made many friends in the business community, and was able to get to meet almost anyone of relevance. Add to this Clint Harris’s encyclopedic Rolodex and his long experience in fund-raising for VC funds managed by Advent. The result: an implausible duo that nonetheless succeeded in reaching that elusive, and really quite unrealistic target of $20M. Gemini was the first of about a dozen Yozma funds, and by far the largest: it essentially marked the birth of the venture capital industry in Israel."
Prior to BIRD, Ed was Executive Vice President of Mobil Tyco Solar Energy Corporation, a joint venture created by Mobil and Tyco Laboratories to develop and commercialize a novel photovoltaic technology initiated under Ed's direction at Tyco, a company of which he was a co-founder in 1960. Tyco (now Tyco International, NYSE) had 2009 revenues of over $17.2B. Until 1974, Dr Mlavsky was a member of its Board of Directors and its Chief Technical Officer; in 1973, he became President and Chief Operating Officer.
Ed has a First Class Honors BSc degree in Chemistry (1950) and a PhD in Physical Chemistry (1953) from Queen Mary College, University of London. His publications include 53 scientific and technical papers, and 24 patents (plus many foreign applications).
Immediately prior to coming to Israel, he was a member of the US-Israel Advisory Council on Industrial R&D, and a member of the Board of Visitors to the School of Engineering at Duke University. In 1989, he was elected a member of the Cosmos Club in Washington DC. In 1994, he was awarded the degree of Doctor Scientarium Technicarum Honoris Causa by the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology.
In April 2003, Ed received the Israel High-Tech Award from the Israel Venture Association in recognition of his unique contribution to the development of the Israel high-tech industry. In 2010, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Israel Management Center (IMC).
In addition, Ed is the Chairman of the MIT Enterprise Forum of Israel. He is a much sought after world-class speaker and lectures at hi-tech and private equity events.
