Elon A. Ganor is an Israeli entrepreneur and artist known mainly for his role as one of the world's first VoIP pioneers. He served as Chairman and CEO of VocalTec Ltd, the company behind the creation of “Internet Phone”, the world's first commercial software product that enabled voice communication over the internet, known initially as “Internet Telephony” and later as VoIP.
Biography
Early life and career
Elon Ganor was born in Geneva, Switzerland in 1964, grew up in Tel Aviv, Israel where he graduated from Tel Aviv University Sackler Medical school and got an MD in 1975.
Entrepreneurship career
After years of practicing medicine Ganor shifted his energy to the creation of technology related companies. His first company was Virovahl S,A- a Swiss-based biotechnology company that he founded in 1987 with a group of Swedish virologists. The company's laboratory was located in Gothenburg, Sweden. Virovahl SA developed the world's first HIV synthetic peptide based on diagnostic test. Under his guidance as President of Virovahl, the test was licensed exclusively to Pharmacia AB from Uppsala, Sweden. In 1990 Ganor joined forces with Alon Cohen and Lior Haramaty who had formed VocalTec Ltd six months earlier in Israel. Cohen and Haramaty developed and manufactured a PC sound card that was sold mainly to the local visually impaired community in Israel with a unique Text to Speech software enabling blind people to use a computer in the Hebrew language. Since that market was limited, as VocalTec CEO and Chairman, Ganor decided to shift the company's focus to software. In 1993 VocalChat was born, a software that enabled voice communication from one PC to another on a local and wide area network. The software was developed by a group of developers including Ofer Kahana, Elad Sion, Ofer Shem Tov and others. The software was presented in Atlanta in May 1993 at the Network InterOp trade show. In 1994, support for Internet Protocol was added and on Friday, February 10, 1995 “Internet Phone“ was launched with a near full page Wall Street Journal article by WSJ Boston Correspondent Bill Bulkeley, “Hello World! Audible chats On the Internet” was the header. VocalTec Ltd became a Nasdaq traded company exactly one year later in February 1996 with Ganor as its Chairman & CEO. In 1997 Ganor, with the help of Michael Spencer wrote the business plan for a new type of a VoIP exchange phone company. After meeting Tom Evslin from AT&T, ITXC was founded, with Tom Evslin as its CEO and cofounder. VocalTec under Ganor invested the initial $500,000 and gave a credit of $1 million in VoIP Gateway equipment in exchange for 19.9% of the new company; AT&T followed with an additional investment. ITXC became the world's largest VoIP carrier, reaching a market cap of about $8 billion as a Nasdaq company in 2000. In 2008 Ganor became the founder, investor and CEO of Nucleix. Nucleix Ltd is a Biotechnology epigenetic company involved in unique development of bio-markers and technologies for forensic medicine. The company developed a product for the authentication of DNA.
Art career
Ganor left VocalTec in 2006 to enroll back to school to study art at Midrasha Leomanut Beit Berl, Israel. He graduated in 2008 with photography being his main passion and focus. Among his works, “Wall Street” a series of staged photographs shot in New York and Israel expressing criticism of Wall Street practices. Also among other series, “The Box” and Earl King. Ganor’s art is present in many art collections including the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Shpilman institute Photography collection, was presented by the Israel Museum in Jerusalem and many private collections.
In the media
Ganor has been covered in leading publications such as Der Spiegel, Die Zeit, Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, Newsweek, Von Magazine, Computer Business, WebWeek, Industry Standard, and Time magazine. He has appeared many times on most main television networks such as CNN, and participated as a panelist many times at the prestigious World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
