Boaz Misholi () (born November 11, 1951) is one of the pioneers of high-tech in Israel. He was a co-founder of Comverse, Verint Systems, Telemesser, DSP, Fundtech, Versamed and others, companies which paved the way for the establishment of many other Israeli technology ventures.
Biography
Boaz Misholi was born and raised in Ramat Gan, where he attended Ort Singalovski high school. In the Israel Defense Forces he served in the Paratroopers Brigade of the Nahal. He studied Computer Engineering at the Technion in Haifa, from which he graduated with honors. As a graduate student, he served as a teaching assistant at the Technion's Faculty of Electrical Engineering.
Business career
In 1972, Misholi joined Shamoa Electronics and was part of a team that developed the first commercial computer manufactured in Israel and marketed worldwide. From 1975 to 1978, he opened a consulting firm that advised on the use of microprocessors. In 1978, he was invite dto Stamford, Connecticut to oversee the design of an automatic telephone credit verification system using digital voice response technology.
Efrat Corporation
In 1980, Misholi founded the U.S. based Efrat Corporation, which developed digital signal processing (DSP) technologies and architecture for computerized handling of multimedia. In addition, the company helped design software and hardware for Fujitsu and ITT, which was developing a public switchboard for telephone companies. At this time, Misholi worked on voicemail architecture for storing and transferring multimedia information by computer using a new algorithm to digitally represent speech.
Efrat Future Technologies
In mid-1982, Misholi cofounded Efrat Future Technologies in Israel based on his patent for a message management system. His partners were Yechiam Yemini of Columbia University and his brother-in-law, Kobi Alexander, then an investment banker in New York. In the original business plan, Misholi was named president, Yemini as chief scientist and Alexander as chief financial officer.
Comverse
Misholi set out to develop a voice and fax messaging system for storing, processing, accessing and transmitting information from any telephone or fax machine. The system offered a more comprehensive solution than answering machines or other devices available at the time. Aside from the money from the Swiss concern Ascom, Tadiran, Ampal-American Israel Corporation, Shearson, ADP, Lehman Brothers and private American investors, the firm received a grant from Israel's Office of the Chief Scientist and subsidies from the Israeli government, which was trying to boost the country's technology sector. Initially, they began to work on a digital listening system for military intelligence.
Misholi and Alexander concluded that for marketing and raising capital it was preferable to be registered in the United States, with names that rang well in English. Misholi's voice messaging system, originally called "Tavor," was thus renamed "Trilogue." The system was capable of supporting up to 5,000 users, 32 ports and 182 hours of digitized voice storage. Users entered a personal identification code via the telephone keypad to access their mailboxes. The voice mailbox provided a user experience similar to the answering machine but without the need to buy a separate device. In early 1984, Misholi, Alexander and Yemini returned to New York to establish a company for marketing the new technology. Comverse (a combination of "communication" and versatility") was founded that year. The firm was headquartered in Woodbury, New York, and focused on centralized voice and fax-messaging hardware systems for large organizations and telecommunications providers. Efrat operated as a wholly owned subsidiary of Comverse, with Misholi and Alexander as joint CEOs and chairmen. In 1984, Comverse's Trilogue technology was chosen by the United States Government's General Services Administration over IBM and Sperry Corporation. In 1985, the New York Times published a profile on the Israeli economy singling out Misholi as a "new breed of Israeli entrepreneur," and calling him a "whiz kid." In January 1987, Comverse went public on the New York Stock Exchange. In 1988, Misholi resigned as CEO after a disagreement with Alexander over strategy. although he continued to serve as a Comverse board member until 1992.
DSP
In 1986, Misholi joined a team of developers specializing in signal processing and founded CallTalk Ltd. The company, sold and renamed DSP, later split into two companies, one traded on NASDAQ and the other sold to Intel.