Overview

Gender

male

Investor Type

Investment Partner

Mr. Pedhazur founded Opticality Ventures (OV), after successfully creating and building Verticality Investment Group (VIG).
Hadar founded Verticality Investment Group, a venture capital firm, in early 1998. He sourced, vetted, negotiated with and then assisted in the management of the portfolio companies in which he invested. He maintained an intense schedule, serving on the boards of four of the VIG companies, assisting in customer calls, attending a variety of management meetings and participating in industry conferences and panels. Leaving VIG to start OV is the next step toward creating a larger, synergistic entity which will help different technology companies achieve extraordinary potential and value. Hadar's principal interests in the VIG portfolio companies are being transferred to OV.

Prior to VIG, Hadar had an 18-year career encompassing all aspects of technology. From 1991 through 1998 he served as Managing Director and Head of Technology for the Global Equity Derivatives (GED) group of the Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS). He assembled a team of top-notch technologists who worked across the globe in eight locations in a distributed object-oriented environment, which he envisioned, architected and managed. The technology group distinguished itself by keeping up with rapid product development executed by GED staff who remained on the cusp of innovation in the financial services sector. Mr. Pedhazur served on a variety of management committees at UBS where he helped shape the technology direction and platforms for the bank at large.

Prior to UBS, Mr. Pedhazur spent eight years at CS First Boston (CSFB) where he attained the position of Chief Technology Officer of CS First Boston (Asia) Pacific. Prior to that, he held a variety of positions, including Head of Equity Financial Strategies Technology, Head of Fixed Income Technical Services, Head of Decision Support Technical Services and Head of Whole Loan Mortgage Technology. Mr. Pedhazur introduced a number of technological innovations at CSFB, including object-oriented programming, and a mainframe-based real-time market feed.

Mr. Pedhazur spent his first three years after college, as an Actuarial Programmer, beginning his career as an Actuarial Trainee at Peat, Marwick, Mitchell and Company. After a year at Peat Marwick, he worked at Coopers and Lybrand designing defined benefit and defined contribution valuation systems.

Mr. Pedhazur has spoken at numerous technology and related business conferences and has held a number of advisory roles, including membership on the User Advisory Board of NeXT. He currently serves as Chairman of the Zope Corporation Board.

He was educated at New York University, where he received a degree in Psychology and Mathematics.