Igal Lichtman was the founder, chairman and CEO of Magic Solutions International, a software company in the field of help desk & asset management, with 300 employees and annual trailing sales over $50M. In 1996 and 1997, Magic Solutions was among INC 500's fastest growing companies in the US, and in April 1998 was acquired by Network Associates Inc. (NETA) (formerly and currently McAfee Associates) for $110M.
Mr. Lichtman was a founder of a prosperous Computer/LAN VAR business that achieved recognition among the top 100 LAN VAR's in the US in 1986–1988. In 1996, Mr. Lichtman was awarded the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award[1] for New Jersey in the Software category and his company, Magic Solutions, ranked #238 on the 1996 Inc. 500, by recording over 1,000 growth over 5 years.[2][3] Search technology that Mr. Lichtman's company created was also licensed to Microsoft for use in their TechNet product.[4]
After the sale of Magic Solutions Mr. Lichtman has built and funded a number of high tech start ups including Iboogie.com,[5] Trafficmedia.com,[6] Quigo.com[7] and Domainspa.com,[8][9] which was an early entrant into "pay per click" internet advertising business model.
Charities work includes board member ship for the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces and the endowment of a wing at MadaTech, the Israel National Museum of Science, Technology, and Space.
Mr. Lichtman has held various positions as both engineer and programmer; he also is a former officer of the Israeli Air Force. He earned a BSEE from Technion, the Israeli Institute of Technology.