Startup Club: MyHeritage
Founded by Israeli CEO Gilad Japhet, the family-oriented social network is the largest on the web, with over 75 million registered users
Over the past few decades, a growing number of small businesses involved in various industries have popped up around the world meeting the needs of an ever-growing, ever-changing market.
Jewish businessmen and innovators continue to excel throughout these industries, displaying their prowess as creative, forward-thinking entrepreneurs, and tapping into continuously developing markets with 'startup' companies.
In a bid to recognize these decorated entrepreneurs for their ongoing contributions and advancements to these fields, Shalom Life is pleased to present: Startup Club, highlighting the best and the brightest of Jewish entrepreneurs who continue to provide our community with new, influential and innovative ideas that will forever change the way we interact with the world, and with one another.
Follow our lead and we’ll follow yours – send us tips or suggestions via email, comment below or tweet us @ShalomLife, in our mission to celebrate the most visionary of Jewish entrepreneurs.
Business: MyHeritage
Based Out Of: Or Yehuda, Israel
Entrepreneur: Gilad Japhet
Industry: Social Network
A little over a decade ago, Gilad Japhet was working in the living room of his apartment in Bnei Atarot, just outside the cusp of Tel Aviv, with fellow like-minded individuals who shared an interest in genealogy.
Their vision? To bring a social network revolving around family, specifically, family history and genealogy, providing those forgotten blueprints in tracing your family tree.
They took time in developing the company, extending its digital branches down generations as more and more people joined, created their own family websites, and easily shared their lives with their loved ones, and also, members of their bloodline they hitherto did not know existed.
Uses the tools of tomorrow to research the family history of yesterday
Particularly, for the Jewish world, MyHeritage (@MyHeritage twitter handle) supplies a way for today's ancestors of persecuted Jewish victims to learn more about them, and even receive items that are rightfully theirs. Last year, Japhet read a list of over 40,000 buildings, stores, and factories from that era that could not be matched to their original owners. Using MyHeritage, he was able to locate many people who shared the same last names, some of which he noted are very rare.
Japhet even set up a team to exclusively work on the Claims Conference list to match names of Holocaust victims with any members on the site. “In my emails to the users, I always write that we don’t want any money for doing this, nor part of any restitution they will get,” Japhet told the Associated Press. “We do this as a mitzvah — which in Judaism is a good deed.”
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