{"id":13958,"date":"2015-08-21T00:04:21","date_gmt":"2015-08-21T07:04:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=13958"},"modified":"2015-08-19T10:42:46","modified_gmt":"2015-08-19T17:42:46","slug":"student-is-ceo-of-tech-firm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2015\/08\/21\/student-is-ceo-of-tech-firm\/","title":{"rendered":"Student is CEO of tech firm"},"content":{"rendered":"

Iddo Gino at the 2014 World Hackathon Day in Tel Aviv. (photo from israel21c.org<\/a>)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

There\u2019s something unusual about one of the startups renting co-working space in the newly opened WeWork building in Herzliya: its CEO is still in high school.<\/p>\n

Iddo Jonathan Gino, 17, is a senior at the Hebrew Reali School in Haifa and hopes to finish an undergraduate degree in computer science at the Open University next year. When he\u2019s not studying in school and online, he heads RapidPay, a year-old company whose four employees have created a mobile in-store and online payment platform for customers \u2013 mainly fellow teenagers \u2013 who don\u2019t have a credit card or bank account.<\/p>\n

\u201cI try to manage my time as well as possible,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Having lived with his family in New Zealand for a couple of years before high school, Iddo speaks English fluently and has a working knowledge of Italian, as well as programming languages such as JavaScript, PHP and Python.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was about 11, I went with my dad to his workplace and I sat with one of the programmers and saw all the cool stuff he was doing,\u201d Iddo related. \u201cHe showed me a program he made to sort out seating for his son\u2019s bar mitzvah automatically. Then he gave me a book to learn how to program. And, from there, one thing led to another.\u201d<\/p>\n

Iddo began with \u201csome cool little projects,\u201d learning how to build online management systems, interactive websites and iOS apps. Last summer, he had an internship at a tech startup in Israel.<\/p>\n

\u201cI got to experience how a startup works, and then I opened my own,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n

Last year, Iddo teamed with students from the American Hebrew Academy in Greensboro, N.C., to develop a predictive app, SmartAlarm, which uses traffic data, flight changes and other real-time information to determine the appropriate time for the user\u2019s alarm to ring in order to get to a destination at the right time. They hope to get funding to launch the app.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday, many people are referring to the so-called \u2018Age of Context,\u2019 where everything will be connected and every product or service will be enhanced using data and technology from elsewhere,\u201d he said. \u201cSmartAlarm is a great concept that utilizes contextual technology and real-time data sources to give users a true benefit.\u201d<\/p>\n

This project was part of a long-distance collaboration between the two high schools. Reali, one of Israel\u2019s oldest private schools, boasts many distinguished alumni.<\/p>\n

\u201cReali is a really great school that has allowed me to do college courses and have my own startup, and we have opportunities in school to create stuff, too,\u201d said Iddo, a computer science and physics major.<\/p>\n

Last May, he and fellow teen entrepreneur Gil Maman \u2013 CEO of HealthBelly and an award-winning veteran of several hackathons \u2013 helped organize the Israeli branch of World Hackathon Day, held at the Google Campus in Tel Aviv. This global initiative was the brainchild of Innovation Israel co-founder and wearable technology evangelist Nir Kouris, 32.<\/p>\n

With the help of an ROI micro-grant and corporate sponsorships, Kouris and two Netherlands-based co-founders connected Israeli teen techies with peers abroad as they hacked apps for health, finance, music, charity and travel. Hundreds participated in the weekend event last May, leading to some potential partnerships and products.<\/p>\n

Behind the scenes, the hackathon also afforded organizational experience to enterprising teens like Iddo and Gil, and their counterparts in Holland, India, Spain, Morocco and Germany.<\/p>\n

Iddo said he\u2019s motivated by \u201call the awesome futuristic stuff out there, like GetTaxi and Waze,\u201d both founded by young Israeli entrepreneurs, though perhaps not quite as young as he is.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of my role models is Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook,\u201d said Iddo. \u201cHe went to university but didn\u2019t stay there long. He had one good idea to pursue and went with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Iddo also admires Israeli tech legend Dov Moran, one of the early pioneers of portable data storage. \u201cI like the way he created something nobody believed he could, and now we can\u2019t live without flash memory.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Haifa whiz kid muses: \u201cOne of the things about the Israeli personality and culture is that it enables you to grow quickly and is very open-minded. I could talk to investors when I was 15, and they took me seriously. I don\u2019t know if that\u2019s something that could happen abroad.\u201d<\/p>\n

Israel21C<\/strong> is a nonprofit educational foundation with a mission to focus media and public attention on the 21st-century Israel that exists beyond the conflict. For more, or to donate, visit israel21c.org<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Iddo Gino at the 2014 World Hackathon Day in Tel Aviv. (photo from israel21c.org) There\u2019s something unusual about one of the startups renting co-working space in the newly opened WeWork building in Herzliya: its CEO is still in high school. Iddo Jonathan Gino, 17, is a senior at the Hebrew Reali School in Haifa and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13923,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4329],"tags":[3608,4323,4325,4322,4324,1881],"class_list":["post-13958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-israel","tag-high-tech","tag-iddo-jonathan-gino","tag-rapidpay","tag-reali-school","tag-smartalarm","tag-technology"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13958\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}