Author: itzik

Have you ever wondered what people really think about you? Especially those close to you – friends and family – do they really tell you the truth? Well now you can find out what they really think – with the jerusalem based latest app ‘Frank’!

Meet ziv, the founder of frank… he is 31 years old, almost a MBA graduate , born and raised in Jerusalem.

Two and a half years ago he met Yair and Natan at the University, together…they invented a website where people can write their most hidden secrets. However, a different app came to the world called ‘secret’, they did exactly what we did and conquered the market.

So they pivoted and changed how they saw things and are working on an app – a social mirror to see how other people see you.

What does an entrepreneur mean to Ziv?

Firstly, he says – live your idea, believe in what you do so much, eat it as cornflakes in your breakfast, dream about it when you go to sleep, its your life for this period of time.

Secondly, he says you need persistence – with a new idea many people think it’s a stupid thing. Have courage and persistence to go in a different way – can you see if fish in a river is alive? It swims against the flow.

Ziv says you need to believe in it so much but be realistic and logical, you need to hear the criticism, and listen to what people say to you, but keep in mind that the nature of a new idea takes time for people to digest.

Ziv came up with the app idea for Frank on date…

He said it seemed good. However, two days after he called her and she said listen its not you its me, as she was mumbling excuses on the phone he thought to himself what did he do wrong, did he speak too much?

To resolve the question as to who can tell him the truth about myself

Who knows him best? His answer – his family, his friends, they know him best but will they really tell us what they think about us? They don’t tell us what they really think about us.

So, we developed a system to enable people to be honest, to say what they think, to open communication and take it to new levels.

Ziv faced some challenges as part of creating Frank..

Firstly, dealing with the members of the team, he said you need to find people you can deal with and that you can see yourself working with all day and all night. People that are reliable and that you can trust and get to an agreement with, and that make you wake up with a smile when you see them.

Secondly, Financing – most business at first steps face a stage where there is financial challenges.

The ‘Frank’ app usese social media and storytelling.

Ziv uses social media all the time, the app itself is based on Facebook. People you rate are your Facebook friends.

He thinks storytelling is the most important thing in advertising and promoting the app. Every time someone meets him he approaches them with an interesting story, tell them what he does in a way they can relate – it needs to be interesting and exciting.

Some advice for fellow entrepreneurs wanting to succeed with their start-ups…

Ziv says you need to believe in yourself, even if no one else will. Be willing to work hard to have sleepless nights; don’t be afraid to share your ideas.

Get advice from other people and think big!

Do you guys want to know what people really think about you – find out now on Frank!

Follow ‘Frank’s’ adventures on their website: www.frankmobileapp.com

Twitter: @frankmobileapp

Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/pages/Frank/1502754429998197

One Day Gym Pass is a new, soon to be released, application created for iPhones and Androids that allows users to buy passes to the gyms in their area. By downloading the app, users can conveniently search, buy and keep their passes all on their phone and have them readily available for the next time they go to the gym. The best part is that One Day Gym Pass provides options of buying passes for a variety of time periods, whether it’s one day, a week or a month- options that are not normally available when buying memberships through the gym itself.

When app creator Nate Hindman first approached BOMAH, the One Day Gym Pass Twitter account (@onedaygympass) had 6 followers and was following 18 accounts. In order to increase awareness of the developing app and get potential users in the New York City area excited and ready to download it, more social engagement, interaction and a dedicated following was needed. With plans to have the app ready to be downloaded by users by the end of February, creating a strategy for theOne Day Gym Pass Twitter account that could increase the app’s awareness rapidly was needed.

Enter BOMAH. BOMAH excels at creating social media strategies that center around personal stories and experiences. Although the One Day Gym Pass app had not yet been available to the public at the beginning of BOMAH’s work with One Day Gym Pass, the strategy created focused on engaging and interacting with potential app users. First, BOMAH focused on narrowing the target audience: men and women in the New York City area interested in living a healthy and active lifestyle, New York City gyms and fitness centers, and fitness, health and wellness writers. After following Twitter accounts within this target audience it was time to find content that would be relevant and of interest to this audience. After researching what other similar accounts were sharing, as well as what the target audience engaged with most and the hashtags they used, the content strategy centered around articles, facts, tips and advice on how to live a healthy and active lifestyle whether that be through different ways to be active, new diet trends or songs to listen to while exercising.

Within two weeks, the One Day Gym Pass Twitter account had gained 70 new followers and followed 287 accounts, which is increasing every day. By engaging with new followers, using similar hashtags and tagging various accounts when sharing their content, One Day Gym Pass was able to gain a dedicated following and increase the number of individuals who requested early access to the app. By sharing content that the audience is interested in while maintaining the mission and goals created by the app, followers are more likely to download the app once it’s available and continue to trust the One Day Gym Pass Twitter account for reliable content related to their fitness and healthy lifestyle needs.

“Bomah was absolutely crucial in helping us build a sizable user base pre-launch. Even before One Day Gym Pass hit the market, Bomah targeted and engaged prospective users on Twitter who were both passionate about fitness and our story and who became early advocates for our product. I highly recommend Bomah for any early-stage team who needs to build their brand on social and target early adopters, but who doesn’t have the time to spend all day on Twitter or Facebook.” –Nate Hindman

By Allison Rumsas

Take a look at the fascinating interview with Alex Libman, – CEO and founder of the “Fellow” app – the newest technology developed in order to monitor and communicate with your personal items – ranging from luggage to supermarket carts, and everything in between. Read on to find out how Alex established this idea from the ground up!

Hi Alex, how did you come up with the idea of ‘Fellow’?

Alex: In my final year of Hebrew University studying BSC there was a project to develop an idea, I came up with the concept of ‘fellow’ – a helpful and cool idea to allow a person to follow their luggage. I won the excellency award in 2014 and then developed this idea into a startup company.

How would you explain your product?

Alex: I developed a way for your things to follow and communicate with you. Can be used for and implemented for travellers leggie, supermarket carts, kids school bags, business travellers, the elderly, kids and people who suffer from disabilities.

Tell me about the team at Fellow.

Alex: I, Alex, am the CEO and founder, I am also a musician and have video clips on YouTube:

I own a music studio and a music gear company for festivals and concerts called blackwave. I graduated from Hebrew University with a degree in electrical engineering and applied physics. – enjoyed the projects. Then there is Liat Ackerman, she graduated from the same degree and has experience with robotics and electronics. We also have Adi Huri, she writes articles and has connections with media, she does CMO + marketing and social content for us. Finally, we have Vitali  Vyazovsky , he is in St Petersburg, he has twenty years with design and visual communications – he does our website, design and photos.

What were some challenges when you first started working on “Fellow”?

Alex: Being students at the start, finding financial support and learn about new things was challenging. Problem solving was important – both technologically and help from people.

What has been the response so far?

Alex: It is still in in prototype stage but we have taken the idea to various places and show them – the feedback from people is excitement and they are waiting for it to go to the market.

What has been your biggest challenge so far in developing ‘fellow’?

Alex: Finding the right investor that will not only support us financially but also who has connections and can make this vision come true.

Social media and storytelling are important for startups – what is your view on this?

Alex: It makes things come alive, to tell story that our company combines IOT and robotics, it makes things personal, and to tell our story that the product is something you can carry daily, to be able to follow and send us relevant data.

What advice to you have for people out there looking to create their own start-ups?

Alex: You need to believe in what you are doing, not just think of it as a craze. People will try to convince you it won’t work, you need to believe in what you are doing and think outside the box.

Lastly, what are your future goals for the company?

Alex: To come up with a wide range of solutions for variety of people with different products, pioneering in field of robotics and IOT. Find useful and great solutions for people and for people who want fellow and people who needs fellow.

What do you guys think about the innovative new app ‘fellow’?

Follow ‘fellow’s adventures on their website: http://gofellow.me/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/gofellowme
Instagram: https://instagram.com/go_fellow/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Fellow/1511742662447506

We research and bargain for days on the best deal for that Chanel purse or the brand new MAC notebook. Question is, why don’t we make sure our lungs get the same treatment? Why don’t we look into the best QUALITY of air our lungs intake?

Unfortunately, we tend to overlook the things that we physically can’t see even if it’s as fundamental as the air we breathe. Our respiratory system works 24/7 to make sure that all parts of our body get oxygen otherwise we literally won’t make it. Simply put, we as humans need air to survive.

A few Israeli environmental engineers decided that these questions needed to be answered and quickly because our future livelihood truly depended on them.

Several years ago, environmental engineer Ran Korber was house searching with his family and before making any final decision he wanted to check the eco-friendliness of the neighborhood. As he researched the air quality of a particular part of town he noticed that the information he was looking for was entirely scattered and that it was nearly impossible to get a quick idea of what exactly he and his children would be breathing in. He needed this information to be a lot more accessible and simplified and knew others need it too. He called his buddy, Ziv Lautman, fellow passionate environmental engineer and they started to develop one of the most promising apps of 2015 – Breezometer.

Breezometer (illustrated below) is a mobile application that tracks real-time air pollution on a street level basis.  What used to be invisible is now available to us in plain sight. What now Co-Founder and CMO, Ziv, describes as “the Waze of air pollution” – Breezometer tells you exactly the type of air quality (Air Quality Index rating) you’re surrounded by this minute and where you can go to surround yourself with better air quality. Additionally, the app tells you what to do (i.e.: whether to keep windows open or go for a run…) for each specific rating.

Athletes, children, health sensitive women (i.e.: pregnancy…) and everyone in between can benefit greatly from getting lighting speed reports about their current environment. Furthermore, while the eco-green population is growing all over the world, Real Estate brokers are now benefiting from this app due to its street based availability.

So how exactly does Breezometer track the air so accurately? Data collecting at its finest, the innovative team created an algorithm that collects data from thousands of government funded air monitor sensors that are located between streets.

Okay so it’s great that environmental engineers are zealous about air but why should we still track our air to the point of getting an actual app for it? Well according to the World Health Organization in 2012 around 7 million people died – one in eight of total global deaths – as a result of air pollution exposure (Source: World Health Organization [http://bit.ly/1jpGo4S])

The team CEO Ran Krober and co-founders Ziv Lautman, Emil Fisher and Revital Handler received the honor of representing Israel in the Global Entrepreneur Week GEW50 competition and they are currently prepping for their trip to the annual Web Summit in Ireland where they will pitch Breezometer on November 4^th 2014 and have their official U.S. launch!

In addition to currently being available on Google Play for Android and soon becoming available in the App Store, Breezometer is also accessible to all the smartwatch users out there (perfect for your daily jog).

Stay up to date with Breezometer’s exciting team and follow them on Facebook here!

The Breezometer Team

*This blog was brought to you by BOMAH’s “Empowerment” Strategy. Go ahead and click on that link and see the magical place it brings you too.

It’s 12am on a Tuesday night and you have a History final in 8 hours. You’re alone and on your 135th cat video on YouTube. Procrastination is once again the theme of the night.

Enter “Booster”. Inspired by “that one friend who’s never on time, anywhere”, the Tel-Aviv based Booster App allows your friends to be your personal alarm clock/task manager. Except, instead of pressing the snooze button you’re going to actually have to take a selfie of yourself doing the task and immediately send it back to your friend for verification in order to complete the task.

The founders of Booster, Eyal and David, came up with this procrastination crushing idea when a close friend of theirs had constant issues with getting to work on time. While both studying psychology they discovered the “Social Regulation Theory”. This theory states that people are much more prone to assertively getting things done faster when they are socially influenced.

With no experience in technology or app development they came across Tom and Gary whom were able to use their application development skills to bring Booster from a mere idea into reality. The four co-founders plus one employee will launch the app November 3rd, 2014 in Tel Aviv. It will be available both O/S and Android.

Their next project, “The Trainer App”, will be their first business-to-business venture that will get people physically moving at the gym by connecting personal trainers to their clients whilst using the Booster structure. They plan to launch the project sometime next year.

Much like the BOMAH Yalla! strategy, Booster empowers you get up from your seat and get things done!

Follow BOOSTER on Facebook to get live updates on their releases and new features here.

Below is a step to step illustration of Booster at work for someone who is trying to stay on track with their diet.

I got off the plane at Ben Gurion Airport and I thought to myself, what am I doing here? After hours of inching along in traffic from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, I finally arrived to the stone-floored Aish dorms situated in the heart of the Old City. I set my things down in the musty dormitory room, took a tour of the premises, and was positive the crusaders lived in better accommodations, over 900 years ago.

My friends that I study with pray together while I play the guitar. The bond we have developed is indescribable.

It’s been 3 months since I arrived in Israel to study at Aish HaTorah and work at an internship. Jinternship found me a position working at the Society For The Protection of Nature, where I would be traveling around Jerusalem and the West Bank to take surveys of gardens. You’d think coming from the Garden State I’d be a natural, but dodging traffic to count olive trees wasn’t exactly the internship experience I was looking for.  The next internship thankfully was a winner. I stumbled upon BOMAH-Brand Of Milk And Honey. A young Israeli named Itzik runs and founded the social media branding firm. He studied at Sapir College in Sderot, which at the time was under tremendous rocket attack from Gaza. He reported what was going on in Sderot via his Facebook and Twitter account and was able to get the word out when major news channels didn’t care about rockets hitting Sderot or Israel. It continues to impress me that Itzik was able to find a way of using the tragedy at Sderot to build himself a career.

Itzik and I on our way to give a presentation to one of BOMAH’s clients

This internship has been a win-win because I bettered my social media skills, while contributing to an organization that supports and fights for Israel. I was able to share the truth about the IDF and respond to enemies of Israel by a few clicks at a laptop. My Zionist beliefs have been strengthened during the war in Israel this summer, called ‘Operation Protective Edge,’ and my commitment to stand up for Israel in any arena that may exist has been vitalized.

Vacationing in Israel and donating to Jewish organizations are very helpful, no doubt. But moving to Israel and contributing to its society is the strongest act of Zionism in a world that needs Zionist leaders.  Anyone looking for a positive internship experience in social media, I highly recommend visiting BOMAH. Thank you Itzik Yarkoni and Rachel Jetter for your guidance and help during my time working here.

As a member of American, white, upper-middle class privileged society, I have engaged in many trips of what we call “voluntourism” – short-term opportunities where I paid to volunteer in a developing country or with disadvantaged communities overseas. I took pride in how I chose to spend my school breaks, how I challenged myself to immerse in and understand a culture not my own.  In order to remember the people I worked with and the relationships I built, I naturally took pictures on my I-phone and of course, I posted them to Facebook.

I recently read #InstagrammingAfrica: The Narcissism of Global Volunteerism and it made me look at these pictures on Facebook a little differently. I now saw myself purposefully posed in the center of a group of people, that I wouldn’t see or talk to again. I thought about the language barrier and the structured timeframe to get to know one another – how much change did I bring to this community. As I went back to my trendy classes, college parties, and JCrew outlets, was the trip really “life changing” for me? I couldn’t help thinking after posting these pictures on my Facebook and receiving many “likes” and comments with words of admiration, was I narcissistic? A fraud? Did I simply go on the trip for a picture and for all of the “likes” I would receive after it I made it my default?

Okay, maybe each experience wasn’t as life changing as my pictures pronounced and the poses in the picture were intentional, but these relationships, although fleeting, did form! And even if I didn’t enable permanent change within these communities, I still exposed them to other ways of life and broadened their knowledge. What I most disagree with from the article is the assumption that by posting these pictures on Facebook, I am narcissistic just looking for attention and admiration.

While my pictures may not represent all aspects of my experience, my posed pictures still captured a moment of reality and they reveal a lot about my character, my interests, and what I can offer to the world. To a friend, I have interesting and have unique stories to add to any dinner conversation. To my family, I am brave, curious, and someone my grandma can brag about to her friends at her weekly bridge game. To a future employer who will no doubt Google search my name before an interview, I am someone who steps out of her comfort zone, who is sensitive to others and willing to learn, who is adaptable and can offer a unique perspective to any brainstorming session.

The pictures we post on Facebook and Instagram are out there for the world to see and we wouldn’t post them if they didn’t reflect who we are or at least who we want to be.

So friends, family, colleagues, future employers – check out my pictures, check out my story, check out who I am and get a preview of the person I’m on my way to becoming.

Want to write a blog and actually reach people outside of your network?

Medium.com is a new and fresh blogging platform, designed by Twitter creators Evan Williams and Biz Stone.  It’s widely considered easy to use, futuristic, communal, supportive, and possessing high quality material for readers and writers.

What makes Medium stand out

• Spammers haven’t been able to jumble the site with blank posts and dummy advertisements.Your content in their editor looks exactly the same as when it gets published
• The M icon on the left opens the editing tools
• Write on a blank white page that helps your thoughts spill freely without distractions.

Have only a few minutes to read an article (VERY COOL)

Well, each article provides an estimated amount of time it will take to read. Now you know if it’ll take 2 minutes to read somethings or 20 minutes.  Time management – check!

Blogs on Medium are:

• personal views and suggestions on current events and general interests
• chosen for the site based on quality
• publicly shared on a wide scale with hundreds of thousands of readers who are a part of the Medium community

How to Use Medium:
Register with your Twitter account. You can even use your Twitter account to comment on headline articles right now! The Medium staff editors regularly invite users to write on the platform which keeps posts active and frequent.

Commenting is SO EASY:

You can comment on any paragraph however it’s ultimately up to the writer to allow those comments to be viewed (haters may hate… but at least they don’t have a place on Medium).

Drawbacks: If you write an article, that article belongs to Medium, which means you can’t incorporate your own logo or post it on your own social media forums.

It’s competitive to get your blog to get featured…the merit system is tough sometimes.

BOMAH wants to empower you to share YOUR story and Medium.com is a fantastic way to make that story viral. Join today or just experiment on Medium.  

Google defines our generation. It has completely transformed how we share information, gather knowledge, write papers, and how connected we are with the world.

It can all be found on Google! It’s AMAZING!! Until you get over 20 pages to open. From there, it’s a game of hit or miss to see if a site has exactly what you are looking for.

That’s where Curiyo come’s in. Curiyo is the latest browser app that combines all web searches, identifies what is important, and creates an answer profile to provide you with exactly what you need all in 1-page. This includes information, posts, comments, hashtags, mentionings, and history from your favorite sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Encyclopedia, News sources, gossip columns, GoogleMaps, Stores/Shopping sites, Imdb, etc.

• Just one-click needed
• No navigating through pages
• Organization – cut the clutter!
• Videos, pictures, and maps included, if relevant

Who is Charles Darwin? Curiyo shows:

And the information, all on one scroll tab keeps going!

Curiyo’s structure of providing information in a fluid format, allows one to learn about the world as if they were reading a story (like BOMAH’s storytelling strategy!) with an organized sequence and chapters clumping similar sub-categories together. The pictures, videos, maps, and personal quotes help bring your topic of inquiry to life, even if you are asking about someone who’s life has long past or about something that isn’t alive at all!

Go to Curiyo.com and try out searches like “cubism”, “Theory of Relativity” and “olinguito” (What’s that last one? Search it on Curiyo!)