From Party Town to Startup City: Single and Searching in Tel Aviv

Over the past decade, the Tel Aviv Municipality has worked hard to market Tel-Aviv as a hardcore party town. It worked: just last year, Lonely Planet commended our party scene and named Tel Aviv the third best urban destination in the world. But delightful as it is to live in a city where sex with a stranger is as ubiquitous as its stray cats, the sinful nature of our little town has also caused young people a lot of strife. Statistics for 2012  show that in Tel Aviv, 71% of females aged 25-29 are single, as well as an incredible 83% of 25-29 year old men. A few heart-to-hearts with friends, both male and female reveal that eternal single hood is not the target status of most of these young adults; but the abundance of casual booty creates an emotional and physical distraction from seriously seeking a permanent mate.

Winds of change: Welcome to Geektown

In 2011, the Tel Aviv Municipality made the decision to rebrand Tel-Aviv as Startup City. From the Municipality website:

“The Israeli high-tech industry … has the highest density of tech start-ups in the world. These start-ups attract more venture capital dollars per person than any country … Tel Aviv boasts a young, dynamic, rebellious and highly academic population which makes the city the perfect home for creative people with an itch.”

Young people! With capital! And an itch! No longer a city of scruffy-faced men with a compulsion to hit-that-and-run, Tel Aviv is now filled with academically-minded, financially stable mama’s boys. Mama’s boys with an itch that this Midnight East reporter was determined to scratch.

Which is where Open Startup Tel Aviv Comes in. The Tel Aviv Municipality contacted 55 startup companies, who agreed to open their offices to the public for two days last week, and explain what it is exactly they do. All My Faves, for instance, is a service that allows a user to group their favorite links on a customized home page and access them from a huge selection of devices. Another is Opinion Stage, a socially-propelled opinion forum, on which users can create and answer polls or join debates to find out what their friends – or the world – think about political, ideological or even technological issues today. Startup companies are typically relatively new, technology-oriented companies that are in the initial stages of product or service development. The participating companies operate in varying fields, ranging from biology to video editing and even to children’s finances.

Groovideo: Birthday Greeting Extraordinaires

First stop on the morning of November 16: the Habima Square office of Groovideo, a young startup that auto-edits greeting videos for events such as weddings and birthdays. The PR photo (above) shows the company is comprised of four guys, all with sweet smiles, no acne and a full head of hair, and one girl. My odds being pretty good, I thought I would drop by. Imagine my disappointment when I was greeted by the only girl on the team, Keren Yaniv, with no men in sight. First thing we do is make a video, because if a picture is worth a thousand words, and a given video has 32 frames per second, and this video is 66 seconds long, then this given video is worth 2,144 pictures, which is like a bajillion words. Watch our video:

The editing algorithm is not very well adapted to a video interview. But if what you are looking for is a quick, hassle-free way to create a greeting video for a loved one, this is definitely the service for you. And it’s free. Create your own video here.

Tell me about your company.

Keren: You know how you’re at weddings, and every single wedding there’s a video, with friends and family greeting the bride and groom? Well, our company facilitates that. We invite users to contribute their greeting or dance via Facebook. Each member records his or her video contribution, and our program edits all the videos into one long greeting video.

So, are the boys – I mean other founders – coming anytime soon?

Keren: There’s a female intern coming in half an hour.

Oh, never mind then.

Keren goes on to tell me about Groovideo. Their editing services have been used by more than 10,000 users, and to prepare birthday videos for celebrities such as Shimon Peres. I’m more curious about why she chose such a male-oriented working environment.

Do you have a boyfriend?

Keren: Yes I do.

How long have you been together?

Keren: Five months.

Did you find him in this company?

Keren: No. Well, I met him a company trip to the U.S.

So, working in a company filled with men helped you find a boyfriend.

Keren: No, it’s not because I work in a company full of men, it might be because the industry is full of men.

Would you advise a single girl to go find a job in the startup industry to find a husband?

Keren: No, that’s stupid. I’m sorry.

Do you have any advice for single girls in Tel Aviv today?

Keren: Be optimistic.

Thank you very much. We will.

Finally, Men: Genome Compiler

Next door to Groovideo at Habima Square are Genome Compiler. I am greeted by two of the company’s five founders: Roy Nevo and Nir Ben Moshe. They explain to their handful of visitors that their company develops software that enables scientists to synthesize new organisms. Biologists have been creating new organisms for decades by taking existing organisms and altering them genetically, but the process has been arduous: they have had to use methods of molecular biology which can take a long time and are prone to error. With Genome Compiler’s software, scientists need only to input the genetic makeup of the organism they would like to create; the company then has the new genetic code printed, bypassing the tedious, time-consuming molecular processes and delivering the final product – new genetic code – ready-made to the customer.

I’m not really paying attention because, for nerds, the founders of Genome Compiler are really really cute. I lasso them in for an interview.

As you know, Tel Aviv is a great party town. Which means it’s easy to have fun, but not so easy to find a serious guy looking to commit. I’m looking for a husband. Did I right to the come place?

Roy: Oh, wow … You’re here to find a husband?  Your mother must have sent you here.
I’ve no doubt she called my editor up and asked her to assign me this job.

Nir: Actually, yesterday a woman came in looking for a job. She gave me her CV. Only it turned out she already had a job, and I got the impression a job wasn’t exactly she was looking for.

Roy: You can’t do that, go up to people and ask to be hired and also for a date, because no one will agree to do both. I would divide your goals into two: either look for a job or for a date.

Okay. So what is your advice for young women looking for a husband?

Roy: Don’t go looking in pubs, because nothing serious goes down over there. You will have a lot of fun but if you’re looking for something serious, my advice is go to school. There are nice men in universities.

Nir: Universities are a very good place to start.

How about you boys?

Roy: Unfortunately we are all married in this office. Wait no! We do have one single guy. And he’s good looking. I’ll be sure to pass on your information.

Mission: in motion!

No Kids? KidsCash Can’t Help

At this point, I am feeling a bit deflated. Getting a date at an office sure is harder work than getting a date at a club. I ride my bike to the headquarters of the TechLoft, a shared office space on Nachmani Street in downtown Tel Aviv. TechLoft is a big open office space. No cubicles, just desks and a carpet and glass walls. I could go for a nap, but the couches are all occupied. I plop down in the nearest empty chair.

Hi, I’m Meirav Seifert from Midnight East.

Erez: I’m Erez Mizrachi from KidsCash.

How can your app make my life better?

Erez: We’re not an app. We’re actually a system. We help kids make purchases online independently and responsibly. The problem that kids have today is when they visit a gaming site or an online store, they have to go through their parents, get their parents’ credit card, and beg their parents to purchase the game or service that they want.

But I don’t have kids.

Erez: Right, so you aren’t the target market for KidsCash. Parents for children between the ages of seven and fourteen are the target market of KidsCash. As an aunt, maybe…

Can you help me get kids?

Erez: Wow. Are you serious? Is this a proposal or something?

Are you married?

No, I’m not married.

Are you looking?

Erez: No …

… that’s unfortunate. Thanks a lot.

A Recommendation-Centric Dating Site PLUS BONUS: A Missile Lands in Tel Aviv

I’m about to go home but one of the teams catches my eye across the TechLoft floor. Their company name is Have You Met, and any business that chooses to associate itself with TV’s beloved comedy series How I Met Your Mother is good in my books. I ask Yuval Suede, CEO of Have You Met, and Shiran Melamdovsky, in charge of marketing, for a bit of their time.

Hi, I’m Meirav Seifert from Midnight East. How can your app make my life better?

Yuval: Well, if you are single or you have any friends who are single…

That’s me! I’m very single!

Yuval: Very single? Good for you. The next thing you need is friends. If you have friends you’re in the right place.

Do they have to be Facebook friends?

Yuval: Yes. Why? Do you not have Facebook?

I do, but some of my readers may not. (Note to readers: really??)

Yuval: The idea behind the application – right now it operates only in Israel – is to offer an alternative to conventional dating sites. If you want to join an existing dating site, you have to write your own profile, market yourself, say how wonderful, smart and funny you are, and most people aren’t comfortable with that. Other people may be lying: they may say they are beautiful and that they believe in true love –

Shiran: or that they’re tall, and rich –

Yuval: And if you view a profile like that, you might criticize the writer for bragging about themselves, or, conversely, you may think the individual has low self-esteem if their profile isn’t filled with self-praise. What the application does is transfer the responsibility of praise and recommendation from the user to his or her friends. If you actually are sweet and smart, your friends can say that about you. The nice thing is that through our application we have cases not only of friends recommending friends but people recommending their siblings, or cousins.

Shiran and Yuval helped me get set up on their application. I “friended” Yuval on Facebook. From his own Facebook account, he accessed the Have You Met app. Then, he wrote a dating recommendation for me that described me as accurately and glowingly as only a person who has known me for twenty minutes could. So far, I have gotten six “likes” on my profile and one message asking for a date.

Have You Met has 10,000 registered users, about two fifths of whom are Tel Aviv residents, and half of whom are 25-30 years old. Presently their app is available for the Israeli market only, but an international release is scheduled in a few months’ time, as well as an app for iPhone and Android. Join Have You Met here.

The interview was cut off around 1:40 PM by a rocket alarm siren. Occasional rockets had managed to make their way from Gaza to Tel Aviv over the previous couple of days; we grabbed our laptops and rushed down the fortified stairwell into the building’s basement. I pretended to be frightened, but really, it is hard to conceive of a more fortunate turn of events. Trapped in a tiny dark basement with eleven or twelve high tech nerds and a 5:1 guy to girl ratio? More, please.

Meirav Seifert is a recent cum laude graduate of Tel Aviv University with a double major in English and Biology. She can bend her legs behind her head. Love letters and/or proposals to meirav[dot]seifert[at]gmail[dot]com.