Israeli Billionaire Offers One Million Shekels: A Revolution in the Job Market
Alon Gonen, one of the founders of Plus500, is launching deFounder, a project where entrepreneurs compete for investments of up to one million shekels. The first episode features innovative job search platforms.
Businessman and entrepreneur Alon Gonen, one of the founders of Plus500, is launching a new venture called deFounder, in which entrepreneurs will compete for an investment of up to one million shekels to develop their ideas. The project opens with its first challenge: developing a new job search platform based on a "swipe" model between candidates and employers.
According to Gonen, the goal of the initiative is to change the way people look for work. Instead of sending a resume and waiting for an answer, a candidate can see the hiring manager, perform a direct match, and establish contact without intermediaries. "No resumes, no bureaucracy, and no intermediaries — it's a dating app for the world of work," he said at the beginning of the episode.
As part of the program, hosted by comedian Mor Chen, five entrepreneurs were chosen from hundreds of proposals to present their developments to Gonen. Over three stages, participants will be asked to improve their products, handle business tasks, and prove their ideas can be turned into active companies. At the end of the process, Gonen will decide whether to invest up to one million shekels in one of them.
In the first episode, product manager Chen Karmi presented a platform based on a "friend-brings-a-friend" model, where candidates and managers join via invitation and receive recommendations through professional connections. During the presentation, Gonen noted that she took the idea "in a slightly different direction," adding that thinking outside the box is a trait he looks for in entrepreneurs.
Another contestant, Ben Brenner, an alumnus of Unit 8200, presented a system based on short video clips of candidates and employers. According to him, the goal is to allow for a direct impression of the person behind the resume. Gonen noted that this approach aligns with how young people consume content today and emphasized the importance of direct communication between the parties.
According to the program's structure, after the initial presentation stage, selected contestants will receive time to improve their products based on feedback and will later be provided with a marketing budget to test performance in the field. Only at the end of the process will it be decided if one of them will receive the investment.
Gonen is known as one of the founders of Plus500, which operates in the field of online trading. He previously shared that he founded the company after years of entrepreneurial attempts and hundreds of failures. In recent years, he has been active on social media, publishing content on entrepreneurship, investments, and personal development, and now seeks to pass on his accumulated knowledge to the next generation of entrepreneurs through the deFounder project.
