Episode 21

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Published on:

26th Nov 2020

#21 - Saar Wilf, Israeli serial entrepreneur & angel investor

Join us for a thought-provoking conversation with serial entrepreneur and investor Saar Wilf.

Saar Wilf is a serial entrepreneur and angel investor. Over his career, he has founded several technology ventures, his first back in 1997. Most notably, he founded Fraud Sciences (acquired by PayPal/eBay for $169m), where he served as CEO and Chief Scientist. He also co-founded ClarityRay (acquired by Yahoo), Trivnet (acquired by Gemalto for $35m), Pointgrab, Deep Optics, Creditstacks, Bzigo, Rootclaim, Immersix, Initiative Q, and wikiwand.com, which serves over 10M users monthly. He was the first investor in Moon Active, Supersonic (merged with Iron Source), Crosswise (acquired by Oracle), Redhill Biopharma, and CallApp. His areas of technical specialty include finance, probability, Bayesian inference, signal processing, machine learning, optics, and computer vision.

Mr. Wilf also funded the Brain Preservation Prize, which sparked the first technique that aims to completely preserve an entire human brain for long-term storage.

Together with Saar, we engaged in a fascinating and at times sci-fi-like deep dive into the following topics:

·        Vitamin D & Zinc as therapeutics for Covid-19

·        Rootclaim – a company co-founded by Saar that uses probability theories to find truth outcomes and weeds out natural biases, providing clarity and aiming light on truth in today’s era of misinformation, deep fakes, and fake news

·        SCOOP: Rootclaim’s determination regarding the source of Covid-19

·        Bzigo – a company co-founded by Saar that provides an innovative product that acts as a personal ‘Iron Dome’ against mosquitos for your home

·        Saar’s vision for the future

·        The Brain Preservation Foundation – a unique process to cryogenically freeze the human brain intact to preserve memories and personality traits in the hope that in the future, they can be uploaded to a computer or other technologically advanced device

·        Human longevity as a solvable problem

·        The efficiency disparity between leadership in Israel’s business & hi-tech ecosystem vs. its public sector & government

Links:

Saar Wilf on Twitter @saarwilf

Saar Wilf’s profile on Startupnationcentral.org

 Rootclaim.com - Calculating Reality

 Bzigo – Autonomous devices for a pest-free life

The Brain Preservation Foundation website

 Deep Optics – developing Omnifocals, the first ever dynamic focal eyeglasses.

 Life Extension – Enhanced Zinc Lozenges

 Watch the video of this episode on Jewanced's YouTube channel.

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For more information, visit us at http://www.jewanced.com

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About the Podcast

Jewanced
A nuanced exploration of Israel, the Jewish world and beyond
Jewanced is hosted by Dan Feferman and Benny Scholder, two guys who grew up in America and live in Israel.
They're curious. They want to discuss. They want to challenge popular conceptions, they want to think critically, examine independently, and most of all, they crave nuance.

Each episode features a different guest. All interesting and original people who strive to break boundaries. Together with Dan and Benny, take a deep dive into politics, foreign affairs, religion, science, technology, food, the arts, business – you name it. Explore the nuanced crossroads of Israel, the global Jewish experience, and beyond.

What's the goal? To create a daring platform where people share their stories, insights, creations, and visions. Jewanced has no talking points, no script, no agenda...just a deeper nuanced understanding of our existence.

Join them on a journey as they explore, think, debate and discuss …. And most of all, listen.

About your hosts

Benny Scholder

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With over a decade of experience in Israel's tourism industry, Benny has managed sales, marketing, travel content, digital content, and the operations aspects of tour companies and travel agencies. Today, he is the Director of Sales-North America at Kenes Tours, Israel's leading provider of incoming tourism services, where he is proud to deliver transformative, custom-crafted Israel travel experiences designed to exceed expectations.
Originally from Minneapolis, Benny fell in love with Israel as a young adult, moving to the country in 2004. He has an extensive background in everything Israel-travel related, having completed Israel's intensive tour guide course in 2010. His career spans both logistical, content-related, and sales management positions with major and boutique Israeli tour companies alike. Benny lives with his amazing wife Maayan and two incredible children in the charming village of Gedera. In addition to his passion for transformative travel experiences, he's super passionate about food, modern & ancient history, politics, addictive TV, and game-changing podcasts. Contact him at Benny@jewanced.com

Dan Feferman

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Dan Feferman is a Major (res.) in the Israel Defense Forces. For almost a decade, he served as a foreign policy and national security analyst, strategist and adviser in the IDF General Staff; as a special assistant to the Deputy Chief of the General Staff; and a commander in an elite intelligence unit of AMAN's Research and Analysis Division.

He is a fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute, a think-tank focusing on issues of importance to Israel and the Jewish people, where he researches religious pluralism in Israel, trends in Jewish identity and Israel-Diaspora relations. He is also a political and strategic consultant and publishes and speaks widely on the Middle East and Israeli defense and political matters.

He is the author of Rising Streams: Reform and Conservative Judaism in Israel, and of a soon-to-be-published book on the changing face of American Judaism.

Dan holds a BA in International Politics and Middle East Studies from the American University in Washington DC and an MA in National Security Studies from Tel Aviv University.

Originally from Indiana, Dan moved to Israel in 2005. He is married to Elisheva, has three amazing kids, and lives in Rehovot. When taking a break, Dan stays busy with Crossfit, martial arts and cooking.