Even Jewish billionaire Mark Cuban would have been impressed.
On November 23, students from 12 Jewish high schools showed their business acumen in “CIJE Tank” as part of an annual competition organized by the Center for Initiatives in Jewish Education. The event, which took place at The Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, is modeled after the hit ABC show Shark Tank, in which entrepreneurs present their products and pitch business titans, including Cuban and Kevin “Mr. Wonderful” O’Leary as well as others.
While students here were not asking for money, at stake was funding for a provisional patent, sponsored by attorney Nathan Renov of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, LLP.
The winning team was Riverdale’s SAR High School for their product “The BreadWinner,” which uses technology to let a baker know exactly when the dough that is to be proofed has doubled and is ready for baking. While they spoke about its use for challah, it could be used for other types of bread.
The students, who said they had watched The Great American Baking Show, said a baker never really knows if the dough is underproofed or overproofed, so the product would be helpful and even have a feature to text the user when the dough has doubled.
“It feels incredible,” said senior Oriyan Weinberger from White Plains of his school’s win over other formidable teams. The other two students on the team were Rinat Kramer-Richard and Lia Tuchman.
While more polite than the sharks on ABC, Ari Gilder, Natalia Jacobowitz, and Zoli Honig asked some insightful, pressing questions and told The Jewish Press that the students were well prepared. Gilder, a senior staff software engineer at Google, explained what stood out about The BreadWinner. “They really thought of everything,” he said. “Their prototype worked really well. The branding was really spot on. They tapped into a growing market, so we think they’ll be really successful.”
Jacobowitz, a product manager at the Robotic startup VIAM, said she was impressed by the level of ingenuity displayed by SAR as well as all the teams. “The BreadWinner was all-around great,” Jacobowitz said. “They had the technology. They had the prototype. It was not just a Jewish idea but also relevant internationally for anyone who is making bread.”
Honig said the SAR students epitomized what a successful team should do. “You’ve got to consider the judges’ psychology,” he said. “We’re getting a lot of information. If you’re not super clear and articulate, our brains are all over the place, so you have to be super clear and lock in on the message. They got on stage in braided aprons. They didn’t have to say a word and I knew it was a baking company. They were the only team that started with the ‘why?’. The branding was amazing.”
Honig gave a passionate presentation to the students explaining how he got on Shark Tank Season 9. Episode 7 and how he used his Jewish mind. Honig and Isaac Deutsch pitched Waive Care, a free electric car service for two hours in which advertisers would pay to be on LCD screens on the car as well as a vinyl ad on the car. They asked for $500,000 for 2% of the company, with the slogan “We waive the fee, you drive for free.” In one of the more interesting negotiations of the show, they ultimately made a deal with O’Leary. Honig has moved on to found Chalkable as well as Short Form Media, and lives in Miami.
Honing told the crowd that Cuban gave him “a hearty Yasher Koach,” and that a big reason they got a deal was that Lori Greiner stated she had seen them and was surprised they had only started five months before. Honig told the crowd he had told drivers to circle around the street where Grenier lives in Santa Monica. He also said while only 10 minutes of their pitch was shown on the show, they went back and forth with the sharks for more than an hour. Honig said they were able to get on Shark Tank because they did an interview with a small Santa Monica publication, noting that the lesson is to do all interviews because you never know who will read it. He said he was not nervous while arguing with the sharks because he was prepared.
Two Shabbos-related products presented by other schools’ teams at CIJE Tank were extremely interesting. Mesivta Ateres Yaakov, known as MAY, in Lawrence, Long Island, presented “Shabbos Alarm Clock,” where an alarm would go off every half hour but there are caps to prevent the sound, so one could simply remove the sound cap for the time the person wanted to wake up.
Junior Rafi Klahr said he was going to sleep one Shabbos afternoon and figured they could come up with a good alarm.
“We would never think of this,” said Gilder, who was impressed by the idea.
TABC’s Urn-EASE involved the halacha of kli sheini and kli shlishi, which some are not aware of and involves how to use hot water for tea or coffee from an urn without violating Shabbat.
Junior Mayer Prager said he noticed many people forget the proper procedure and he was happy to work on something that would prevent people from violating halacha. The product uses a double valve mechanism.
Will Starbucks be interested in The Frisch School’s “SafeTea Locker?” The students from the Paramus, New Jersey school worked out a way to help prevent beverage thefts by having drinks in a locker that customers could open with a code. As more and more consumers order coffee on apps, the drinks become easier to steal. The product is not only for hot drinks; Jacobowitz noted that a salad she ordered last week was stolen.
Lev Bais Yaakov High School in Brooklyn pitched “The Handy Hammer” in which the top would have a metal detector to prevent people accidentally breaking pipes while hammering a nail into the wall, while Bruriah High School in Elizabeth, New Jersey, had “The PreVent System” to flush out lint before it clumps together and can cause a fire.
On the sports side, JEC of Elizabeth, New Jersey came up with a creative product called TimeOutWhistle. When the ref blows the whistle, it would sync to the clock in order to avoid the problem of people making mistakes that could cost a team a game.
The funniest moment of the competition was when Jacobowitz questioned a member of Shevach High School in Queens, whose product was “Smart Smoke Sensor.” She asked who would put rice in a toaster and the student replied: “Someone in my family.”
CIJE president Jason Curry said that every year he sees growth, but the level of skill has reached new heights. “What’s happening now is the projects are not simply concepts – there are projects here that are really ready for marketing,” Curry told The Jewish Press. “They not only have the engineering in the concept, but they’ve also done the design. They’re able to put this together for a format that is ready to market and that’s what we’re trying to do at CIJE.”
