Yonatan Stern () is an

Israeli-American Israeli Americans () are Americans who are of full or partial Israeli descent. The Israeli-American community, while predominantly Jewish, also includes various ethnic and religious minorities reflective of Israel's diverse demographics. This c ...

scientist and entrepreneur. He is the founder of multiple high tech software companies including Rosh Intelligent Systems, CardScan, Zoom Information, Bizo Inc, Opster Ltd and AltNext Ltd. Stern sold 3 of his companies for more than a billion dollars. He was awarded the Israel Defense Prize for contributions to the defense of the State of Israel.

Early life

Stern's father fled

Czechoslovakia Czechoslovakia ( ; Czech language, Czech and , ''Česko-Slovensko'') was a landlocked country in Central Europe, created in 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary. In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland beca ...

after a

pogrom A pogrom is a violent riot incited with the aim of Massacre, massacring or expelling an ethnic or religious group, particularly Jews. The term entered the English language from Russian to describe late 19th- and early 20th-century Anti-Jewis ...

erupted in his town of

Pezinok Pezinok (; in the local dialect ''Pezinek''; ; ; ) is a town in southwestern Slovakia. It is roughly northeast of Bratislava and, as of December 2023, had a population of 24,443. Pezinok lies near the Little Carpathians and thrives mainly on vi ...

in 1939 and arrived in

Mandatory Palestine Mandatory Palestine was a British Empire, British geopolitical entity that existed between 1920 and 1948 in the Palestine (region), region of Palestine, and after 1922, under the terms of the League of Nations's Mandate for Palestine. After ...

the same year. Stern graduated

cum laude Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some Sout ...

from the Technion, with a bachelors (1976) and masters (1980) in

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

, working with Professor Shimon Even. He served in the Israeli Army, rising to the rank of

Major Major most commonly refers to: * Major (rank), a military rank * Academic major, an academic discipline to which an undergraduate student formally commits * People named Major, including given names, surnames, nicknames * Major and minor in musi ...

in the

Israeli Intelligence Corps The Israeli Intelligence Corps (, ''Heil HaModi'in''), abbreviated to Haman () is an Israel Defense Forces corps which falls under the jurisdiction of IDF Directorate of Military Intelligence ( Aman) and is responsible for collecting, disseminatin ...

Career

After leaving the army in 1981, Stern went on to co-found his first company - Rosh Intelligent Systems, where he was CEO. The company provided software maintenance and

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

diagnostic solutions, and was one of the first venture backed companies in Israel. Stern moved to Boston in 1989 to manage the Rosh headquarters there. Rosh (later renamed ServiceSoft) was sold to Broadbase Software in 2002. Stern left Rosh in 1993 to found Corex Technologies Inc (later renamed to CardScan). He served as its CEO until 2006. The company sold business card scanners, and was, according to the NPD group, the best-selling card scanning solution in the early 2000s. In 2004, Stern returned to Israel after 15 years with his wife and three daughters, but continued to manage his companies in

Boston Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

through frequent travel. In 2000, he created a new company called Eliyon Technologies. It received investment from

Venrock Venrock (portmanteau of Venture and Rockefeller) is an American venture capital firm formed in 1969 to build upon the successful investing activities of the Rockefeller family that began in the late 1930s. It has offices in Palo Alto, California, ...

, and later the company changed its name to Zoom Information Inc. ZoomInfo is a go-to-market solution provider, selling business intelligence data on millions of businesses and business contacts. Stern was the founder, CEO and Chief Scientist at ZoomInfo, and has six patents issued in his name. He developed most of the core technology that still runs the company. In 2017 the company was sold to Great Hill Partners, a private equity firm for $240 million dollars, with Stern staying on as CEO until July 2018, and remained on the company's board. Six months after leaving the CEO position, the company was sold to DiscoverOrg for $785 million dollars, who later adopted the

ZoomInfo ZoomInfo Technologies Inc. is an American software and data company which provides data for companies and business individuals. Their main product is a commercial search-engine, specialized in contact and business information. From the intern ...

name and brand for the combined company. In 2008 Stern was a co-founder of Bizo which was a spin-off from ZoomInfo. The company provided business demographic data for online publishers. Bizo was acquired by LinkedIn in 2014 for $175M dollars. In 2019 Stern co-founded two companies - AltNext and Opster. AltNext is a live-streaming marketing platform for the

Esports Esports (), short for electronic sports, is a form of competition using video games. Esports often takes the form of organized, multiplayer video game competitions, particularly between professional players, played individually or as teams. ...

industry. Opster is an

ElasticSearch Elasticsearch is a Search engine (computing), search engine based on Apache Lucene, a free and open-source search engine. It provides a distributed, Multitenancy, multitenant-capable full-text search engine with an HTTP web interface and schema ...

monitoring and performance enhancement tool set.

Awards and recognition

In 1980 Stern was awarded the Israel Defense Prize. Stern was nominated for the

Ernst & Young EY, previously known as Ernst & Young, is a multinational corporation, multinational professional services partnership, network based in London, United Kingdom. Along with Deloitte, KPMG and PwC, it is one of the Big Four accounting firms, Big F ...

's Young Entrepreneur of the Year award three times, in 1998, 1999 and 2001.

External links

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Stern, Yonatan 1954 births Living people Businesspeople from Jerusalem Technion – Israel Institute of Technology alumni 21st-century Israeli businesspeople Israel Defense Prize recipients