Meet the Team

Management

• Net Jacobsson - CEO

  Net Jacobsson is a former Facebook executive and serial entrepreneur. At Facebook, Net led International Business Development, mobile business and early M&A activities. Net is also a founder of Playhopper, Inc. and Opportunistic Ventures LLC, and an advisor to many startups such as Crowdstar, OpenFeint (Sold to GREE), Pixowl, Padworx as well as a board member of the Chinese social network P1. Previously, Net has held leading positions in companies like Maxthon (China), Mashup Media, ICQ and SonyEricsson. Net is a frequent conference speaker in areas of entrepreneurship, social platforms, social games and mobile, and has been featured in New York Times, CNN, Financial Times, Business Week, Reuters, Techcrunch and many other media outlets.

  Follow Net here:
  www.netjacobsson.com
  @net

• Yael Karov – Founder, President, & COO

  Yael Karov has an outstanding professional and academic record of almost 20 years in the field of natural language processing and machine learning, as well as a successful track record in the commercial launch of innovative products to the market. Prior to founding Ginger Software, Yael joined Rosetta Genomics [NASDAQ:ROSG] at its early stages, serving as Chief Technology Officer & Vice President Research and Development. She led the R&D team to achieve revolutionary scientific results in the domain of genetics, based on a breakthrough machine-learning model, and spearheaded a successful IPO. Prior to Rosetta Genomics, Ms. Karov was the founder and Chief Technology Officer of Agentics, a company specializing in free-text classification of e-commerce product information based on natural language processing.

  When Agentics was acquired by Mercado Software, Ms. Karov subsequently led the sale of Agentics technology to Microsoft's MSN division. Before founding Agentics, Ms. Karov served as a Director of Research and Development at Click Software [NASDAQ:CKSW], where she founded and led the R&D team of Nester Technologies in the development of a product based on a solution to a combinatorial optimization research problem. She is the inventor and co-author of over 20 patents, and the author of numerous publications in leading computer science journals. Ms. Karov holds a M.Sc. in Mathematics and Computer Science from the Weizmann Institute of Science. In her free time, Yael enjoys writing fiction and reading poetry.

• David (Dudu) Noy – Vice President, Product and Marketing

  Dudu is a passionate consumer product and interactive media professional with over 20 years of experience in designing, managing, and marketing first class innovative products for large scale communities. Prior to Ginger, Dudu was leading the product at Taboola.com (>100M Monthly Users) and before that leading the product at Metacafe.com (>50M Monthly Users). Dudu also teaches Product Management at the Interactive Media program at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya (IDC).

  Earlier in his career, Dudu assumed management positions at leading Telecom companies (TTI Telecom, Amdocs, ECTel), working with major Telecom carriers in US, Europe and South America.
  Dudu is a graduate of the prestigious “Interdisciplinary Program for Outstanding Students” at Tel Aviv University, where he pursued the field of cognitive and computational Neuroscience, and completed a patent protected master’s thesis in the field of intelligent human-computer interaction. Other passions include Yoga, swimming, Brazilian music and playing the piano.

• Ziv Isaiah - CTO

  Ziv Isaiah is a software architect, product strategist and entrepreneur with 15 years of industry experience in high-tech companies as ECI Telecom (ECIL), Check Point (CHKP), Cellglide and Imagine Communications. Prior to joining Ginger Ziv served as a technology and strategy consultant for several startups and major software companies in the spaces of communication, digital video and solar energy.
  Prior to that Ziv founded Spritecom, an advanced TV advertising platform and BOXEE, an award-winning social media center.
  Ziv holds degrees in Electrical Engineering (B.Sc) and Physics (B.Sc) from Tel-Aviv University as part of an interdisciplinary excellency program.
  In his free time, Ziv loves to cook, bake and spend time with his family and friends.

• Miki (Michal) Feldman-Simon - Vice President, U.S. Operations

  Miki brings varied experience in entrepreneurship, education, and organization management to Ginger Software. She started her career working with underprivileged teenagers and their families and helping them prepare for military service in Israel. Miki went on to coordinate a student assistance program (Big Brother) that partnered underprivileged kids with volunteer university students. Following this, Miki served as National Sales Manager for an educational startup company, Geometrix, which created and marketed an innovative visual-thinking program for elementary school children. She managed operations throughout Israel and grew sales from 4 to 140 groups.

  She went on to establish a human-resources consulting company providing services for several successful Israeli startups including Agentics (later acquired by Mercado) and Demantra (later acquired by Oracle) and introduced Employee Assistance Programs services to the Israeli market through an alliance with an established Australian EAP provider. Miki moved to Boston in 1998. She went on to head the Human Resources department of Phonetic Systems, which was later acquired by Nuance Inc. Miki has a B.A. in Psychology and Educational Counseling and an M.Sc. in Organizational Behavior (graduated Magna Cum Laude) from the Tel Aviv University. Miki’s passion is education and innovative educational programs.

• Alex Ben-Ari - Vice President, R&D

  Alex Ben-Ari has 13 years of experience in software engineering, architecture and management of software development processes. In his previous position, Alex managed the software development unit in Rosetta Genomics, where he led a large scale effort of developing and executing distributed machine learning algorithms on very large amounts of genomic data. Alex has a special passion and expertise in agile software development practices and processes and has successfully introduced and cultivated them in multiple development environments over the years.

• Guy Shalom - Vice President, Applications Development

  Guy Shalom brings over 15 years of experience working within the software sector, performing architecture, design, development and management roles.
  Prior to Joining Ginger Software, Guy co-founded Sophistica Software. Sophistica provided software consulting services to startups as well as developed a cloud based website performance testing product.
  Before founding Sophistica, Guy served as Vice President Research and Development at Shunra Software, a market leader of network emulation and remote applications performance prediction and analysis. He led the company’s development activities in its entirety, which spanned a wide range of technologies including web based and desktop applications, network drivers and appliances. Prior to Shunra, Guy spent several years working with software startups including Personetiscs, and MINT, MINT was acquired by Sungard during his tenure there. Guy graduated Cum Laude from Ben Gurion University with a BS in Computer Science and Math; he earned his MBA from The College of Management again graduating Cum Laude. In his free time, Guy enjoys playing the guitar, singing and spending time with his family.