JFE (Jews for Entrepreneurship), a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt non-profit organization, was founded in San Francisco by Jenny Belotserkovsky and Michal Tavrovsky in November 2009 to be a platform for young professionals looking to learn more about innovation and entrepreneurship from industry experts, seasoned entrepreneurs, and investors.

Since then, JFE Organization has become the leading network of founders, investors, and technologists.

We brought the Silicon Valley spirit of entrepreneurship to New York City, Boston, Boulder, Los Angeles, London, and Israel. Since our launch in 2009, we have hosted over 100 events, including pitch events, seminars, speaker panels, startup accelerators, pitches for series A companies, career fairs, and networking mixers. Our extended network and community brings together over 20k people around the world to be a part of JFE Network.

Jenny and Michal mentored and accelerated numerous successful companies.
Startup work included running 8 startup accelerator programs, building mentor programs and technical sessions, organizing large scale pitch events, and advising and mentoring U.S. and International startups across all aspects of business development and fundraising. Furthermore, the founders engaged a 100+ mentor network of sales/growth/business development experts and their experience scaling startups is a big differentiator.

Among the companies that participated in acceleration programs, seminars, and pitch events are HomeRoots, Virool, Snappy gifts, Getgoing, Wiser, Tradle, Cater2me, Signifyd, Sense.ly, Pantry (acquired ByteFoods), SalesPredict (acquired by SalesForce), Blazemeter (acquired by CA Technologies), WebDAM (acquired by Shutterstock), CloudEndure (acquired by Amazon) among others.

JFE events and programs engaged some of the biggest names in the tech world such as Jan Koum (WhatsApp), Dylan Smith (Box), Bram Cohen (BitTorrent), Jeff Pulver (Vonage), Michael Rubenstein (AppNexus), Barry Appleman (AOL), and many others. JFE has hosted notable VCs and Angels as speakers, and judges including Greylock, Venrock, Accel Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, Founders Fund, NEA, Softbank, Draper Fisher Juverston, and many others.

Our Mission

Our mission is to create a thriving ecosystem of innovation; bridge generations of Jewish/Israeli founders, investors, and technologists; to be the launchpad to success for high potential startups; recognize extraordinary achievements in technology and innovation by the Jewish people. Our goal is to create a thriving community of entrepreneurs and young professionals who would support each other; to educate the next generation of entrepreneurs about philanthropy in the Jewish community; to inspire entrepreneurs by learning from seasoned, successful founders and technologists; to bring together Jewish founders from the US and all over the world to help them build their vision.

Timeline

Over the past years, JFE Organization hosted entrepreneur training workshops, pitch demo events with the participation of leading investors and entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley.

In February 2013, JFE launched its first accelerator program, the 2 month JFE Accelerator. In Fall 2013, the program expanded to NYC and 7 cohorts were completed, with the 7th (Summer 15 SF) lasting for 3 months in San Francisco.

In 2015, JFE launched the Series A Pitch event for Israeli startups looking to raise post-seed funding. The event was hosted in NYC and San Francisco with a partnership with the Israel Economic Mission.

In 2022, JFE launched a Los Angeles chapter.

To date, JFE Organization hosted more than 120 events with 150 startups participating in JFE programs.