We spoke with the members of Heimdall to learn more about their venture-in-progress. Heimdall is a project that focuses on data protection for average users on the web—to regulate the control of access to user private data and for users to manage it.
What’s your name, where are you from and which field are you working in?
Abed: My name is Abed, I am 27 years old. I’m from East Jerusalem, I have a degree from Hebrew University in Computer Engineering. I’ve already been a software developer for four years at Check Point software technologies in Tel Aviv at a Cyber Security company.
Amit: I am Amit, 32 years old, living in Tel Aviv. I have a computer science degree that I received here in Jaffa from the Academic College, and I’m a software developer too for over four and a half years at CheckPoint.
Daniel: My name is Daniel, I am 27 years old and currently a student of Industrial Engineering and Management. I worked for several years in the field of project management in a variety of positions. And from the near future co-founder of Heimdall together with my friends.
Why did you join the 50:50 Startups program?
Amit: Abed and I joined because before 50:50, we had a project that we worked on, during our own time. Then we tried to find something like this, like 50:50, that will help us take our product to the next level, and here we are.
Abed: We heard about 50:50 and it’s for, you know, “50 Arab and 50 Jewish” and I said, Amit and I are in this exact situation.
Amit: Then Daniel joined us and we had another idea. We started working with Daniel, and we came up with our team.
Daniel: The same - a friend of mine sent me a link to the 50:50 program and I saw it as a good opportunity for trying to develop myself and several ideas I had at that time. I'm really glad that I met Abed and Amit, together we are an excellent Team. I'm sure we'll make it big time.
How did the idea of your startup come to be? What was the motivation behind it and what do you hope to achieve with it?
Amit: Actually, Abed and I came up with another idea and we were talking with many people from this program, but our meeting with Daniel [was different]. You know, we did a lot of brainstorming and talked about ideas, and every person that we’ve met suggested his own problems that we have to solve. We really found, with Daniel, a good connection and [we talked about] the same problem that we face everyday. It is something we are trying to solve.
Daniel: We started from one general field that we wanted to attack because we had something to solve in that field, and from there, we had several rounds of brainstorming until we found the perfect solution in our customer's eyes. Right now, we are trying to—if I can describe it in one short sentence—we are creating a system for controlling and managing all your private and sensitive data online.
Abed: Data is distributed on every site. You enter a new site and you put in your data but you don’t know what they will do with your data. They may be selling it, they may send you irrelevant data, mails and SMS… so we are here to control this access to your data and [for you to] manage it.
Daniel: So our solution contains a variety of problems that every person using the internet nowadays faces. Those problems can meet you in your junk mail, it can meet you like Abed said when you pay for something online or with your kids when you are trying to restrict their online access. So this is the main idea because it affects all of us on a daily basis, and this is our motivation, the main, core idea that we are trying to achieve here.
Amit: It’s a product from the fintech world. It’s a web service, but you will get access on the mobile too.
Startup accelerators, specifically the 50:50 program, offer a lot of tools: workshops with experts, networking opportunities, mentoring with the teams. How has the program been so far and how do you think it will help you with achieving your goals in the future?
Daniel: They gave us a wide range of tools to use and to evolve our ideas. For example, we just finished an hour-long talk with one of the speakers, and he helped us to gain confidence in ourselves and to understand the next step that we need to do in order to first raise the money for our idea. So in this case, I think that 50:50 is a perfect playground for people like us that came with an idea, and really pushed themselves forward to really make it be.
Amit: The connections to these professionals is priceless. This is the biggest advantage of this program. From my point of view.
Daniel: I strongly agree. The content that the program provides us is very professional. In each session, we learn something new and important for building the startup.
Abed: I agree with them. In addition, I found the lectures very useful, and they tell us how you can come up with a startup and how you can take this experience and go forward.
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Interview by: Adi Nassar
Transcription by: Salina Kuo