Yonatan Stern
Businessman
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yonatan Stern (Hebrew: יונתן שטרן) is an Israeli-American scientist and serial entrepreneur. He founded multiple hi-tech software companies, the most well known of them being ZoomInfo, and has sold several of them for a combined total of over a billion dollars.[1] He was awarded the Israel Defense Prize for contributions to the defense of the State of Israel.[2]
- Entrepreneur
- media proprietor
- investor
Yonatan Stern | |
|---|---|
יונתן שטרן | |
| |
| Born | 1954 (age 71–72) Israel |
| Education | Technion – Israel Institute of Technology (BSE and MSc) |
| Occupations |
|
| Years active | 1981–present |
| Children | 3 |
His later projects include research into why companies fail and how to build successful companies using a repeatable method. SmartUp Academy is a program founded to implement the findings of his research in real world conditions.[3]
Early life
Stern was born in Jerusalem. His mother was a descendant of the Bak family, who moved to the land of Israel in the early nineteenth century and were part of the Old Yishuv. His father arrived in Mandatory Palestine after fleeing Czechoslovakia, following a pogrom that erupted in his hometown of Pezinok in 1939 in the lead up to the Holocaust.[4]
He is one of three children.
His maternal grandfather is the Haredi artist Yitzhak Bak.[5]
Stern was in the first graduating class of Himmelfarb High School and then went on to graduate cum laude from the Technion,[6] with a bachelors (1976) and masters (1980) in computer science, working with Professor Shimon Even. He served in the Israeli Army, rising to the rank of Major in the Israeli Intelligence Corps.[2] While in the army he was awarded the Israel Defense Prize in recognition of projects accomplished by his unit - Unit 8200.
Career
Throughout his career Stern has founded numerous companies, covering different industries and customer bases. [1]
After leaving the army in 1981, Stern co-founded his first company - Rosh Intelligent Systems, and took on the role of CEO. The company provided software maintenance and artificial intelligence diagnostic solutions, and was one of the first venture backed companies in Israel.[1][7]Dan Tolkovsky was one of the first investors in the company.[8] Stern moved to Boston in 1989 to manage the Rosh headquarters there. Rosh (later renamed ServiceSoft) was sold to Broadbase Software in 2002.[9]
Stern left Rosh in 1993 to found Corex Technologies Inc (later renamed to CardScan). He served as its CEO until 2006 when it was acquired by Dymo.[10] The company sold business card scanners, and was, according to the NPD group, the best-selling card scanning solution in the early 2000s.[11]
In 2000, he founded his third company called Eliyon Technologies. It received investment from Venrock,[12] and later the company changed its name to Zoom Information Inc.[13] 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.[14][15][16][17][18][19] In 2017 the company was sold to Great Hill Partners, a private equity firm for $240 million, with Stern staying on as CEO until July 2018, and remaining on the company's board.[20] Six months after leaving the CEO position, the company was sold to DiscoverOrg for $785 million,[21][22] who later adopted the ZoomInfo name and brand for the combined company.[23]
In 2008, Stern was a co-founder of Bizo, a spin-off from ZoomInfo.[24] The company provided business demographic data for online publishers.[25] Bizo was acquired by LinkedIn in 2014 for $175 million.[26]
After leaving ZoomInfo in 2018, Stern went on to found SmartUp Academy, a program dedicated to teaching entrepreneurs how to build profitable companies.[27] The Academy hosts lectures and workshops for entrepreneurs, CEOs and founders. The company also serves as a cofounder for many of the companies that it works with, focusing on growth and scale, and investing in them. Since 2020 Stern has invested in over a dozen companies[28], including Opster, which was sold to Elastic in 2023.[29][30] [31]
Awards and recognition
In 1980 Stern was awarded the Israel Defense Prize.[2][7]
Stern was nominated for the Ernst & Young's Young Entrepreneur of the Year award three times, in 1998, 1999 and 2001.[7]
In 2025 Stern gave a Tedx Talk at the Technion focusing on how to build a thriving company.[32]