Website www.conduit.com Organizations founded Conduit Residence Gedera, Israel | Role Entrepreneur Name Ronen Shilo | |
Born May 1, 1958 (age 65) ( 1958-05-01 ) Occupation Entrepreneur and software technologist Education Technion – Israel Institute of Technology | ||
Ronen Shilo (born May 1, 1958) is an Israeli entrepreneur and software engineer. He is the founder and CEO of Conduit, an online platform that allows publishers to create free mobile apps and loyalty programs. Conduit became Israel's largest Internet company in 2013, valued at $1.3 billion.
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Early life
Shilo grew up in Nes Ziona, Israel and was a member of the Israeli army where he was an officer. He graduated from the Technion, the Israeli Institute of Technology, with a BSc in Computer Science.
Career
Early in his career, Shilo worked for Ready Systems in Silicon Valley.
In 1995, he founded DoubleAgent, a collaborative technology company that aimed to enable application sharing online. Nine months later the company was acquired by software company NetManage. Ronen served as manager of the Tel Aviv branch of the company before leaving in 1999 to start Effective-I, a learning system that enabled corporations to leverage, search, organize and deliver information.
Shilo founded Conduit in 2005 with partners Gaby Bilcyzk and Dror Erez to help publishers retain and engage users. Though the company has received venture funding, the three founders retain a majority share in the company. He said he looks at Mark Zuckerberg's control of Facebook as a model for Conduit.
In the Financial Times, he called the phenomena of Israeli companies selling too early as "Quick Sell" nation. Israeli newspaper Haaretz mentioned him in the article "Four Reasons Not to Hate Israel's Big Business Tycoons" as one of a small number of Israeli tech CEOs who "shunned the quick buck of an M&A deal and stayed the course."
He wrote an article for Fast Company in 2012 explaining why he had largely stayed out of the press despite running an Internet company with 260 million users.
In September 2013 Shilo spun off its Conduit's Client Connect (web toolbar) business division, the biggest part of the company, which combined with Perion Network, a NASDAQ-public company.
Personal
Shilo is married and has three children. He told Inc. Magazine in 2013 that his company's billion dollar valuation had not changed his lifestyle and that he and his family still lived in the same home.