Tech Founders Build New Platform for Jewish Life in Florida

Two South Florida natives are preparing to launch Jewgo 2.0, a major expansion of the Jewish community app that began as a local directory and quickly grew to hundreds of daily users.

Dovi Brody and Mendel Lieberman, childhood friends who have known each other since Pre-1A, first launched Jewgo with a simple idea: put the Jewish community in one place.

“What if everything Jewish was in one place?” Brody recalled of the idea that started the project. “All the shuls, restaurants, businesses, mikvaos and everything else Jewish near you.”

It was an idea rooted in the South Florida community they had grown up in. Lieberman’s family has deep ties to the ORB kosher certification organization, while Brody’s family opened one of Florida’s earliest kosher stores. They watched as Jewish life in South Florida expanded rapidly, bringing with it more shuls, restaurants, schools, stores and services.

But the growth also created a familiar problem.

Jewish community life increasingly became buried inside WhatsApp.

There was a chat for the shul, another for local deals, another for free clothing and dishes, another for the preschool, another for the neighborhood, and countless others for every part of community life.

Brody initially began compiling a directory of South Florida Jewish establishments and services. The list kept growing until, as the founders put it, “the list got too big.”

So they turned it into an app.

Together, Brody and Lieberman built Jewgo 1.0, a South Florida Jewish directory that aimed to provide information people could actually rely on, with listings updated regularly rather than simply collecting names and addresses.

The response was immediate. According to the founders, Jewgo received 800 downloads within its first hours and later grew to approximately 600 daily users.

Now they are taking the idea significantly further.

Jewgo 2.0 will expand the original directory into a free platform made up of three separate apps, including Jewgo Nav, which helps users find Jewish life around them, and Jewgo Biz, which helps local Jewish businesses reach customers and manage their presence on the platform.

For Brody and Lieberman, the larger idea is not simply to build another directory. It is to take information and services that are currently spread across dozens of chats and disconnected sources and give Jewish communities a single place to find them.

“Jewish life is run through WhatsApp,” the founders said in describing the problem they are trying to solve. Jewgo, they say, is their attempt to make that experience far simpler.

While the project began in South Florida and was shaped by the community there, the founders are now building Jewgo 2.0 for Jewish communities well beyond Florida.

Jewgo 2.0 is expected to launch shortly. More information is available at Jewgo.app.