Tomer Kagan: Living the American Dream

The American Dream can be defined as the ideal that every citizen of the United States can and should achieve prosperity and success through determination, initiative, and hard work. Tomer Kagan is one prime example of how hard work and ingenuity can result in success.

Kagan’s family moved from Israel to sunny California when he was just four years old. He grew up in an Israeli neighborhood and is fluent in Hebrew as well as in English. Even at a young age, it was evident that Kagan had a bright future as an entrepreneur. He paid his way through college by starting up a business called Static Printing which printed customized apparel for its customers. Kagan eventually graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz with a degree in Molecular, Cellular, and Development Biology, but deciding against following that career path.

After college, Kagan ventured into business again – this time founding a branding solutions company called Your Logo Here. Some of the company’s biggest clients included Google and Slide. A born visionary, Kagan believes that the world will become more and more software-dependent and we will be seeing things like traveling hospitals and personalized food in the future. It is also this forward-looking attitude of Kagan that led him to co-found Quixey with Liron Shapira. Quixey is basically a search engine for apps where people can search for the applications they want and need by inputting a description of the task they would need the application for. Users don’t need to know the exact name of the application to use Quixey and it allows them to discover other apps that can perform the same tasks as more popular apps in the market.

Aside from being an entrepreneur, Kagan is also on the board of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (formerly, the Singularity Institute) and is an advisor to other companies like Upwest Labs, Mucker Lab Seed Fund, and Innovation Endeavors.