With a $39 million dollar check from Microsoft, fortunate are those to be on the receiving end of Shloma Baum’s ma’aser check.
The Satmar Chassid from Kiryas Joel recently sold FieldOne Systems, his field services management company, to the industrial giant.
An article on Geektime, a newsblog dedicated to the fields of science and entrepreneurship, posted an announcement from Microsoft on the recent purchase. Microsoft noted, “FieldOne really stands out, providing enterprises with a comprehensive modern field service solution … including work order, automated scheduling, asset contract, inventory and procurement management, workflow capabilities and mobile collaboration – this gives companies the ability to do things such as adjusting routing on the fly and delivering service arrival estimate times within a smaller window, which is essential for more personal customer engagement.”
FieldOne Systems also impressed Microsoft as part of a growing movement of haredi startup entrepreneurs in both Israel and the diaspora.
“Ultra-Orthodox Jews are underrepresented in the hi-tech community, partially because they do not always receive a rigorous math and science education and in part because the hi-tech world likes to hire people in its own image: young, male, privileged graduates of elite army units in Israel or prestigious colleges in the U.S.,” the article stated. “Given Baum’s position straddling two worlds, he has had to think a lot about the relationship between a closed ecosystem (a company, religious community) and the outside world.”
Check out the full article from Geektime here.
The words of this author reflect his/her own opinions and do not necessarily represent the official position of the Orthodox Union.