Sansana, and hummus for a robot
I grew up in Sansana, a small community in the southern Hebron hills. It is the kind of place where you learn early that if a thing does not exist, you build it. That is where I started working with my hands, mostly with wood, and it never really left.
When I was young I decided I wanted a robot. I had no money for one, so I started selling hummus around the community. When I finally bought it, I found out the interesting part was not the motors, it was the code. That is how I learned to program.
At nine I wrote a children's book and published it. Looking back it is the same impulse: take something that exists only in your head and turn it into a thing other people can hold.
Three years in Boston
Then we moved to Boston for three years. I led a robotics team in a youth league there, and learned my first serious programming language. It was the first time I built something that had to work against a deadline and against other people, rather than only against myself.
I did a lot of sport alongside it. I ran a half marathon, played on the basketball and wrestling teams, and started training calisthenics. That sounds like a separate hobby, but it is the same story: in training and in code alike, you only find out what actually works once you go out and try it.
Back to Jerusalem
At 15 I came back to Israel and moved in with my grandparents so I could attend Himmelfarb high school in Jerusalem. I am on the advanced mechatronics track, alongside advanced maths, physics and English.
At school I lead the mechanical team on our robotics squad. I design on the computer, machine parts, and build drivetrains and mechanisms. I am also a youth leader in Bnei Akiva, and that is where I really understood how hard it is to run a good activity for a large group.
Why I built RushPoint
The idea did not come from a market or a competitor analysis. It came from trying to run a real mission race and watching how fast it broke. Judges who have to stand at stations, paper that gets wet, one team queueing while everybody else is moving, and scores worked out at the end of the night from somebody's handwriting.
What I wanted was a platform where anyone could build a genuine mission race across real places and run it without a whole crew. I could not find one, so I built it.
The part that mattered most to me was that it had to work equally well for three completely different audiences. A game a ten year old gets excited about, that a youth group takes seriously, and that adults on a team day do not feel is childish. It is the same engine underneath; the only difference is the missions you write.
I am still at school, so most of the development happens in evenings and at weekends. That means everything in the platform is there because somebody actually needed it outside, not because there was a gap on a product roadmap. If you are running a game and something is missing, write to me. I read all of it.
