Organizations like ChabadMatch and the Shidduch Center of Baltimore, which maintain large regional databases of shadchanim, have even begun offering digital meetings with some of their matchmakers in the Covid era. (Both ChabadMatch and the Shidduch Center declined to comment, with a representative from the Shidduch Center citing privacy concerns.)
Jeffrey Kaplan, 35, was familiar with these traditions when he and Mike Ovies, 37, founded JustKibbitz in Asheville, N.C., in 2020.
Mr. Kaplan credits the idea for the matchmaking venture to a fortuitous trip to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in 2013. While visiting his mother there, Mr. Kaplan discovered with amazement that she was “catfishing” young women on the Jewish dating site JDate by impersonating her younger son, Adam.
Though none of these overtures ever led to a physical meeting, Mr. Kaplan, a self-described “serial entrepreneur” and the director of the start-up investment firm Venture Asheville in Asheville, N.C., said he instantly recognized “a huge, unarticulated need” in modern dating: a space where moms could, with consent, pick their children’s partners. “Truly, parents meeting other parents and setting their kids up on dates is how civilization began,” Mr. Kaplan said. “That, we saw, was missing from online dating.”
Over the next five years, Mr. Kaplan honed the idea for a website called Oogum, where, originally, “any kind of mom” was invited to join. At first, the idea was greeted as “outlandish” and “crazy” at monthly Asheville “pitch parties.” Then, in September 2019, the pitch won $150,000 in seed money at the Asheville Investment Club’s “Big Scary Fish Tank” fund-raiser.
