Are you tired of LinkedIn? What about the job market? What about networking Zooms that give you a contact and perhaps a good conversation, but rarely leave you feeling like you really know someone?

These are dynamics that countless professionals and job seekers have expressed frustration over in recent years. There was even a recent New York Times essay about how Gen Z would love to just opt out of the career game entirely.

Well, a new partnership between the Jewish Business Network, a Philadelphia-based networking group, and ALINE, a startup and networking app, might offer a more refreshing way to play this game.

On July 29 at JBN’s annual Rooftop Summer Social at The Sporting Club at The Bellevue, its biggest event of the year, the networking group and the startup will unveil the potential future of networking.

“ALINE is designed to answer one simple question: ‘Who should I meet in this room?’” stated a news release about the event. “Using real-time proximity technology and mutual networking intent, the app connects attendees with people who align with their professional goals, making networking more intentional, efficient, and impactful.”

The Rooftop Summer Social has space for 200 people, according to Barri Miller, the director of JBN. The event is sold out.

At the gathering, the Jewish business networkers will just have to download the app, input some personal information and explain what they are looking for in a connection. Then, the app will identify other people in the room who match well with their industries, interests and goals.

“Hopefully after this event, people will leave with more connections than any other event,” said Miller. “I’m hoping this will lead to business conversations and outside business deals.”

Miller and Rabbi Menachem Schmidt, the executive director of Jewish Heritage Programs at the University of Pennsylvania, which includes JBN, have both identified the “pain point,” as Miller describes it, of Jewish business networkers only approaching people they know at JBN’s monthly events.

Skylar Marcoux, the chief operating officer of ALINE, had that exact experience at a February JBN event she attended.

Marcoux, who lives in Ardmore, recently became part of the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia’s Pathway Fellowship, a leadership and philanthropy program run by the Federation’s NextGen network for young professionals in their 20s and 30s. She learned of the JBN event while playing pickleball at Ballers in Fishtown, where she saw a flyer for it.

But at the gathering, she mainly talked to people she knew from the Federation.

“I realized the whole point of a networking group is to connect with people you didn’t already know,” she said.

After the event, she thought about ALINE. Marcoux knew Andrew Line, the Philly-based founder of the company, from an entrepreneurship meetup group she had attended a year earlier.

Line presented to the group about his AI agency that helped small businesses launch using AI agents. Marcoux connected with him on LinkedIn, and they found a time to meet up in person.

They got on the subject of networking events. Even then, Marcoux had her issues with them.

“People were getting laid off. They were frustrated, and didn’t know what to do,” she said.

Later, Line told her about his idea for ALINE. He came up with the concept 10 years earlier, but the idea wasn’t well-suited for the moment.

It cost too much to run apps back then. People also weren’t yet comfortable “posting and being discoverable in real time,” Marcoux said.

“Now people are more comfortable with that. We’re used to being discovered online first,” she said.

Members of Gen Z “grew up on screens,” Marcoux added.

“They want to connect in person but have to build the muscle of cold connection,” she concluded.

So, a few months after the JBN event in February, Marcoux, Line and a third founder, Malik Harouna, teamed up to launch ALINE. It became available in the Apple App Store in May and in the Google Play Store in July.

Line runs the business side. Marcoux handles partnerships. Harouna is the engineer who codes the backend and pushes updates to the app.

Harouna, a student in the Startup Scholar Program at San Francisco Bay University, knew Line because his mother had been the caretaker for Line’s grandmother. SFBU’s Startup Scholar Program supports students in their efforts to build startups, so Harouna reached out to Line.

“He was looking for a project. Andrew said, ‘Why don’t we build this now?’” Marcoux recalled.

ALINE hit 1,000 users on July 20.

“Although we’ve launched in Philly, we’ve also grown to New York, San Francisco, Las Vegas and most recently San Diego,” Marcoux said.

Location-based launches make sense because ALINE is designed for users to connect in person.

“If you download the app and you’re in the middle of Kansas, yes, you have it, but there aren’t a lot of people on it,” Marcoux said. “So, we typically launch through networking groups.”

Miller connected with Marcoux at the February event. Miller and Rabbi Schmidt knew of the “pain point” because many JBN members had mentioned it. But a survey they sent out earlier this month confirmed it.

“They wanted to move toward business connections. It aligns specifically with what Skylar and her team are doing,” Miller said.

The networking app and the networking group see each other as potential long-term partners.

After events, ALINE can pull anonymized data. Marcoux said she would pull numbers from this event and give them to Miller. The JBN director said they could help the group tailor future gatherings to the goals of attendees.

“They’re looking for this, this and this. Maybe people can come, and JBN can give them what they’re looking for,” Marcoux said.

“Our goal after is to have this be a resource that’s automatically included in membership,” she added.

For ALINE, the next goal is 5,000 users, then 10,000 and onward.

“It’s only going to work if we get a critical mass. That’s why we’re building community by community, so hopefully, over time, it’s on everyone’s phone,” Marcoux said.

jsaffren@midatlanticmedia.com