On 8 June, Jewish American start-up co-founders and brothers Gabe and Aiden Einhorn received a message from a job applicant on the platform Handshake.
“Not interested in working for a jew. Thanks.” [sic] read the message from Aiden Franco, a Cornell student.
Gabe Einhorn posted a screenshot of the message on X/Twitter along with the caption “This kid applied to our job on Handshake, we accepted him, and then he responded this. He probably knows nothing about Jews except for what they tell him in college and on social media. Sad world.”
The incident soon went viral.
Cornell University released a statement on June 9 saying it was aware of “an unconfirmed report regarding a post made by a student on the Handshake platform” and that it takes all reports of discrimination and hate speech seriously.
“We are committed to conducting a thorough review in accordance with university policy,” Cornell added.
Franco doubled down in comments of Einhorn's post
Franco himself then commented on Einhorn’s post. Instead of apologizing for his words, he doubled down on his original statements.
“I was stating why I was not interested after you had asked to interview three times. I found out you were Jewish after the fact. My experiences with Jews have not been pleasant, both in person and online. This is not to say I haven’t had positive experiences, but on the aggregate, that is not the case.”
Franco then said that the online reactions by the Jewish community “only serve to further prove my point.”
“Given that I have been doxed and intimidated by your community, including having my personal life investigated for no other reason than a single comment, I can’t imagine any reasonable person not coming to a similar conclusion, per the post above,” he said.
The Einhorns started the company VryfID about 10 months ago. The start-up verifies renters’ identity and income, then matches them with apartments they can afford. It aims to help landlords fill units faster, increase occupancy, and raise net operating income.
“We’ve made a big push to utilize Handshake and some of these other job hiring companies to bring on a lot of college interns, and we have over 10, close to 20 college interns across the team helping us build on the product side, on the sales side, all this stuff,” Gabe Einhorn, 24, told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday. “We posted for the summertime job hiring about three or four weeks ago, and we got a lot of interest: over 100 people.”
It was during this process that the message from Franco came through.
“We were both just kind of shocked. My whole goal of posting this was to show this is a clear example of antisemitism. I only had maybe a thousand followers on X, so I didn’t expect it to reach the national news that it has.”
Einhorn stressed that his initial intention was not to call Franco out; in fact, he didn’t publish his full name so as not to identify him publicly.
'He can learn from his mistakes'
“At the end of the day, he’s still a young college kid, and he can learn from his mistakes, and I don’t plan to take any other actions against him, but obviously just keep raising awareness,” Einhorn told the Post.
“Obviously, it spiraled, and it’s gotten a little bit out of hand. As it’s been exposed and blown up across social media, the rise of hate has gotten out of control, especially on X, so we’re just trying to figure out a way to still fight back against that.”
Einhorn has received swathes of antisemitic messages like “you need to die k***,” “piece of sh** Jew boy,” and “we hope [Hitler] will return and complete his work” across his social media platforms.
There has also been a coordinated campaign to destroy his startup and his family’s business by leaving bad reviews online.
“It’s tough. It’s scary to see that people are not afraid to hide it and they’re proud of their hate.”
“Thankfully, a lot of really cool people have reached out to support and to show guidance, so we’re just trying to lean on those people who have been through it and know how to get through it.”
“We don’t want to harp on about this story too much. Obviously, it happened, it’s terrible, and everybody’s true colors are being revealed, but we just want to use it as fuel to go forward and not let it destroy our business,” he concluded.