Principles of Entrepreneurship Summer 2019

Five Ways in Which I Have Human Capital That is Truly Unique: 1)      I am driven by an active need for this solution. 2)      The fact that I can think so small about an industry so niche and stagnant shows that I am able to come up with creative solutions. 3)      My combination of business savvy in sales and design make for a skilled young professional that can work within a firm and make a difference. 4)      My experience having grown up with both parents working in a start-up, I know how new businesses and private firms operate, as well as my college education, qualify me over others my age. 5)      My perspective based on my experiences gives me unique creativity that opens doors for me. Five Interviews with People That Know Me the Best: Roommate 1: “You have a drive to accomplish things despite the time or tangibility of the project. This is pretty evident from t...

The segment that I selected to interview for this project and from past assignments is the portion of the population that works in or lives in multi-level buildings. The three interviews that I conducted were with residents of my building that I know personally and live on my floor, the ninth floor. This requires them to use an elevator to get to and from classes, work, and activities beyond their home. Two females and a male, all 20-21 years of age, in school, with the male working part-time at UF. Alternative Evaluation: Among the alternatives to a statistically optimal programming, there is alternatives of lobby prioritization, price-based prioritization, and amenities prioritization. They choose between among these alternatives based on a preconceived notion of the best possible solution. If a person is selfish or greedy, they may want it to be based on what floor pushes the button first. If they are used to finer things and pay more than other tenants or make more than o...

1) What are the behaviors that you have used (or developed) to keep up with the requirements of this course? One of the behaviors that I developed throughout the duration of this course is to get the assignments done far ahead of time. If comments are due on a Monday, I will do them the Friday before. I do all of the assignments for a week about a week ahead of time, just to make sure that I can put all of the final touches on them and not be rushed, as well as balancing this class with my more time-consuming courses. 2) Talk about a moment or two when you felt like "giving up." What pulled you through? Do you feel like you've developed a tenacious attitude during the past two months? What experience or experiences most contributed to this? One of the moments that I felt like giving up during this course was when I miserably failed an exam in one of my other courses. I knew that it was not the end of the world, but I still was upset with the result. It crossed my m...

GRINDING IT OUT: THE MAKING OF MCDONALD'S, RAY KROC The element of Ray Kroc that surprised me the most was how little he did on his own. He did not come up with the name, he did not even come up with most of the processes that made McDonald's the industry titan that it is today. He was not a finance genius or an industrial engineer. Despite that surprise, I do admire his business acumen. His ability to critically think and make almost all the right moves to penetrate a fairly new but large industry and then set in motion the international symbol. However, I despised his treatment of others. He ran the founding brothers of McDonald's out of business when they refused to sell him the original location by placing a McDonald's across the street and stripping their ability to use the name. Kroc’s biggest challenges were with franchising the restaurant and the suppliers. McDonald's sold food for a cheap price, and with that kind of business plan, it is hard for some ...

Segment: The portion of the population that takes an elevator at least once a day in a multi-level building (residential, business, recreational). When does the need take place? All the population within my segment experiences this need when taking the elevator during a busy time of day. According to my interviews, mornings, lunches, rush hours, dinnertime. These all add up to about six total hours everyday of incremental amount of time being wasted waiting for the inefficient elevators. This need takes place about 10 minutes per day per person, which really adds up when you consider the amount of people on earth that use elevators in multi-level buildings. When do they become aware of the need? Elevator Patrons become aware of this need when the time waiting passes a threshold. Based on my three interviews, this threshold is 30 seconds. The people that I interviewed are elevator patrons and programming students. They not only have a grasp of the required effort to produc...

I am a third-year business student at the University of Florida hoping to graduate with a Master’s degree in International Business after my fourth year at UF. My talents include sales and graphic design, which are essential parts of the business development process. I hope to be able to work hard enough in my first ten years out of college so that the rest of my professional career can be a management level position. This would be a part of my idea for elevator optimization, being able to be in on the idea from the ground floor, no pun intended, then managing or owning the company and being able to relax and reap the seeds of my early work. I am offering an upgrade that can change the lives of millions of people around the world, saving incremental amounts of time in waiting for elevators using variations of a patented computer program that customizes the elevator prioritization to the preferences of the building owner or the elevator company that purchases the computer code. ...

This blog post is my uploaded elevator pitch #1. Please enjoy.

Those that do not fall within the boundary of my opportunity are people that do not live in multiple story residential units or work in multiple story professional office buildings. The point at which my need described as higher elevator efficiency differs from other needs because it is such a niche market. Not everyone or even a super majority of people use elevators more than once a day according to my interviews. My opportunity is about efficiency of everyday items, but the idea can go beyond just elevators. Obviously, the programming is not the same for something like traffic light optimization or the speed and reach of automatic doors, but it is a similar skill set and market to take advantage of once the skills and certifications are established for solving one of them. The underlying cause would be location based on my interviews. My parents live in suburban central Florida, living in a one-story house and working in a one-story business storefront. This is a strong juxtaposit...

My selected opportunity is the inefficiency of modern elevators and especially older and outdated ones. The programming of these essential machines is not what it could be, and I find this to be an obvious hassle in everyday life, when it could be solved by anyone with the ability to understand and write a fairly complex program that could boost the efficiency of every three or more story building in the world. Having interviewed several users of the product (fellow tenants and people working in multi-level business offices), I now have a better grasp on the concept and the opportunity in order to form my product/service and how I can market and monetize the idea. The solution to the problem of inefficient elevator programming lies in the code itself. All elevators run on a similar program of “open doors at the closest floor to its current location” and “go to the floor designated by the button.” There are several faults in this, however. If a person on Floor 10 presses the button ...