14A – Halfway Reflection

Honestly, I have learned a lot more about myself in this class than I would have expected. Through the 100s of interviews and constant revamping/ reconstructing of business ventures, I have learned a lot about myself in this class. Personally, I feel the behavior that is a requirement for this class is confidence as yes gumption and determination can help you get your assignments done but confidence is what gives you the strength to not only think of an outlandish idea but to flaunt it as well. In this course we use confidence to present our big ideas in blog posts and discuss it with fellow classmates on why it is such a good idea and what we should do to make it even better. Honestly every blog post was a struggle but what kept me going was more specifically a time were I had to be tenacious and overcome my “give up attitude” was when we were doing the elevator pitches as both me a roommate dreaded the activity to the point where we thought it would never get done but once we got started and believing in each other we quickly saw how viable our ideas were and the 90 sec time frame quickly became too short of a window to contain all of our ideas.

Three tip(s):

Don’t worry about due date(s), just know that if you believe in yourself and work little by little every day the assignment will get done.

Tenacity is all about discipline and if you lack discipline you lack tenacity.



The best way to develop more “tenacity” is to discipline yourself. I personally do this by working out and studying :).

13A – Reading Reflection No. 1

The “biographies/autobiographies” that I choose was Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, Ashlee Vance. The reason why I choose this book was due to my recent interest in Elon Musk as a person as he seemed to be not only done to Earth yet very outlandish at times. It seems as though (mostly recently ) he is self-aware of the image he has amassed on the internet which is ironic as less than a decade ago I feel no Elon Musk had no real internet presence whatsoever. One the thing that I learned that I liked the most about Musk was that from an early age he was always on the prowl for the next big idea. He knew early on that human needed to do two things to alleviate our dependence on oil/fossil fuels and for humans to travel the cosmos. The big idea behind it was that oil and fossil fuels are finite and once we discover an energy source that can produce the same energy whilst also being renewable would make human future proof. While also seeing the stars a destination rather than an observation. Another thing I can relate with Musk was from an early age we both expressed our entrepreneurial tendencies as when I was younger I would sell candy. When Elon Musk was a lad he made a video game and sold it 500$ even though both ventures are vastly different it proves that he and I share similar qualities. What least admire about Musk is his attitude the opening pages of the book starts with Musk seemed both controlling yet interested in the creation of his biography as he only agreed to it when he was strong-armed by the author. Elon faced many challenges on his journey to become a billionaire as when he was in college he released zip2 to which he would sell for a profit of 22 million. The use that same money to create x.com which would later be known as PayPal and sell that to eBay for billions. At this point, Elon could have stopped a retired yet he ventured on to achieve his goal of space travel and took the biggest risk of his lifetime SpaceX. One thing that confused me wasn’t really a critic but rather the idea that Musk wanted to continue pursuing his space dream after becoming a billionaire which has to do in part with his heavily motivated character and determined attitude but personally I would have stopped after I had made a billion dollars. One question I would Elon Musk was what kept him motivated on days that he felt uninspired and unwilling during the days that he felt that he should give up. Because we know what he thought about in college that motivated but what motivated him as a billionaire. “What important issues will affect the future of humanity?”

12A – Figuring Out Buyer Behavior No. 1

Sex - both?


Age - 15 -40


Income - lower to middle class


Ethnic - any ethnic groups


Location - Worldwide


Psychographics -


Attitudes: Those who want to learn more about tech and connect with others who also want to learn more about tech.


Interests: Those who want to learn more about the current trends of tech as well as learn more about the tech they use every day.


motivations: Those who are willing to learn more about tech.





Awareness / Information search: One thing I discovered in my interviews is that many people really like the idea of having a universal site for hotfixes. It's the idea of the convenience of being able to look up any problem encountered. As stated before it seems that many people first step in technical help is going straight to google and typing their problem. I what I need to do is make a one-stop shop for this problem.





The results from the interview are the same as before when discussing how they use technology in their everyday life the interviewer almost always the start off confident in their knowledge in how they effectively utilize the tech in their life but when being prodded for questions the holes in their understating become present. The biggest thing discovered in this series of interviews is that now I know where the site needs to focus on in order to achieve success as now it has become evident many people desire a resource they can use to search for quick help and solution to their problems.

11A – Idea Napkin No. 1

Hello, my name is Dervens Jean-Baptiste. I am a Sophomore at the University of Florida. For the past 3 three years, I have been studying computer science learning both Java and C.




Today, I am offering a solution to all of your technical problems. I want to build a website that will help the common man connect with professionals all over the world and help teach them the ins and outs of their household technologies that they use every day. The problem I see in today’s society is the idea that with technology becoming a crucial part of our society yet so many people lack the proper knowledge of how to use their “technologies” to its fullest potential. I want to create a social media/news outlet/forum that is accessible to everyone. For years I have seen all these resources on platforms that are all independent of each other but what I want to do is combine all of them onto one platform. This site would be a great resource in educating the average user as well as a place for many companies to see what features customers enjoy and what features they can live without. Similar to how Twitter connects users to their favorite celebrities, I want to make a platform that connects users to technologies and express how they feel about features whilst also using them.




I feel the biggest problems this idea faces is competing with other social media outlets as it only appeals to those who want to learn about tech which surprisingly niches.

9A – Testing the Hypothesis, Part 2

After conducting my wave 3 of interviews have successfully able to divide the general user base into 2 categories for those Who/Who’s not, What/What is not, Needs/what is it not need.

Who	What	Needs
Those who wish to learn and socialize about technology.	Easy to access, something even a toddler can use. A way for users to connect with each like they do on other social media platforms. Friend request, incentives to log in, DMs.	This is great for those who wish to learn as well as discuss tech.
Those with no interest in technology.	To create a hive mind of those promoting one good over another a.k.a a biased resource.	What this platform doesn’t need is paid reviews/ bots/ anyone who is potentially using this platform to promote their goods or need.

What I’ve learned from wave 3 the most is that most people feel as though they will be intimidated by the presence of those who know more than them. It is the idea that the site will one day become very niche and newcomers will become intimate with the site-made diction. One way I was suggested to make this more pleasant for most users is the idea of making the interface to user-friendly that it's welcoming to newcomers. The problem lies in designing a site that is welcoming while also being technical enough to incite meaningful conversations. I have found that many social media site opts for more lighter themes are they seem more welcoming than darker themed sites, but many would agree that darker themed sites look better and many including myself have installed various dark themed modes for various of sites. Another suggestion I received was the fear of impending bot accounts and self -promoters. As there is no way (yet) to stop this from happening I would just need to vignette in stopping this before it happens as once the site gets a reputation for being unreliable it will be hard for it to come back. I’ve also heard that working with bigger sites is the best way to go but the validity of that statement has not yet been proven. It is true that working with big celebrities do in fact bring in their fanbase but it does provide retention unless it gets a stream constant promotion. This is another route I will have look into for the future.

10A – Elevator Pitch No. 1

8A – Solving The Problem

This will be a follow to the opportunity explored in my last blog post but essentially I will be creating a platform that will use to discuss/learn/purchase various things technology. The idea will be a combination of reddit/amazon/news outlet. The design is going to very unique in the sense that the home page will series links to trusted articles very similar to the site hacker news( https://news.ycombinator.com/) At the top having various categories of technology which will lead to the forum on that specific topic. Each topic page will be split into two sides with the first having a list of the current topics while the other side having current tech or advancements. The idea of the thread system is that they temportay as each topic will last only 24 hours (the time limit can be extended if it becomes very popular) the idea is that people won't be talking about the same thing over and over again. If the thread remains on topic then the thread will be achieved but if it its off topic or an advertisement it will be pruned. This will keep the site clean from non topic subjects. And if there is a term that the user doesn’t know or recognize they can search it up in the address bar at the top of the thread and the user will be taken to a user created wiki on the term. The idea is that the the page will be a wiki can constantly update the product page with also a section to leave reviews as well as similar topics on the same thread. The wiki page will also serve as a mini-forum as users can post frequently asked questions and expect replies as well as post fixes to common problems or open source community projects that fix problems not addressed by the developers ( or modding).. The second side to every topic page will be an advancement section where all the latest news about a certain topic will be posted( if it's programming it will contain advancements in various open source projects). This advancement page will also include paid reviews and news articles discussing the advances in the field so for a section such as headphones/phones there have threads on the latest phones as well being able to have insight on what the media has to say on the topic. This allow users to fact check what they view in the threads as well as comapre what main paid reviews think compared to what the average customer feels about the product. The site will be maintained by ads and donations as well as hopeful some outlets to whom wish to promote their product on the site. The site will have both paid and volunteer moderators as the paid ones are mainly there for maintenance while the volunteer is run by the community meaning that the paid ones are there t make sure there is no one breaking the rules and make sure the site is running efficiently while the volunteers will people of the community who can spot spammer or those notorious for causing a ruckus in threads and determining whether or not a thread needs to be achieved or not.