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Showing posts from June, 2019

What's My Secret Sauce?

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My Human Capital I've lived in 2 different countries, moved 5 times in 4 years, gone to three different high schools, and worked at 3 places in 3 years. I have learned to adapt to my environment quickly. Whether it is a new school, neighborhood, or workplace, I can adapt and settle in no time. I've noticed the importance of speaking multiple languages more and more in recent times. I already speak two: English and Spanish. Languages come really easy to me, I just haven't gotten around to diving into a third one. But I know if I try, I can learn it quickly. Because of my constant change of environment, and because of my upbringing, I have a sense of maturity some people describe as "beyond my age". This means that, for example, I never look for any "beef" with anybody, regardless of where I am. I always try to do what's right. No matter where I am, I try to help people, or just be nicer than I need to be. It's mostly little

Figuring Out Buyer Behavior 2.0

Segment: [Young]* Adult Account Holders *Primarily between 25 - 35, but if they are 18-24 and have an account they apply too. Interviews: After conducting the interviews, I learned that when someone wants to open a new bank account, they consider the banks with a branch closest to either their home or workplace. This is to choose the bank that best fits their needs, while still being a reasonable distance away. Some customers do care about their mobile banking experience, others see it only as a bonus. For those who already have accounts, and aren't happy with their current app, they consider going to the bank in person just to save time. Customers' preferences may differ based on their banks. Some prefer using the app because they can do it all through it, others prefer going to the bank because their app doesn't have some features, and they don't feel like spending 10 minutes or longer trying to figure it out. This specific segment in particular is mo

Halfway Reflection

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Tenacious Behaviors Throughout this first half of the semester, I have developed the habit of working ahead. Whenever you have just a little extra time, work ahead. For example, I create my posts about a week in advance. And through the week, I start adding the content and formatting it to how I want it to look. But since this is not my only class, I have to always be doing it on the side. So if I get to a class early, or if I'm in the computer lab and the T.A hasn't arrived yet, I'll work on the blog. But always work ahead, future you will thank you. Also work smarter. This doesn't mean work less, but change the way you work. If you've always done something a certain way, and never really got the hang of it, switch it up and see if the results change. Find the best way to work that suits you. Staying Motivated There are always those times when you just don't want to keep trying. Whether it is in a math class, or maybe a physics class, or even

Reading Reflection 1.0

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Grinding It Out by Raymond A. Kroc DISCLAIMER: I HAD NO IDEA THE PICTURE WOULD DISPLAY THAT BIG FROM THE HOME PAGE. MY BAD! Thoughts On Ray Kroc Before reading Ray Kroc's autobiography, I had watched the movie The Founder , which tells the story of how Ray Kroc got to meet the McDonald brothers, and became their head of franchising, eventually over-powering them and buying them out, which enabled him to legally rename the company "The McDonald's Corporation", a company that had originally nothing to do with McDonald's (other than, well, opening McDonald's restaurants across the country). And after doing both, what surprised me the most was his drive to be successful. It was never ending. He was in a fairly stable position twice (paper cups, and then the "Multimixer") before he took the leap into McDonald's franchising. But I also admired this trait. Countless people are complacent nowadays. They get to a stable place in life, and

Figuring Out Buyer Behavior 1.0

Segment Chosen: [Young] Adult Account Holders Interview Findings: During the interviews I learned that most people didn't realize they had the need for a better mobile bank app until they encountered a situation in which they either didn't know how to do something, or straight up couldn't do it. A recently married couple with accounts in different banks wanted to merge both into a joint checking account, and open a joint savings account. While the latter was no different to opening a new account, the former was slightly more complicated. One of them had to be added to the other's account, then close their current account in their other bank, and once they got their cash/check payout, deposit that in the joint account. While not necessarily hard, they would have liked an easier way, maybe online. I also learned that some people realize they need something better when they want to start investing and they try downloading one of the many investing apps, just to find

Idea Napking 1.0

Who I am My name is Carlos Valencia. I am a first year Computer Science major at U.F. I was born in Peru, and lived there until I was 14, when I moved to Tampa, FL. Some of my talents are information analysis, fast learning, work environment versatility, and languages. I want to become a software developer, whether I am an independent one or I end up working for a tech company. If I was to launch this business, I would hope this was a starting point for my developer career. What I offer I am offering an app that works as a portal to mobile banking. From this portal, you can manage all your accounts as if you were using your bank's app. This will effectively standardize mobile banking across all banks, giving all banks access to the same features, and increasing accessibility. It will also increase security, with banks making their data private to sources other than the portal. If access to the portal is successfully encrypted, as is data transfer between the servers and

Elevator Pitch 1.0

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Welcome to the best bad elevator pitch video in the World Wide Web You can also watch the video on ☛ YouTube ☚ By the way, at the end I say "26% in Europe", but the mic cut off right at the end. Pitch Transcript: Most everyone has a bank account, and I'm willing to bet that most people with a bank account have their bank's app in their smartphone. Unfortunately I'm also willing to bet that most of those people would probably improve something on it, like more control over investments, more flexibility in credit card payments, and just easier access to account information overall. So today I would like to, if nothing else, at least introduce the idea of a global bank portal, that gives you easy access to any information in your account, in multiple accounts, and eliminates the need to download separate apps per bank. So you just download the one app, and you can control all of your accounts as if you were in person in the bank but better and eas

Testing The Hypothesis 2.0

Who:   Actually, banks seem to be the most likely to fall out of the boundary. After interviewing a couple of bank employees and former employees, I found out that banks want to stay as independent as possible from one another. They would rather have less customers but be independent than be partnered with a much bigger bank and have 10 times as many customers and risk going down if anything happens to that bigger bank. I also interviewed an elderly couple, and I realized that there are people who don't particularly have more than one account, and even some who don't have an account at all. And so for these people, release of a global portal would not benefit them. In fact, if this portal became the new standard, it might even hurt them, since they would be forced to learn something new, or not handle their finances themselves, instead having a close friend or relative helping them manage their finances. What:   While I initially described it as a need to improv

Solving The Problem

About The Opportunity The opportunity that I saw was in banking. Since the release of smartphones, banks have released their mobile apps to provide a better, more personalized experience to each individual customer. Banking apps allow customers to access account balance, view statements online, edit their account information, deposit checks electronically, and more. However, not every bank is the same, and therefore not every app has the same features. Take Wells Fargo for example. You can't dispute a transaction from the app, but instead you have to log in to the Wells Fargo website to do so. Finding your account information, like the account number and routing number, is not intuitive, and understanding the transactions is not always easy. That's just Wells Fargo. Since not every app is the same, some other bank apps are more intuitive at these tasks, but compromise in others And, security is critical in banking, and also hard to administer in electronic devices. Too

Testing The Hypothesis 1.0

⛤⛤⛤This assignment was posted a week late⛤⛤⛤ The Opportunity: And improved mobile banking experience by using a globalized portal to access accounts from any bank, and even access multiple bank accounts from within the same portal account; improving security for users, and providing a more comprehensive "transaction history" breakdown The Who: Banks and bank customers with at least one account. The Wat : Accessibility and security could be improved. Understanding of transactions could be more comprehensive The Why: Potentially weak security, excessive app diversity Testing The Who: The who is made up of users with bank accounts, the more accounts the better. Banks are also part of the who, since they would be getting mobile banking features, and potentially more customers. We might be able to add tech-oriented people, whether they have multiple accounts or just one. Testing The Wat : The what would be exactly what features to implement. Like, for e