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 the users, then security is not as big an issue as it is right now. Again, all banks and users would get this treatment if they are part of the portal. As an added bonus, we would use maps and potentially even machine learning to simplify bank statements. The idea is that instead of displaying a code that may or may not be readable by an average person, it just displays the actual name of the place, and can link you to the address. I might also incorporate a stock trading feature that allows you to buy and sell stock, and has useful information about investing and the trading market.

Who it's offered to

This is a two part business. Admission to the portal is offered to banks, and then we both offer the users the switch from their bank's app to the portal app. More specifically, this is offered to those people that have multiple accounts, or that have a different bank from their family or close friends and often have a hard time sending or receiving money, or anyone who just wants to take advantage of this new service.

Why customers care

As I learned during interviews even before I came up with this idea (they were actually the foundation for my idea), most people might be willing to change their mobile banking setup. Some people who may not be willing to change their setup include non tech-oriented people, and some elder people. I reiterate, some. Not all elders are bad with technology, and some that might be are still willing to do the effort to keep up with the current times.

My core competencies

In my opinion, I am just another person trying to figure out what I want to get out of life. But people have said otherwise before. Some people think that since I lived in another country, and since I had to leave what until that point was my entire life and start over, I have a sense of maturity that's not too common among people my age.
Others have said that because I have moved a lot (since moving here in 2014 I have lived in four different cities, and gone to three different high schools) I have increased environment adaptability. No matter where I am, I will settle in quickly.
Others have said that sometimes I am too nice, I try to do what's right too often, and that makes me a more ethical being. There have been many situations where I could have taken advantage of someone, or something, and yet I didn't.
Like I said, I want to think I am just someone else trying to figure life out, but I also choose to belief all of these opinions about me.

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Reflection

I must recognize that some aspects may be both strengths and weaknesses. For example, me trying to do what's right may be a good practice to apply in my specific service, like protecting user information and not sharing bank data with the other banks. But it may also hurt me from a business stand point, like maybe I can strike a deal with some other company that would greatly benefit us both, yet I choose not to because of my principles.
Other than that, I think all of these elements fit pretty tightly together. I have some background in programming, I speak two languages, which can help me make this app international, and I am actually passionate about this. Not banking, but helping people AND programming. Sure, programming is not something cool like the Matrix, it's more like staring at a screen for three hours trying to find that one line where everything went wrong, taking less than 3 minutes fixing it, and repeating until the code works. Sure, it sounds stressful, and not as cool as you might have thought originally, but I like it. And helping people makes me feel good about myself. So to be able to do something that combines both of those...

I'M IN