Week 2: My Entrepreneurship Story

During the fall of 2014 I was lucky enough to go on the study abroad trip to Ireland for six weeks. During this time we had the opportunity to visit a number of businesses and companies in Ireland, like Google, IBM, and smaller entrepreneurs. There is a huge population of entrepreneurs in Dublin. During our visit, we students were required to form small groups where we thought of a new, innovative app idea and had to write up a business plan and think about the economical aspects and so on. I have never written a business plan, or even went as far as building an application before that time so it is an experience that I hold so heavily. Actually getting to do something rather than just saying you are going to do something truly puts what you can really accomplish with effort in perspective. 

Aside from being in the Innovation Academy here at UF and surrounding myself with peers and professors who are urging me to think more openly and with an entrepreneurial mindset, I have still always been around entrepreneurs. My father and his brother left home in Egypt at ages 17 and 19 to come to the United States where they had nothing. They built up their own bar and restaurant and now successfully own their own real estate property as well as law office. That's younger than I am now and it seemed that they had everything figured out, even though that was not the case at all. I hope to even become just half the entrepreneur my father was and is today because he illustrates what starting from the bottom can really amount to if you put in an honest effort and work hard with every rising sun. I hope to learn skills that will better be as a business person and just person in general. The future is innovation so it's important to learn to think with that mindset.