ACE Success Stories
David Rich, OfftheQuad.com, Winner of 2010 Business Plan Competition
In 2011, David Rich an FAU Accounting alumnus and winner of the 2010 FAU Business Plan Competition had raised over $450,000 in investment funding for his dynamic digital media platform business Off the Quad. OfftheQuad.com is a daily e-mail that delivers unique lifestyle content to college students, specifically about their campus. Each e-mail contains a short (approximately 250 words) and entertaining commentary about something that students would want to know. Off The Quad was founded in January 2010 by David Rich, and entered its pilot market in February 2010 at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Creating a subscriber base in the pilot market and evolving the model has included a focus on determining best practices regarding content voice; subject matter, delivery times; mechanisms, sign up methods, marketing; subscriber acquisition methods, website; email design, and advertising sales. Off The Quad will focus on 111 college towns that fulfill size and student type requirements. In a college town, 20% of the total town populations are comprised of college students and over 50% of the local businesses are geared towards the campus population. The cumulative student population of these 111 college towns is 2,084,433. Off The Quad’s goal is to achieve more than 50% penetration of this student population, resulting in a target subscriber base of 1,103,782.
Ray Leavitt
Raymond B. Leavitt IV is the Founder and CEO of Evolux Transportation, LLC, an early-stage aviation technology company located in Florida Atlantic University's Research & Development Park in Boca Raton, Florida. The company's mission is to make private air travel more affordable and accessible, as an alternative mode of transportation
Leavitt conceived the company in 2005, while completing an internship at the corporate global office of Standard Chartered Bank in Singapore. He completed the company’s preliminary Business Plan during his junior and senior years at Florida Atlantic University, and in 2006, upon graduation, established corporate headquarters in the Technology Business Incubator located within the Florida Atlantic University Research & Development Park in Boca Raton. Leavitt also participated in the 2009 FAU Business Plan Competition
Passionate about entrepreneurship, Leavitt is keenly interested in economic development, and the role that universities play in fostering entrepreneurship and technology commercialization. He was instrumental in the facilitating relationships within the College of Business and the College of Engineering and Computer Science.
Eric Schwartz
Florida Atlantic University alumnus, Eric Schwartz was one of only 50 entries chosen from a nationwide pool of applicants to compete in The Big Sell, Purdue University’s Calumet Center for Entrepreneurship’s elevator pitch competition. Schwartz’ pitch was his prototype, The E-Z Finder Golf Ball Retriever, a long-handled device with lighted camera for finding and fishing the ball out of a water hazard. The competition was on Saturday, March 26, 2011, when Schwartz had two minutes to sell his idea to some of the best and brightest business minds in the Midwest. Schwartz graduated in December 2010 with Entrepreneurship MBA degree. “Each of the courses I took in the FAU MBA entrepreneurship track played a vital role in how I prepared my business plan. My education as an MBA student important to my success in being selected to the Purdue Competition.”
Marshall Sklar
“As alumni of FAU, I am proud to be an active part of our university's forward momentum. The 2009 FAU Business Plan Competition hosted through the Adams Center for Entrepreneurship not only offered an opportunity for us to present our services, but also allowed us to network with professionals that can help us to accomplish our long term goals with the university.
A lot of gratitude must be given to FAU’s College of Business, as they are the foundation behind many of these brilliant opportunities created for FAU students, faculty and alumni. Looking back now, I can proudly say that attending Florida Atlantic University from 2001-2005 was the most memorable experience of my life so far. The university provided me with many of the necessary tools to succeed not only in the business world, but in many other aspects of life as well. I am real living proof that college is a lot more than just a schedule of classes and a pile of books; it is a window of opportunity that allows anyone to follow their dreams.
FAU has set a precedent for many of the goals that I hope to accomplish in my personal life. The university has been an inspiration as well as motivation, clearly depicting how persistence and focus can reap great rewards in the long term.
I look forward to not only being an active part of the FAU alumni body, but most importantly, giving back to a school that has offered so much to me. Integrating Student Housing off Campus as part of FAU’s growth plan is just the beginning of a long term partnership that we are beginning to build, and this can be attributed to the dedicated efforts from many of FAU’s finest members.“
Alexander Luft, “Serial Entrepreneur”
Alex Luft’s business professor for the Entrepreneurship 4024 class at FAU, Steve Stewart, calls him a “serial entrepreneur.” At 23, the double major in Marketing and Management already owns three web-based businesses. After he receives his dual degrees on Thursday, December 9 at 1 p.m., Luft will use his newfound knowledge to move those businesses from their start-up modes to “a trajectory that takes on the competitors”. During his years at FAU, Luft started his best-known business in his bedroom and funded a writing team and editor to produce content for www.gmauthority.com, an online destination for fans of General Motors. Although he founded the site when GM was in bankruptcy proceedings, Luft wasn’t worried.
“Being the strategy-oriented car guy that I am, I saw a very bright future for GM based on its upcoming product portfolio,” he explained. Recent news of GM’s rebound has confirmed Luft’s business acumen. His site includes the latest GM news, vehicle and product reviews, opinion blogs, podcasts, a discussion forum, and in-depth video reviews. His web analytics tools revealed that General Motors employees were reading the site in large numbers, and the company has allowed Luft to drive and review its entire fleet of autos. The site averages 30,000 page views each month.
Luft also is the co-founder of a web design and development and graphic design firm, Theory 16, the number 16 being his ice hockey jersey number for the two years he played at FAU. While not a typical sport for South Florida, the Parkland resident began playing ice hockey around the age of five -- in St. Petersburg, Russia, where he spent the first 12 years of his youth. Luft’s father, an American businessman, had moved to Russia to assist in Ted Turner’s Goodwill Games, an international sports competition created to ease tensions during the Cold War. He married Luft’s mother, a Russian businesswoman. Family members speak Russian in their home, and Luft also learned Spanish in Russia. Traveling around the European continent as a youth gave him an international perspective that made a profound contribution to his penchant for entrepreneurship, Luft said. Turning his passions into businesses has revved Luft’s enthusiasm for his marketing and management majors. His web site, destinationthemepark.com, features a writing team from all over the country reviewing theme parks and the industry.
We encourage students, faculty, administrators and the community to share ACE entrepreneurial success stories. Contact the Community Relations department with your story today!