Students with enterprising aspirations crowded into the Barnett Applied Research Center at Florida Polytechnic University on Tuesday, Feb. 3, to hear directly from prominent tech entrepreneur Todd Baylis.
Baylis, who has founded and led multiple successful technological companies, shared the story of his personal pathway and the twists and turns he took to reach professional success. The session, “Breaking into Tech: Lessons from a Leading Tech Entrepreneur,” highlighted practical steps for turning technical skills into sustainable businesses.
“You can build this really awesome product for a total market of 100 customers that exist, but can that become a sustainable business?” he asked the audience. “Are they willing to pay for what you’re building versus building it for a market of 100 million people and iterating toward that?”
Baylis is the entrepreneur-in-residence at Catapult, a start-up business incubator in Lakeland, Florida. Prior to this, he was chief customer officer at Bloomerang, a nonprofit fundraising and donor-management software company, and CEO and co-founder of Qgiv, an online fundraising platform for nonprofits.
Students asked Baylis about topics such as market assumptions, funding sources, maintaining focus, and what he would have done differently.
“I would have learned how to lead earlier, how to become more diverse in my knowledge and skill sets, and read books outside my coursework and hyper-focused email encryption algorithms,” he said regarding a career do-over.
Martha Seney, career services program director at Florida Poly, attended the discussion and said it underscored the importance of providing real-world business lessons to innovative-minded students.
“Technical skills are essential for entrepreneurs, but understanding how products move from concept to customer ultimately shapes their trajectory,” Seney said. “The session with Mr. Baylis emphasized how expanding STEM students’ knowledge of the business process and market sustainability can further strengthen their ability to transform innovative ideas into sustainable solutions.”
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