Today we’d like to introduce you to Jeremy Ramos.
Hi Jeremy, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I love working with business leaders, entrepreneurs and pre-entrepreneurs that are inspired and inspire others, and that is why we founded Phiquest. However, like most people, my journey has meandered past success, failures and some dead-ends.
My first meaningful work after high school was as a 52-D with the US Army. I enlisted when I was 17 and skipped my prom to get to basic training as quickly as possible. From what I heard later, I did not miss much at prom. That was the beginning of an 8-year career with the Army that took me to various posts in the US and Germany.
From 1995 to 1999, I attended the University of South Florida and earned the degree of Bachelor in Computer Science and Engineering. I was not particularly good at math, but I was curious about computers and technology and developed a passion for applying my creativity to this space. In 1997, I was accepted to Ronald E. McNair Scholars Program and went to Cornell University as part of a research project into Neural Networks and Artificial Intelligence. At the time, AI did not have the popularity it has today. It was a pioneering project developing facial recognition classifiers that hinted at the controversial racial biases produced by AI today. I overcame my lack of natural math ability with hustle and ultimately did well in all of my subjects, graduating Cum Laude in my class.
In the spring of 2000, I started a 16-year long career at Honeywell Aerospace as a Systems Engineer. In those 16 years, I worked on many projects and filled various roles for Honeywell. Perhaps the most interesting was that of Technical Director for the EAFTC program funded by NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The team I led developed high-performance computers for space applications. The easiest way to describe it is by thinking of a supercomputer and then thinking about how to put one on a spacecraft in orbit. It was the kind of project that only a true computer/space nerd could love, and I loved every minute of it. Only a few years after that project I got the entrepreneur bug and started to seriously consider building my own company. That was the beginning of a journey of personal growth that I could not even imagine.
After numerous false starts with MLMs, naive mobile app projects, and just fumbling around like a toddler trying to figure out how to be an effective entrepreneur, I connected with a startup called Titan4Games. I was a paid consultant for Titan4Games, helping them develop games. Titand4Games was in the declining business of making arcade machines and to me, every screen on an arcade machine looked like an opportunity for an advertisement. Since I had previously owned and operated a digital signage company, this was my point of view. This idea ultimately led to a founding patent for Prize-Based Digital Advertising and the birth of a new company called Priatek.
The profile of the Priatek startup rose quickly. Our team moved from a very modest light industrial space in Pasco County and into the tallest building in downtown St. Petersburg. We literally got our name on the building at the time Priatek Plaza. In the span of a few years Priatek raised more than $10 million dollars in capital and I led the successful implementation of numerous technologies in support of the prize-based advertising business model. In the spring of 2018, Priatek pivoted toward crypto and started development on a project called VendXor.
The idea behind VendXor was to eliminate the slow and expensive process of clearing retail discount coupons by replacing it with a blockchain-based solution. Some might say we got swept up in the crypto craze, but the truth is the concept was sound and aligned well with the Priatek business model. Little did we know that in less than 12 months of starting VendXor it would bring Priatek into default and destroy the amazing team we had worked so hard to build.
The VendXor project was a double-edged sword for the Priatek team. It allowed the team to continue to raise capital but it also attracted a large number of new players with conflicting interests and hidden agendas. The details of what transpired are the subject of another story. Suffice to say that by December of 2018, Priatek was out of money and in a legal situation that precluded the company from raising new capital. I personally had to dismantle the most talented and dedicated team I had ever assembled. It was gut-wrenching to be the one to deliver the pink slips to the team. It was truly an experience I wish on no one, but from that bottomless pit of failure, I knew we all had to rise and move on.
By February of 2019, I was back in the consulting space and this time I have the benefit of the lessons from Priatek. I had earned the equivalent of a PhD in entrepreneurship and learned almost all of the ways not to run a startup. My original goal was to build a team and a consulting company dedicated to helping product and service developers get their ideas to market quickly while avoiding the common pitfalls that beset startups and new product teams. This was the birth of Phiquest.
I started by recruiting my most trusted developer Mourad El Bidaoui. Years earlier, I hired Mourad onto the Titan4Games team when he graduated from the University of South Florida. Within weeks Mourad and I had secured multiple projects and gotten into a groove. From the outset, we wanted to build a team and a company that we could be proud of, but most importantly, we wanted to bring positive net value to society. This is why Phiquest is founded on a system of core values that form the foundation of everything we do. Since then, our team has grown and our mission has become clear.
The Phiquest mission is to serve and partner with innovators in developing their big ideas into products with business models that are profitable and provide a positive net value for society. If you have a burning desire to bring your vision to reality, welcome home – Welcome to Phiquest.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I consider myself an innovator, but what does that mean. To me, innovation is about holistic thinking, it is about looking at problems from many perspectives and being sensitive to our own biases. This is why when I approach a new problem, I start by checking my ego at the door and surrounding myself with the most diverse team possible. The more diverse your team, the better your chances at finding the most creative solution to a problem.
Is there a quality that you most attribute to your success?
By far, it has to be keeping a positive outlook while at the same time being disciplined about gathering facts. To develop new things, you have to believe that you can do it, and you have to mute the voices telling you that you can’t. However, you have to also be subordinate to facts. In the early stages of developing an idea, it is difficult to differentiate the crazy and from the genius. So to start, you have to go on faith, but faith alone will not get you to successful outcomes. The second ingredient is facts. Your team has to become diligent at conducting experiments and collecting facts that support your vision. When those facts don’t support the vision, then that could be a signal to pivot towards a more promising direction.
Pricing:
- Ideas – $0.00
- Good Ideas – $1,000.00
- Great Ideas – $10,000.00
Contact Info:
- Email: jeremy@phiquest.com
- Website: phiquest.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/phiquestco/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/phiquestco
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/phiquestco/
