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USF Bits & Bytes: Alumus Feature - Marc Blumenthal
December 29, 2011
Marc Blumenthal is one of the most successful graduates from the University of South Florida's Information Systems & Decision Sciences Department. In this article, Marc, the CEO of Intelladon, Marc shares his success story, as well as tips for current students.
How did you become an entrepreneur?
I have been working since I was about twelve years old. I was always doing something after school, on weekends, and during summers that involved working and earning money.
While I was in high school, I worked on engraving, polishing and sales at the jewelry store my father started the year before I was born. I later worked in restaurants (as a cook and waiter), sold Christmas trees, started a landscape nursery, and went to flea markets to sell jewelry and sunglasses.
By the time I got to the University of South Florida, I was selling handbags at the flea market and learning how to be a college student.
When Dr. Stan Birkin suggested I interview at IBM for a job at their National Accounts Division during my junior year, it sounded like a great idea. I interviewed and got the job, which I quit when I was a senior. That was the last paycheck I received from a company that I did not own.
Tell us about your early experiences as an entrepreneur.
While I was at IBM, the personal computer was very new to the market. Very few IBMers had any idea of what they were supposed to do with the PCs. When a customer in the Tampa area wanted to talk about them, they sent me in because I seemed to know the most about them at the branch. Before I knew it, I was visiting Jim Walter Corp., AC Neilsen, USF, HCC, the Polk County Sheriff’s Office, and dozens of other customers around the Tampa Bay area. They were asking for things like PC setup, training, networking, and custom programming.
Each time I went back to the branch to ask my manager how to handle these requests, she said, “We don’t do those things.” It did not take me too long to start to think that maybe I could “do those things.”
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Bits & Bytes, The newsletter of Information Systems & Decision Sciences
