[Music] [Text on screen The Bert L. and Iris S. Wolstein Entrepreneurship Summit Fostering Ohio's Entrepreneurial Leadership The Ohio State University] [Text on screen Tommy Tauer Bert and Iris Wolstein Intern, ResCon Technologies] Tommy Tauer: I worked at Rescon Technologies as a software engineer intern, and I worked on one of their projects involving the use of an inertial measurement unit in order to predict the position and orientation of a craft. To do this, I was using Rescon's own machine-learning techniques. [Text on screen Brian Gyovai Founder and CEO, ResCon Technologies] Brian Gyovai: We actually gave him a baseline project to investigate a part of machine learning that we've never looked at before, which was really excellent for both us and, I think, for him as a learning experience. Tommy Tauer: My first day was a lot of reading and catching up-just getting up to speed on the different projects that Rescon does, learning a lot more about how they do machine learning, and just a lot of other scientific topics that they're involved with. Brian Gyovai: I can see how people would be intimidated by being asked to really forge a new path, and he completely kept an open mind and just went after it. I was really happy with just how independently and self-motivated he was. Tommy Tauer: We would have morning meetings, and we'd each get-like, I'd go out and set out to do something, and I had a lot of freedom with what I could figure out or try for the day. One of the things I was working on was simulating inertial-measurement-unit data, so I got to go out on my own and look for open-source simulators to make that happen. Brian Gyovai: What he learned in overcoming those challenges is just that mindset of really digging in and not giving up. He constantly ran into roadblocks, and since we were in that virtual environment, there wasn't someone over his shoulder to constantly give him directions. He had to, on his own, figure out how to sidestep challenges or roadblocks he found. That overall mentality of never giving up- having the grit and perseverance to keep pushing toward the goal- that's going to serve him well no matter what he does. Tommy Tauer: There are a lot of different things you can do with entrepreneurship to make money when you're starting out, and you don't need something physical like a physical product. You can do something with software or a mathematical technology like machine learning to get going with your company. Brian Gyovai: Without the funding from the Wolstein Internship Program, we would be way behind on our current project. So Tommy came in and really laid the foundation for us to be able to start and be ahead on the project today. Tommy Tauer: This was my first time having the opportunity to do a software engineering internship, so I got to learn a lot about programming in the workplace as opposed to on school projects. Thank-yous to the Wolstein family and Rescon for helping fund and support my summer opportunity. [Text on screen The Bert L. and Iris S. Wolstein Entrepreneurship Summit Fostering Ohio's Entrepreneurial Leadership The Ohio State University] [Text on screen Daniel Bagin Bert and Iris Wolstein Intern, Ghostwave] Daniel Bagin: I think what I learned was really how to work in a professional environment. First off, the technical skills: technical writing, how to draft proposals, what kind of research to do, and then drafting proposals-six grant proposals-and trying to get that funding, trying to do the best job to beat out other small companies. [Text on screen Dean Zody, Founder and CEO, Ghostwave] Dean Zody: GhostWave has four patents licensed to us from The Ohio State University on radar technology. Dana's primary focus was grant writing. GhostWave has very little investment from other institutions or investment funds Daniel Bagin: It was overwhelming at first. But working in that environment with people like Dean-he answered all my questions and helped me really understand what my position there was. It wasn't that I needed to understand the concepts down to the fundamental level; it was more like: How can I implement my business minor and my engineering technical skills? Reading, writing, understanding, problem-solving-how can I implement that working for GhostWave? Dean Zody: As somebody doing this now-when I was an undergrad, got an engineering degree here, an MBA-we never wrote grants. Getting into the startup world with smaller companies, it's a big deal. There's a lot of money to be had. And it's a skill set that, if you go into an interview as a new engineer and say, "Oh, by the way, I wrote six grants during this internship program," it should make you stand out from other candidates. At least from a small-business perspective, that's a good skill to have. Daniel Bagin: It kind of changed my perspective on entrepreneurship. Like, it does take a lot to start a business, but it doesn't take as much as people think. I think it just takes an idea and a lot of work. Dean-I respect him because he had the guts to start GhostWave. Dean Zody: For three years, we've had interns from the Wheeler Wolstein Program, and they do a great job of bringing in people who are interested in entrepreneurship. And the ones we've had have just been really rock-solid. There's something about that scholarship program that ties them together. I'm not quite sure what it is, but it's a good chemistry that comes out of the scholarship program. Daniel Bagin: I think their characteristics-their personality-really influenced me in terms of, "Wow, that's something I can do if I really have a great idea," or, "If I really want to make my own business, it doesn't have to be big, but it can be anything." It's possible as long as I put in the time. [Text on screen The Bert L. and Iris S. Wolstein Entrepreneurship Summit Fostering Ohio's Entrepreneurial Leadership The Ohio State University]