The DCP Entrepreneurship Club held the DCP Alumni Entrepreneurs Networking Summit, which featured keynote speaker Jon Antevy, co-founder of e-Builder, and a panel of DCP Gator100 recipients.
Our students were given valuable advice about being entrepreneurs in the professions they choose.
All three panel speakers, Antevy (BDES ’93, MSBC ’94), Sarah Cain (MID ’07) and Allen Gast (BSBC ’00) answered questions and gave advice, including the importance of learning all about the financial aspects of owning a business.
Antevy converted his master’s thesis research of multimedia and Internet applications for the construction industry into the business plan that launched e-Builder. He and his brother, Ron Antevy, a UF engineering alumnus, developed and grew the company over the last 20+ years.
And in the panel discussion, Antevy credited his brother’s business acumen for helping with e-Builder’s growth. “He basically took what I created on the front end as far as a lot of the business development side and he took that process and made it repeatable and transferable and documented what was working, and he really helped us scale the business.”
Sarah Cain owns her own interior design firm in Gainesville. Before she got her master’s degree in interior design, she and her husband owned several businesses so she already learned a lot about the financial aspects of being an entrepreneur.
“You really need to know the financials,” Cain said. “You need to understand how to make a profit. That you need to make a profit and there are expenses and the money coming in doesn’t mean you’re making that money.”
Allen Gast owns his own construction company and stressed to the students the importance of learning about the financial side of being a business owner now.
“If you were going to start a company, go take accounting classes, business accounting classes,” Gast said. “Understand that world.”
And our students now understand that world better thanks to the great advice these three alums gave them.
“Our event was a platform for current students to connect with DCP alumni leaders,” DCP Entrepreneurship Club vice president Sophia Palombo said. “The panel discussion, Jon Antevy’s presentation on sales and opportunities for informal networking helped answer our questions about the many opportunities and challenges of entrepreneurship.”