The idea of one day starting a company of my own, during my early college years, spawned from frequent discussions with my close friend of mine, Joseph Rasamny. Joe and I always had the entrepreneurial bug. We had talked about the notion of running our own company as early as our sophomore year. During our senior year, an exciting project opportunity had fallen into our laps through a mutual friend. A local medical firm was in need of a Windows based network in order to support their expanding office requirements. It was at that time that Joe and I decided to take on the project together. Simultaneously, it only seemed to make sense to formally start up a company

Back in October of 2001, I co-founded Paradox Solutions, LLC along with Joe and 3 other partners (also college friends). During this time, we had discussed our motivations behind starting Paradox Solutions to a handful of professors in the "Management Information Systems" (MIS) Program. Our names quickly became familiar to all students and professors in the school of business as the "Paradox Guys". It was an exciting time.

While in the early stages of planning our company's business model, we leaned heavily on several professors in the MIS program for guidance and support. Two of the most supportive professors were Dr. Michael Gendron and Dr. Leslie Leong. Both professors offered valuable insight to ensure we never strayed of the "right" track. Professor Gendron, in particular, was of great assistance, as he himself had run his own consulting company earlier in his career. He knew what trick to leverage and what pitfalls to avoid.

Several months into starting Paradox Solutions, we diligently worked on our business plan and slowly built up our client base. Also around that time we moved our operations out of the dorm room and into an office. CCSU officials had connected us with a local business incubator facility, Institute for Technology and Business Development (ITBD) that would take us in. ITBD provided us a professional facility, access to business resources and had immediately expanded our business network. Click here to see a press release introducing Paradox Solutions to the neighborhood.

While at ITBD, we immediately began thinking of a "big idea" product that we could develop and market, in addition, to our core revenue generating competencies. It was around this time that we had begun developing a golf management system called "X-Golf." X-Golf was a system that would help golf course management on several fronts.

First, it would increase the customer experience; users would be able to interact with an intuitive, touch screen, interface retrofitted directly to the call cart, which would support score tracking, real time communication back with the club house. This would allow users to order food and beverage in real time from anywhere on the course amongst a slue of other benefits.

Secondly, X-Golf would have housed a GPS tracking device in each golf cart that would be linked back to the club house. This would allow course managers the ability to track the speed of carts and ensure golfers moved at an aggressive pace to avoid bottlenecks. The quicker the pace, the more golfers a course can squeeze into a given day. Of course, a higher turnover would translate into increased profitability for the course.

These are only a handful of the services that could have been leveraged through the X-Golf System. To learn more about the X-Golf System, Click Here

During the development of the X-Golf system, we had engaged numerous golf consultants, courses, investors and golf professionals. All were extremely excited about the idea as they had sensed it was the future of golf management. It was early in the game and at the time, there were only 3 main competitors, all of which used a completely different technological solution then we had developed. We had reached a point, through a mutual business partner, where we had peaked the interest of several advertisers such Samsung International and American Express. They just wanted to see a working X-Golf System on a golf course before any commitments were made. We had worked hard to develop the X-Golf application but our ultimate downfall was the lack of funding to procure the necessary hardware required for a pilot course. The interest was there but we just couldn't find the funding we needed to move forward. It was a sad day when we all finally realized nothing would materialize from X-Golf.

Roughly one year into Paradox, it was clear to all of the partners that we'd all need to individually go out on find full time employment. We have invested too much time into X-Golf and our residual income from other services rendered were not enough to support everyone. Little bye little, we all found jobs. I tried to keep the business going once we were all employed but I think the collapse of Paradox Solutions left the partners feeling discouraged and perhaps unwilling embark on the same risk again. It was sad to stray away from my business colleagues and friends but the total entrepreneurial experience was invaluable one. One that I would not trade for anything in this world.

 >> back