Member Monday: Elezar Tonev, COO & Co-Founder
Milestones/Accomplishments: Elezar has achieved many accomplishments, like becoming a state and national champion winner in Engineer Design with the Technology Student Association, winning the USF Fintech Business Plan Competition, and placing as a finalist with the Florida Blue Health Innovation competition.
Favorite Influential Person: Jeff Bezos- Elezar admires his perseverance in pursuing his dream despite pushbacks. Furthermore, he commends Bezos’ attention to detail in perfecting one component of his business before expanding and adding another. Together, Elezar believes these traits prove that with a dream and a determination to make that dream a reality, anything is truly possible.
Favorite Company: Markforged, an industry leader in 3D printing technology, is Elezar’s favorite company. With a market that has seen rapid expansion over the last decade, Markforged has been able to create something truly unique with their printing technology that has allowed many companies to adopt additive manufacturing. Elezar believes the company’s push for innovation and attention to detail in their products is very inspiring.
Struggle: Elezar’s biggest founding struggle includes learning the importance of specializing and delegating work amongst everyone so that nothing was left uncompleted and so that there was never a task being worked on by four people. Elezar states, “It is assumed that doing everything alone may be easier; however, it often limits creativity and sometimes prevents the team from finding a better solution to the task at hand.
Why?: Elezar believes that it is very unfortunate to see great ideas be stuck on the launchpad; many times this happens because product development is often too expensive for many inventors. That said, RDM was founded with the vision to streamline this lengthy and expensive process in order for those grounded ideas to finally see light. He believe that the more innovation the world sees the better it will become.
End Goal: “My end goal is to leave a legacy for my family and to create a company that has the potential to grow for many decades after my time has passed”, says Elezar.
2020 Goal: Elezar’s personal goal includes graduating from the University of Florida with a degree in Mechanical Engineering, while his business goal includes doubling RDM’s revenue.
Advice For Future Entrepreneurs: “If I could go back and give advice to someone interested in becoming and entrepreneur, I would first tell them sit down and look at your business idea from 1000 ft and identify what tasks need to be completed to bring your business to life. Once you identify all of these tasks separate them into categories: important & urgent, unimportant & urgent, important but not urgent, and not important and not urgent. Then make a plan on how you will begin to complete these tasks. Often this is the most frustrating part, but forcing yourself to identify these tasks and creating a plan will pay large dividends in the future.”