Alexander Blanchette is a 2020 FSU Tech Fellow interning at StarterStudio in Orlando, FL.
I have some more things to talk about since my last research post. At this stage, I have all the groundwork done to conduct interviews. For starters, I have been meeting lots of founders and serial entrepreneurs as a part of my internship who are interested in the project and want to learn more. In addition to networking, I have been developing interview questions to thoroughly obtain as much information as possible. One of the biggest concerns I have is making sure I get the most out of the interviews as being able to make the most of the time people volunteer to me is important.
Upon reflection, I can say that progress is going well, though securing interviewees has been difficult. As it stands, I have all the preliminary work done; that being interview questions, good research papers with proper citations, and a rough formatting outline. The good news is that my research topic is relevant to almost anyone because it is about family connections within entrepreneurship. The biggest challenge I am facing is getting people to take time out of their busy schedules to meet for interviews. COVID is affecting people in different ways and some are more available than others or have more immediate obligations. So far, my goal is to get 5 people interviewed at a minimum, with 7 being ideal. Having everything moved to remote will make conducting the interviews easier in theory though, as it will not be predicated on meeting in the same place.
All in all, I am excited and ready to conduct the research for this project and look forward to learning more about my topics on a personal level. By the next update, I hope to have 2 people interviewed with the rest scheduled. From that point, I can look for similarities and differences between the interviews and the research papers I plan to cite.
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