My name is Taylor Miller and I write to you from beautiful Santa Monica California where the Small Business Internship Fund has allowed me to intern with Option3, a company that takes medical technology from concept to commercialization. At Option3, it is all about assessing each opportunity and mitigating risk to maintain as much control as you can within the business model, which I think is fascinating. This kind of operation takes vision. That is where my boss and Wabash Alumnus James Dreher comes in. One of my favorite quotes and mottos to live by is “Always know if the juice is worth the squeeze.” In this industry, you have to be fully aware of what else is out there and how you are going to make your product the number one product among its competitors. That means researching every facet of the operation before pursuing it financially or building it in the workshop. This has been my job for the past month; to assess the squeeze. I am a venture analyst and I research the market size, regulatory path, risk load, reimbursement, ramifications of device failure, and even intellectual property. Patent searches have become my enemy, but I have learned so much about the precision and understanding of leverage needed to be an entrepreneur. Aside from researching, I have spent my summer here traveling up to San Jose for a business meeting one week and the next going into surgery to observe laparoscopic specimen removal. This internship has in no way been one-dimensional. I have been meeting with and discussing current projects with engineers, doctors, and finance experts where I am the only one in the room without a PhD or MBA. I was kind of hoping some of their genius would rub off on me.
So of course this internship has offered an opportunity to absorb and learn very valuable life lessons as well as real world knowledge, but I would not be doing this post any justice if I didn’t mention my summer outside of work. Santa Monica is very different from anything I’ve experienced in Indiana. Back home things are simple and quiet. Here, the traffic never stops and the people are even more non-stop. That’s what I like about living here though; there are so many motivated individuals. It doesn’t matter if the goal any given person has in mind is a productive one or not, they are driven to achieve it. Street performers line the streets when the sun goes down, and when it comes back up you can count on a herd of fitness enthusiasts running the boardwalk. I’ve also made my way into the city of Los Angeles for a Dodger baseball game and to a Street League Skateboarding competition, which is the professional league for skaters. It seems like there is always something going on here; in fact, tonight there is a concert on the beach that I’ll be attending after work. Thanks for reading, but now I should get back to work.
