平整了

马科斯·莫拉莱斯25岁, 危地马拉市的大三学生, 危地马拉, remembers feeling like he couldn’t find his footing as a first-year on 圣澳门金沙赌城线上游戏’s campus. “It was a struggle to go from being so close with my family to only talking to them through the phone,他说.

It was one of his cherished phone calls with his dad that shifted his perspective. “有一天我给他打了电话, 他说, ‘I heard that 澳门金沙线上赌博官网 is one of the best universities for 创业. You should go check the program out,’” 莫拉莱斯 says. “这对我来说改变了很多.”

莫拉莱斯 looked to combine his newfound curiosity for 创业 凭借他的技术 计算机科学. 作为一个青少年, he had a talent for coding that led him to attend numerous summer camps and complete a degree at the Bloom Institute of Technology to hone his skills.

“I always wanted to do some level of professional coding because I enjoyed the idea of picking apart a problem and understanding how to fix it,他说. A 计算机科学 major, 莫拉莱斯 never anticipated his passion for 创业. “我完全没有准备,他笑着说, “but I knew I wanted to bring value to others’ lives.”

莫拉莱斯 came up with an idea that could help people in their fitness journeys, something he had struggled to navigate since starting college. “Freshman year, I was not my healthiest,他说. “我开始做一些研究, and I realized there are a lot of fitness apps out there, but the problem is they will give you a one-size-fits-all solution.”

莫拉莱斯受到启发创办了BFit, a start-up that customizes workout plans for the user, modeled after how personal trainers work.

“教练能带来什么??莫拉莱斯问道。. “他们认识你。. 他们知道你的细节, 他们知道什么对你有用, and they fine-tune your workouts based on that. I wanted to use AI to offer that service at a much cheaper cost,他说.

Artificial intelligence (AI) played a crucial role in developing BFit, 莫拉莱斯 explains. “编码是有限的。. 当你写代码的时候, it’s like carving out a path and you have to take into account every possible path. That’s hard to do with human fitness journeys,” 莫拉莱斯 says. Instead, AI generates these paths based on user input. 

莫拉莱斯 also views AI as a tool that can be used to level the playing field. “It gives the capability for people who don’t have as many resources to bridge gaps. I don’t have the funding Google has or a giant team of developers, 但有了人工智能, I’m capable of giving value to the user at a much cheaper cost.”

莫拉莱斯进入了2023年 路易斯·H. Stumberg New Venture Competition Seed Round, where student-led teams pitch their start-ups to a panel of judges in hopes of receiving funding. After BFit was selected to advance to the finals, 莫拉莱斯, along with WooJin Han ’26 and Mollee Priddy ’24, spent the following summer in the 澳门金沙线上赌博官网 Accelerator, a program where students refine their start-ups and build connections with local businesses.

马科斯·莫拉莱斯25岁, one of the founders of BFit, at the 2023 路易斯·H. Stumberg New Venture Competition Seed Round.

While BFit did not win the Stumberg Competition, 莫拉莱斯 learned a lot from the experience and has applied this knowledge to a new project, FitQuest. 保持ing motivated to work out is a huge hurdle, 所以FitQuest带来了乐趣, enjoyable component of video games to fitness.

“We’re using the same feedback system as BFit, but we are game-ifying everything,” 莫拉莱斯 says. “We’re letting your progress be correlated to a video game character, and the only way that character will get stronger is if you are consistent [in exercising].”

Currently, FitQuest is in its prototypical stage. “We onboarded 20 users, and all of them are still active. They do a daily quest based on the things they want to accomplish, 比如完成10,000 steps or eating a meal that has 45 grams of protein. Based on those quests, their character gains abilities,” he explains.

莫拉莱斯 dedicates most of his spare time to getting FitQuest off the ground. His team just advanced from the 2024 Stumberg Competition and will compete in the finals in the fall. 莫拉莱斯 remains inspired by one of his 创业 professor’s advice on starting his own business: “You can spend your whole life working to make someone else’s dream come true, or you can work to make your own dream come true.”