Life doesn’t always go the way we think it will. For Jason Henja the unexpected was a bout of walking pneumonia that forced him to drop out of school at WMU.
Since then he’s had to get even more serious than he was about his entrepreneurial enterprises. His first business is the Virtual Retail Solution.
Henja says what differentiates his solution from similar smart phone products is it mimics the way people shop. The system captures panoramic images, creates an augmented reality for every product, and sends it to a phone based on the customers current location in the store. It allows them to interact and connect with the products they are seeing, in the grocery aisle, at their favorite store.
One of the things it does is give users a way to keep digital receipts. The company runs algorithms on this data to give customers the ability to delve into their personal finances.
This data can also be used by stores to identify and forecast buying trends, with the goal of more accurate inventory ordering.
The virtual retail solution also can keep track of what you are purchasing and have your goods already to check out without having to scan each item.
Henja is one of those kids who took his parent’s TV apart and put it back together at a young age and built his first computer at age 10. Now his company,
Virtual Retail Solution, is in a startup phase.
He also has a
list of ideas that keeps growing. It’s up to 24 different ideas that he encourages others to pursue. One is to use recycled computers to heat homes. Another is a website called the happiest place on earth where people are asked: How happy are you (on a 1 out of 10 scale)? Measure the results and use a map of the world to display them.
"If people find inspiration in this list, I think it would be cool to share ideas with them," Henja says. "If I died without sharing these ideas then no one would ever see them. My goal is to help as many people as I can do good things for others."
Writer: Kathy Jennings, Second Wave
Source: Jason Henja, Virtual Retail Solution
Enjoy this story?
Sign up for free solutions-based reporting in your inbox each week.