From Idea to Scale: What It Really Takes to Build and Grow a Startup

There’s no single playbook for building a startup, and that’s exactly what our Co-Founder and COO, Jason Quintana, will be sharing at the University of Central Florida as part of UCF’s Startup Skills Speaker Series.

Jason’s journey into leadership and entrepreneurship hasn’t followed a traditional path. It has been shaped by what he often calls obsessiveness and morbid curiosity, a constant drive to dig deeper, question assumptions, and take ownership of outcomes, even when something technically “wasn’t his job.” When building a startup with minimal team members, or completely bootstrapped, you are going to wear multiple hats. Scale is impossible if you dont become a master of even your least favorite and weakest skills.

In his upcoming talk, “From Idea to Scale: What It Really Takes to Build and Grow a Startup,” Jason will reflect on that mindset through two very different but deeply connected experiences. One is helping scale OneRail into a leading last-mile fulfillment platform, a series C venture backed business with over $100 Million in funding since he joined as one of the first 20 employees in 2021. The other is co-founding Community Tech to modernize how communities operate, a completely bootstrapped business he began with friends with 0 idea on how to build a business.

At OneRail, Jason has been part of scaling a complex, high-growth organization that supports hundreds of thousands of deliveries per day across North America. That experience sharpened his belief that growth doesn’t come from staying neatly inside a role. It comes from obsessing over details, chasing down inefficiencies, learning far outside your comfort zone, and treating the business like it’s your own.

Those same lessons carried directly into Community Tech.

What started as a frustration with long visitor lines quickly exposed a much larger problem. Fragmented systems, outdated technology, and communities lacked the tools to operate efficiently. Instead of building a narrow fix, Community Tech was designed to connect people, platforms, and processes while incentivizing better behavior through rewards. The throughline between both journeys is the same. Build to real pain, move fast, and never stop learning.

Jason’s session will challenge students to think differently about growth. It will explore the difference between being an employee who completes tasks and an entrepreneur who owns outcomes. It will also focus on deciding what kind of business you actually want to build and why true scale requires more than casual interest.

We’re excited for Jason to share an honest, behind-the-scenes look at that journey with the UCF community and to connect with students who are curious enough to ask, “If this were my company, what would I do?”