Building confidence in AI

From intimidation to implementation

When Imsulen “Allen” Jamir (MBA ’26) co-founded Takum, a cost intelligence platform built to predict and prevent business cost failures, and won the UF AI Days Pitch Competition, he knew artificial intelligence could transform businesses.

What he didn’t know yet was how to optimize those AI solutions.

With $5,000 in grant funding and the first-place title, Jamir used the momentum of the competition win to build both Takum and his own AI expertise.

“Jamie Kraft at the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Center introduced us to other companies,” Jamir explained, while Dean Saby Mitra connected Jamir with fellow CEOs.

“Gators were there from the start to just really get that momentum going,” he said.

While expanding his professional network, Jamir turned to the MBA program’s course offerings to dive into an opportunity that could offer him both structured academic and real-world client AI experience.

He and fellow Takum co-founder Réka Holicsek (MBA ’26) enrolled in Clinical Associate Professor Michael A. Carrillo’s Strategic Consulting and AI-Driven Practices (MAN6930) course, a pilot course designed for MBA students that focused on strengthening consulting fundamentals while integrating agentic, AI-driven analysis for a real client.

With the introduction of agentic AI and a growing interest in the field, Jamir saw that course as an opportunity to “really get my feet wet.”

“I’m not from a tech background. I was not a coder, developer, engineer, etcetera,” Jamir explained.

For him, the AI and tech-specific jargon was especially challenging.

“Right off the bat, the client [was telling us] ‘oh, we have this data lake,’” Jamir shared. “[At the time, I thought] ‘I don’t even know what a data lake is.’”

Through asking questions and working directly with the client, “it went from scary to not so scary,” and then eventually to exciting.

While the course was outside of his comfort zone, Jamir was able to learn how to develop and build an agentic AI solution for a global technology company.

For his peers that think, “there’s no way I can code, there’s no way I can build an AI product or there’s no way I can do a solution,” Jamir believes “a class like this breaks that mentality.”

The experience gave Jamir confidence working with AI and inspired him to continue pushing his boundaries with Takum.

A natural next step

Jamir approached Senior Director of MBA Student Experience, Sarah Carlson, and Senior Lecturer, Odile Guinot, with the idea to create his own independent student-led practicum that he, Holicsek and fellow co-founder Samuel Frempong (MBA ’26) could lead.

Through the practicum, Jamir hoped to strengthen Takum.

Carlson and Guinot made it happen.

For weeks, Guinot helped the team focus on separating roles within the company, establishing a system for outreach, formulating a plan for contracting customers and developing the sales process.

“If I had to describe [the course] in one sentence, it would just be like [having] an executive coach grilling you,” he said.

Like the AI Consulting course, this student-led practicum opened Jamir’s eyes to a new way of doing business.

Equipped with this fresh perspective, the team took to the Big Idea Competition where they placed in the semifinals.

 As a part of the competition, students need to create a well-thought out business plan.

“If there was anyone who even thought about doing a startup or making a business, I think [the competition is] a great way to fully flesh out your ideas,” Jamir said. “There’s so many things that you don’t even know that you don’t know about.”

The judges’ feedback at that competition pushed them to take Takum further.

“[There], we got the idea that Takum isn’t just an aviation project; it [could] be an industry agnostic product,” Jamir explained. “It changed our trajectory.”

Looking ahead

As a recent graduate, Jamir is now focused on leading Takum into its next stage of growth.

Reflecting on his time in the MBA program, Jamir encourages students to take advantage of the resources available through both the University of Florida and the Warrington College of Business.

“UF offers a ton of AI resources,” he said, including student pack offers for programs like GitHub Pro, AI Platforms (including Claude, Gemini and ChatGPT) and Google Colab.

More importantly, Jamir stresses the importance of actually taking the initiative to use those resources.

Beyond the technology itself, he also encourages students to build strong professional relationships.

“You’re not going to get that access unless you go out of your way and ask,” he said. “Don’t be afraid to talk to the faculty.”

Through conversations, hands-on experiences and practical AI coursework, Jamir has built a foundation with confidence.

“The UF Warrington MBA program trained me to not study AI [as an] abstract, but to actually build solutions that solve problems,” Jamir said. “As a startup, that’s what we do. We notice people and problems [others] often overlook, and we provide solutions.”