Kenneth Augusto
Current Automotive Sales Consultant at CDJR of Princeton
Rutgers University: Class of 2025
B.A. in Computer Science, minor in Business Administration
B.A. in Computer Science, minor in Business Administration
In October 2019, at just 16 years old, I launched my first business reselling sneakers while in high school. With an initial $1,000 investment from my father, I grew the business at a peak to generate $90,000 in sales in the year 2022. This experience introduced me to the world of automation, using automated checkout software to streamline checkout processes and optimize my operations. Starting with sneakers, I expanded into reselling high-demand items such as trading cards, PS5 consoles, and even above-ground pools. I did this by leveraging market trends to find arbitrage opportunities.
Through this venture, I developed key business skills, including cash flow management, inventory control, and debt management. I used Excel to track operations and collaborated with online research groups to anticipate market demand. This business provided me my first hands-on exposure to running a business.
In May 2021, at 18 years old, I was a founding pillar to High Fidelity, a consignment storefront business startup, during its launch and transitioned away from online sales to face-to-face customer interactions. As part of the opening team, I played a key role in setting up the store, relocating inventory from a warehouse to the storefront, tagging all items, and managing inventory directly using Shopify.
In this role, I was responsible for all aspects of sales and inventory management. I consistently achieved exceptional sales results, frequently exceeding $1,000 in daily sales and occasionally generating $7,000-8,000 days on my own. At peak times such as holidays, we would have $15,000-20,000 days in total sales.
This experience sharpened my skills in business, particularly in areas such as inventory control, team collaboration, and customer engagement. In this position, I developed strong social and interpersonal skills and further sharpened my confidence. I found much pleasure in guiding customers through purchasing decisions and tried to achieve many long-term business relationships with customers. Additionally, I would frequently conduct inventory counts, created spreadsheets for management, and faciliated large cash deals for arbitraging sneakers and streetwear. Working at this position was a pivotal experience in sharpening my sales expertise and built an ability to thrive in a fast-paced, customer-focused environment.
In October 2019, at just 16 years old, I launched my first business reselling sneakers while in high school. With an initial $1,000 investment from my father, I grew the business at a peak to generate $90,000 in sales in the year 2022. This experience introduced me to the world of automation, using automated checkout software to streamline checkout processes and optimize my operations. Starting with sneakers, I expanded into reselling high-demand items such as trading cards, PS5 consoles, and even above-ground pools. I did this by leveraging market trends to find arbitrage opportunities.
Through this venture, I developed key business skills, including cash flow management, inventory control, and debt management. I used Excel to track operations and collaborated with online research groups to anticipate market demand. This business provided me my first hands-on exposure to running a business.
MyShell was written during Spring 2024 where I took the class Systems Programming. It is a custom shell designed to interact with the operating system using a command line interface. MyShell has built-in commands and has the ability to execute external system commands.
Spelling Checker was written during Spring 2024 where I took the class Systems Programming. The spelling checker, uses an array to store words in a library and then does binary search to check the library.
MyMalloc was written during Spring 2024 where I took the class Systems Programming. The program is a custom version of 'malloc' and 'free' and manages memory. It uses a structure 'metadata' to track each blocks size and contains its allocation status (0 or 1).
Fast Trajectory Replanning was written during Spring 2024 where I took the class Introduction to Artificial Intelligence. The program contains A* based algorithms (including repeated forward A*, repeated backwards A*, and adaptive A*) for maze solving and the program features maze generation using Depth-First Search and visualization methods for pathfinding results.
Face and Digit Classification was written during Spring 2024 where I took the class Introduction to Artificial Intelligence. We made a neural network and perceptron for training and classification tasks using digit and face datasets.
Database Manager was written during Fall 2023 where I took the class Computer Architecture. The program manages records for programming languages, operating systems, and databases through an interactive command-line interface allowing for setup, insertion, deletion, modification, and retrieval of records.
Current Computer Science student with a passion for software development and artificial intelligence. I aim to pursue a career in Software Engineering or AI Engineering!