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Latika Vyas
Latika Vyas

The Last Mile is a 5-year old startup founded by Chris Redlitz and Beverly Perenti that aims to help incarcerated individuals gain business and entrepreneurship skills. Redlitz was initially invited to speak to a group of prisoners at San Quentin State Prison in California about business. He was impressed by the prisoners' engagement and interest in entrepreneurship. This inspired him to co-found The Last Mile to provide entrepreneurship education programs to prisoners to help reduce recidivism rates. The organization recruits volunteers from universities and companies to teach classes inside prisons. Its goal is to help prisoners start their own businesses upon release and successfully reintegrate into society.

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Business Review Report on The Last Mile Latika Vyas 13499881 MBA
Summary This Business Report is been developed to understand different aspects of entrepreneur and entrepreneurship. I have taken the reference from E-corner, having enormous interviews of entrepreneurs and business innovators all over the world. In the process of my research I selected The Last Mile: From Lockup to Start up. Its a five year old start up by, Chris Redlitz and his wife and business partner Beverly Perenti, Its an American based company incorporated now with the vision of social cause. This company has a different though interesting drive, in simple words this company is helping those who are behind the bars, understanding they are not bad person rather they have made bad decisions in life. There are many organizations and companies working for social cause all over the world but The Last Mile is totally different. In this Report I will cover three vast topics based on my investigation on this company I.e What makes someone to be an entrepreneur; My learning on entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship; how this interview has impacted me. i
Introduction The Last Mile, started from the prison of California, San Quentin state prison, where the founder visited to talk to few men in prison about business and entrepreneurship, . I was invited to San Quentin to speak to a group of men about business and entrepreneurship. I had never been in a prison before. From The Interview.. That first day when I first arrived, I was ushered through a series of gates until I arrived at the courtyard, at the center of the prison. On my left, the adjustment center which houses all death row inmates in California and some of the most notorious criminals in California. On my right, the Catholic Chapel, which was surrounded by a well-manicured garden. I was, as they say in San Quentin, at the gate between heaven and hell. I was led down a paved road past the guard towers into the lower yard where hundreds of men dressed in blue were exercising, milling around or playing checkers (Ledritz, 2013) The Last mile has supported as groundswell for criminal justice in America. The small talk for 30 minutes turned to 2 hours conversation, the interest of those men in blue was the most attentive audience Chris has ever seen. He was amazed with the participation, preparation and commitment of those men in blue, it made him think that he work every day with young entrepreneur why not to work with them. In California, they spend more for prisons than higher education. The average cost per prisoner to tax payers $45,000. The rate of recidivism exceeds 60%. So by the time many men are released from San Quentin, as taxpayers we've already invested nearly $1 million for their incarceration. But without rehabilitation, many of them will return. That's a bad investment. If we could reduce recidivism by just 5%, billions of dollars could be saved in the next 10 years alone. But without rehabilitation, these problems will persist. (Ledritz, 2013) What makes someone to be entrepreneurs rather is an employee or professional? According to GEM, The GEM data is used to produce a larger model connecting a series of Entrepreneurial Framework Conditions (EFC) to the TEA, entrepreneurial aspirations, technical progress, GDP growth, and other macro economics variables. The EFCs reflect institutional factors with theoretic connections to entrepreneurship and are produced using data from the NES. The original GEM model was revised to reflect stages of development to generalize the model's explanation to all countries. The methodology in doing so was based on a paper by Michael E. Porter, Jeffrey D. Sachs, and John W. MacArthur to reflect the differences in needed institutions at different points in a country's economic development. (GEM) According to the requirements of GEM 1) Financing system: The Last Mile has two partners each having their share of investments. 2) Government Public Policies: The Last Mile working for social cause, under the regulations of USA government and with their support. 3) Government Public program: Providing support and path to the prisoners, when they come out they will be a better person with new life. 4) Education and training: They have many volunteer from highly reputed universities, companies support, government support as well 5) R&D transfer: Technology oriented, prisoners dont have internet in their pockets like us, they have been taught social media. 6) Commercial and professional infrastructure: going to prison where the building is provided to teach prison students. 2
7) Internet market openness: basically they have been given exposure to social media for example one of the graduate from The Last Mile has received the award for best answer from Quora. 8) Physical Infrastructure and services: teaching and building path inside prison. 9) Cultural and social norms: The Last Mile is totally for social cause. Entrepreneurs are humans like us; they are just challenging the market with the odd ideas, and creating market for themselves. They can be necessity driven or vision driven. They have weird ideas developed inside the society and for the society needs. So many of you may not be old enough to remember the movie, but if you remember My Fair Lady, Henry Higgins is teaching how to go from a Cockney accent to a proper British accent. So that night, I walked in class singing 'the rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain.' And they thought I was out of my mind, but we had Phil start to sing his presentation. And when it came to demo day, he was flawless. And some of the people at San Quentin came up to me and said either Phil has been reincarnated or he has a twin brother, but that's a type of response that we needed to see that it really resonated. The second one was engagement. Beverly and I can do this ourselves to some degree, but we really need volunteers and people from the outside to bring their expertise in as well. So as we would in business, we try to find those key influencers in the market that would really help us to teach, but also to share the message. So we invited entrepreneurs in, some from our portfolio and some from the outside. (Ledritz, 2013) Conclusion After watching the interview of The Last Mile, I can defiantly say I am amazed that how small thought can change the life of others and more impressive when you start seeing world in a different way. Its not easy to go inside the prison and get the inspiration to start up a company to educate prisoners so they can have better life when they come out. It has been so much riskier like risk to life being among criminals, insecurity of failing, convincing people, authorities and who all not. There are many different organizations working but the difference in them and the last mile I found is vision and clarity what exactly they are doing and how. They provide the platform to those who have lost all hopes, so they can give something back to society. They are developing entrepreneurs inside the prison. I find The Last Mile is more necessity driven of helping the needy and they help society plus it is vision driven too. After watching and researching about them I have learned every thought is important but exploring of your thought and implementing them is more important. Its never easy it need hard work and correct approach to the mission. 3
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  • 1. Business Review Report on The Last Mile Latika Vyas 13499881 MBA
  • 2. Summary This Business Report is been developed to understand different aspects of entrepreneur and entrepreneurship. I have taken the reference from E-corner, having enormous interviews of entrepreneurs and business innovators all over the world. In the process of my research I selected The Last Mile: From Lockup to Start up. Its a five year old start up by, Chris Redlitz and his wife and business partner Beverly Perenti, Its an American based company incorporated now with the vision of social cause. This company has a different though interesting drive, in simple words this company is helping those who are behind the bars, understanding they are not bad person rather they have made bad decisions in life. There are many organizations and companies working for social cause all over the world but The Last Mile is totally different. In this Report I will cover three vast topics based on my investigation on this company I.e What makes someone to be an entrepreneur; My learning on entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship; how this interview has impacted me. i
  • 3. Introduction The Last Mile, started from the prison of California, San Quentin state prison, where the founder visited to talk to few men in prison about business and entrepreneurship, . I was invited to San Quentin to speak to a group of men about business and entrepreneurship. I had never been in a prison before. From The Interview.. That first day when I first arrived, I was ushered through a series of gates until I arrived at the courtyard, at the center of the prison. On my left, the adjustment center which houses all death row inmates in California and some of the most notorious criminals in California. On my right, the Catholic Chapel, which was surrounded by a well-manicured garden. I was, as they say in San Quentin, at the gate between heaven and hell. I was led down a paved road past the guard towers into the lower yard where hundreds of men dressed in blue were exercising, milling around or playing checkers (Ledritz, 2013) The Last mile has supported as groundswell for criminal justice in America. The small talk for 30 minutes turned to 2 hours conversation, the interest of those men in blue was the most attentive audience Chris has ever seen. He was amazed with the participation, preparation and commitment of those men in blue, it made him think that he work every day with young entrepreneur why not to work with them. In California, they spend more for prisons than higher education. The average cost per prisoner to tax payers $45,000. The rate of recidivism exceeds 60%. So by the time many men are released from San Quentin, as taxpayers we've already invested nearly $1 million for their incarceration. But without rehabilitation, many of them will return. That's a bad investment. If we could reduce recidivism by just 5%, billions of dollars could be saved in the next 10 years alone. But without rehabilitation, these problems will persist. (Ledritz, 2013) What makes someone to be entrepreneurs rather is an employee or professional? According to GEM, The GEM data is used to produce a larger model connecting a series of Entrepreneurial Framework Conditions (EFC) to the TEA, entrepreneurial aspirations, technical progress, GDP growth, and other macro economics variables. The EFCs reflect institutional factors with theoretic connections to entrepreneurship and are produced using data from the NES. The original GEM model was revised to reflect stages of development to generalize the model's explanation to all countries. The methodology in doing so was based on a paper by Michael E. Porter, Jeffrey D. Sachs, and John W. MacArthur to reflect the differences in needed institutions at different points in a country's economic development. (GEM) According to the requirements of GEM 1) Financing system: The Last Mile has two partners each having their share of investments. 2) Government Public Policies: The Last Mile working for social cause, under the regulations of USA government and with their support. 3) Government Public program: Providing support and path to the prisoners, when they come out they will be a better person with new life. 4) Education and training: They have many volunteer from highly reputed universities, companies support, government support as well 5) R&D transfer: Technology oriented, prisoners dont have internet in their pockets like us, they have been taught social media. 6) Commercial and professional infrastructure: going to prison where the building is provided to teach prison students. 2
  • 4. 7) Internet market openness: basically they have been given exposure to social media for example one of the graduate from The Last Mile has received the award for best answer from Quora. 8) Physical Infrastructure and services: teaching and building path inside prison. 9) Cultural and social norms: The Last Mile is totally for social cause. Entrepreneurs are humans like us; they are just challenging the market with the odd ideas, and creating market for themselves. They can be necessity driven or vision driven. They have weird ideas developed inside the society and for the society needs. So many of you may not be old enough to remember the movie, but if you remember My Fair Lady, Henry Higgins is teaching how to go from a Cockney accent to a proper British accent. So that night, I walked in class singing 'the rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain.' And they thought I was out of my mind, but we had Phil start to sing his presentation. And when it came to demo day, he was flawless. And some of the people at San Quentin came up to me and said either Phil has been reincarnated or he has a twin brother, but that's a type of response that we needed to see that it really resonated. The second one was engagement. Beverly and I can do this ourselves to some degree, but we really need volunteers and people from the outside to bring their expertise in as well. So as we would in business, we try to find those key influencers in the market that would really help us to teach, but also to share the message. So we invited entrepreneurs in, some from our portfolio and some from the outside. (Ledritz, 2013) Conclusion After watching the interview of The Last Mile, I can defiantly say I am amazed that how small thought can change the life of others and more impressive when you start seeing world in a different way. Its not easy to go inside the prison and get the inspiration to start up a company to educate prisoners so they can have better life when they come out. It has been so much riskier like risk to life being among criminals, insecurity of failing, convincing people, authorities and who all not. There are many different organizations working but the difference in them and the last mile I found is vision and clarity what exactly they are doing and how. They provide the platform to those who have lost all hopes, so they can give something back to society. They are developing entrepreneurs inside the prison. I find The Last Mile is more necessity driven of helping the needy and they help society plus it is vision driven too. After watching and researching about them I have learned every thought is important but exploring of your thought and implementing them is more important. Its never easy it need hard work and correct approach to the mission. 3
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