It all started one quiet Sunday afternoon in 1987 when Omar was born to his loving parents, Efren and Lorena Ramos. Continue reading...

Growing up in the country just a few miles West of the Barbara Worth Country Club, Omar had a blast playing outside with his three sisters, Paola, Kristabel, and Belen.

From a young age Omar always had a dream to do something really important that would help a lot of people and he decided he wanted to be an inventor/scientist. Luckily, his parents, especially "Big Momma" (standing at 4'11"), always gave him encouragement to follow his dreams.

Once Omar reached the 5th grade at Meadows Union Elementary, he didn't really think about his early dreams anymore and decided to focus more on his schoolwork, karate and sports. All of the hard work paid off and Omar graduated as Valedictorian of his 8th grade class.

The next year Omar began high school at Southwest, the same school his two older sisters had attended. For his freshman and sophomore years Omar found a balance between schoolwork, karate, basketball, and the occasional video game playing.

The story gets interesting the summer right after Omar's sophomore year. It was at this time that Omar decided that he wanted to get a job, since he was now 16 and he thought it would be possible. After asking a number of employers that were computer-related, he was pretty sure he wouldn't be getting a job, since they required him to be 18. So Omar decided to open up his first business: ORWARE Systems.

At first, Omar opened the business so he could build custom PCs for people, but at the suggestion of his mom he also began to do at-home computer consulting for people that wanted help. It was never something he planned to do forever, just to earn some money for gas and other teenage spending habits.

When school started again for his junior year, Omar did less and less computer work as schoolwork increased. Then in February 2004 Omar was offered the opportunity to run a dialup internet service business. He talked it over with his parents, who fronted the money required to purchase the business, and Omar began managing this business.

Here is where Omar began to gain a more "official" view of how a business operates and the requirements involved in keeping a business running smoothly.

In June 2005 Omar graduated from Southwest High School as Valedictorian and put in to attend UC Berkeley. Not being like most of his fellow classmates, Omar didn't really have a college preference, he just wanted to learn, but UC Berkeley appealed to him after his friend, Marco Marquez, talked about what a great school it was for Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Omar attended for a year before deciding to leave the school. Having closed the dialup internet service business after two years of operation, going through a particularly tough breakup, and not being taught the things he felt he should be learning all added up to his decision to leave. For some reason Omar wanted more and he thought a lot about what he wanted out of life and what he wanted to accomplish.

So he returned home, enrolled in an online school and started his business all over again. Website Developer by day, student by night, every day Omar thought about the words he had read, especially like the ones made by Zig Ziglar (quoted below), and his childhood dreams:

• Sometimes adversity is what you need to face in order to become successful.
• Building a better you is the first step to building a better America.
• Success means doing the best we can with what we have. Success is the doing, not the getting -- in the trying, not the triumph, Success is a personal standard -- reaching for the highest that is in us -- becoming all that we can be. If we do our best, we are a success. Success is the maximum utilization of the ability that you have.
• You can have anything in the world you want if you’ll just help enough other people get what they want.

For about 6 months Omar studied, wrote papers, thought, thought some more, and completed a few web development projects.

By January 2007, Omar figured that he should start looking for a job where he'd be able to use his experience with computers and building websites, and where he'd be able to draw a regular salary. That money, he felt, would help him to pay for college, and allow him to continue running his business as a side-job.

Omar applied to jobs here and Omar applied to jobs there. Omar applied to jobs everywhere! Most positions were computer-related, many were entry-level, a few were experienced. Nobody seemed to want this young man who felt he had so much to contribute. In all Omar applied to over 15 positions.

Something that Omar finds difficult to do is to ask for help. For one thing, he is proud and would hate to ask for help if the situation did not require it. Second, in times past he has been let down by people he asked to help him.

Let's fast forward to August 18, 2007 when Omar completed his final class that earned him a Bachelors Degree in Information Technology.

Omar's situation at this point was like this: he hadn't had much development work for the previous months and money was short, he still hadn't been accepted into any of the positions he had applied for, and now he didn't any schoolwork. "What can I do?" He asked himself.

It was then that he remembered an idea he had while taking his Web Application Development class a few months prior. It was then that he began work on the IV Superstore project.

Omar believes the idea is nearly perfect. It is an idea that allows him to empower the entire community to join forces and give back, while at the same time it removes the worry that is always at the back of Omar's mind: making enough money to pay for the next set of bills.

He hopes that you will join him in making this project a success. The technical framework has already been assembled by him so that the entire community can begin to take advantage of his idea to bring money back into our community. All you have to do to participate is to begin making online purchases via IVSuperstore.com and voting and contributing ideas on IVSuperstore.org.

On a final note, Omar found the video below to correlate very well with his beliefs in leadership and integrity: