World Housing Solution
For entrepreneurs and small business owners, a strategic pivot can mean the difference between success and failure. But executing that pivot often requires expert guidance. Ron Ben-Zeev, founder and president of modular shelter manufacturer World Housing Solution, made just such a bold shift — from targeting the disaster relief market to supplying the U.S. Department of Defense. To capitalize on this new direction, he turned to the Florida Small Business Development Center at the University of Central Florida (FSBDC at UCF), where he found the support he needed.
World Housing Solution was born in 2010 in response to the devastating earthquake in Haiti. The company developed durable, sustainable shelters designed for rapid deployment in disaster zones. Despite the need, the market wasn’t ready. “No one cared at the time,” Ben-Zeev recalls. “We were met with a lot of skepticism and a lot of the word ‘No’. Then the Department of Defense discovered us and we pivoted. The U.S. Navy challenged us to make the shelters bigger and allowed us to actually start selling our ideas and inventions.”
That pivot proved transformative. “The main differentiator between us and our competition is that we truly listen to our customers,” explains Ben-Zeev. “We live and die by the fact that no one cares about our solutions; they only care about their problems. What we’ve been able to do is intersect our capabilities, our solutions, with problems the Department of Defense is facing when deploying in remote or austere environments.”
Yet navigating government contracting was unfamiliar terrain—and notoriously complex. That’s when Ben-Zeev turned to the FSBDC and its government contracting affiliate, the Florida APEX Accelerator at UCF. “The FSBDC as a resource has become invaluable to us,” he says. “Working with the Department of Defense and the U.S. government is truly byzantine. It is a difficult process, filled with traps and issues and acronyms. The folks at the FSBDC have been absolutely amazing in guiding us through the maze of doing business with the government.”
The FSBDC’s support extended far beyond contracting. “The assistance that is provided by the FSBDC is just endless,” Ben-Zeev raves. “Every time I speak with folks in the office, I discover new ways and other things that they’re doing to help business flourish and thrive. For us particularly, it has been phenomenal in learning how do we market abroad? How do we improve our online presence? How do we leverage other smart people in the Orlando ecosystem?”
World Housing Solution also participated in the FSBDC’s award-winning Advisory Board Council program, which assembles a customized board of expert volunteers to advise and guide businesses over 18–24 months. In World Housing Solution’s case, the Board was comprised of volunteers with expertise in government business development, accounting, the law, finance and operations who helped Ben-Zeev explore those and other facets of his business and its strategic plan.
But for Ben-Zeev, the biggest win came from working with Steve South, manager of the Florida APEX Accelerator at UCF. “Thinking back about how Steve took the time to better understand what we do; how to narrow our NAICS Search codes, for example; how to be able to take those codes and target them through the APEX Accelerator so that, when opportunities arise out there, we get alerted as quickly as possible. Then, going back to Steve, and leveraging his know-how and his capabilities, to decide if we respond and how we respond, and then maximizing our ability to then win the bid or get in front of the right person. All of it has been extremely helpful to us overall and has been instrumental in the success of our company in Florida.”
For information about World Housing Solution, please visit https://worldhousingsolution.com/.
