The stories of upcoming entrepreneurs are always one to be applauded and marveled at. At the University, our school’s adage is “Opportunitas”, suggesting that all students from all walks of life can come to the University and be afforded the opportunity to a better life. Three students have taken that saying to heart. Senior Paul Wallace of Brooklyn, New York and sophomores Samuel Corso and Joseph S. Pidoriano, both hailing from Staten Island, New York, are three young men who are making it happen their way and on their terms.
Paul Wallace is a marketing major with a concentration on advertising and promotion. His business is a marketing agency called Bright Page Media. The 21-year-old’s business is all about helping local businesses achieve high levels of digital presence across all platforms, i.e. Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. According to Wallace, his business model is to assist small businesses who have been left out by bigger agencies and his company will bring them into the 21st century of advertising by upgrading their digital presence. “It’s like a give back to a community or local business that has been around and needs help” says Wallace.
Samuel Corso, a business management major with a concentration on entrepreneurship and a minor in computer science, co-founded a web and mobile developing agency. Tech suite, his business, dabbles in digital marketing. “[The agency] focus on building web and mobile applications as well as websites. And in terms of digital marketing, we do search engine optimization and things like that” says Corso. The 19-year- old started this venture a year ago, previously freelancing for seven years. “I was only 12 years old and I started freelancing, programing, and I started with some basic web languages and I got a little bit more advances in this mobile language and seven years of experience translated into a lot of knowledge” says Corso. This led to his transfer over to the business side.
Joseph S. Pidoriano is a business management major transitioning to accounting major. His business is a publishing company called 123 Published Incorporated. The company works with authors in the pre- and post-publishing process. With small and large businesses, the company works on their online components. The 19-year- old’s start in the publishing business first began through writing his own books. He has written eight books, with four books published. “I’ll tell you what my story was: as a young kid about 15 [years old] I was writing books…I wrote my first book The Dimension Travel Trilogy and followed by that I’ve written part four and then part five then I published those three within the past two years,” Pidoriano says. The business motto of his company is to promote, promote, promote. Pidoriano goes around networking on every social media platform predominately Facebook. He starts large group chats with friends and fans discussing his products and promoting his clients and his own novels. The 123 Published Incorporated is unique from other publishing companies because Pidoriano messages all his authors individually. “Other publishing companies—they don’t even talk to the authors. They will only go to authors with big names and my company goes to all authors,” says Pidoriano.
According to businessman Nolan Bushnell, “the true entrepreneur is a doer, not a dreamer.” What these three young men have that only a few pursue is courage. They saw what they wanted and saw a need that people in business and publishing were lacking. The takeaway from these entrepreneurs is no matter what age, you are tenacity and knowledge can get you far.
(Left to right: Paul Wallace, Samuel Corso, Joseph Pidoriano)
