Mark Cuban was just another dude. A 23 year old kid sleeping on the floor in a house with 5 of his friends. He spent nights going out drinking and mornings sleeping in. To save money, he’d buy a cheap bottle of champagne and put an expensive label on it at the bar. Mark finally got a decent job doing sales, and got quite a client list. One day his boss asked him to come in the shop early to mop the floors. Mark was scheduled to sign a contract with a client that morning, and instead of going to mop the floors, he went to meet his client and landed the contract. When he got back to the shop, he was fired. Why is Mark Cuban in my Fave 5? Perseverance. Mark took his client list and started his own company Microsolutions Inc. After the obvious scary slow start, he was able to sell it seven years later and take some time off to travel. He then day traded tech stocks successfully until he got bored with that. Projects came along and one little dandy was Broadcast.com. In theory it was designed to stream college athletics over the internet live. Seemed like a hell of an idea at the time, making TV almost futile in the future possibly. It went public. Mark and friends sat in a Wall St bar watching CNN all day. Everytime Broadcast.com’s IPO was mentioned they would do a shot. As Mark said, “It turned into a really long day.” Then Mark struck oil when Yahoo acquired Broadcats.com for billions, making Mark one of the world’s wealthier men. He has gone on to buy the Dallas Mavericks and up their value tremendously, is interested in buying the MLB Chicago Cubs, runs HDnet, is taking a big role in the rise of MMA, is a big investor in Mahalo, and various ventures along the way. A lot writeoff Mark’s success to luck, that he was able to cashout right before the tech bubble burst. Was Mark called lucky when he was sitting at home reading software manuals or Cisco Router manuals? Was he lucky when he started his own bar freshman year at Indiana and had to deal with drunken kids everyday while going to school full-time? The cliche rings true, the harder you work, the luckier you get.

I have always been interested in business. I was probably one of the few 11 year olds that read the paper’s business section thoroughly. I made up fake businesses: Business plans, logo design, headquarter layout, quarterly profits, the whole nine yards. I had a lot of free time on my hands. Anyway, everything I learned about business led me to think my professional life would not be in Rochester, NY or upstate NY in general. That is until I read an article on Mr. Koretz when I was in High School. It struck a chord. Here was this guy only a few years older than me, running a business (Tech at that!) in Rochester, NY and doing it proudly. He didn’t hop on a plane to Palo Alto and start sending out resumes to startups…Nope, he secured his own funding rounds and started his business here. That gave me great hope, and I will be making my professional life in this area. Why is David Koretz in my Face 5? Application. Here’s a normal kid like me from a town right next door…running numerous companies successfully and being mentored by Tom Golisano. Ideas are a just that, ideas. Implementation is usually the problem. Inaction cripples people, and Dave is the exact opposite of inaction. He has given me sound advice and exceptional reading lists and is a great role model for any young professional in this area. Check it out his blog for more of in-depth look.