Young entrepreneur delivering knockout in business world
A local entrepreneur’s high-tech savvy and ability to land a punch have landed him in elite national company.
Brian Pedone, 25, was nominated last week by BusinessWeek magazine as one of 25 young entrepreneurs under 25 in the United States.
Pedone’s journey took him from Queens to Saylorsburg at age 10, then to school at Notre Dame and East Stroudsburg University’s computer science department and, now, to national recognition.
But it was a sticky note slapped on the side of a computer monitor that truly propelled him.
Last year, while working as a database manager at a medical office in Stroudsburg, Pedone had noticed that his co-workers always referred to sticky notes stuck to their monitors whenever they needed to remember their passwords.
He thought there must be a better way. “It had to be quick and it had to be easy,” Pedone said during an interview Friday at his office in ESU’s business accelerator.
In two months, he built his own system, needmypassword.com, and launched a business, ABP Software LLC.
The product allows visitors to store and access all of their passwords through one, easy-to-access Web site. He has signed up 2,200 users.
How will it make money, you might ask?
“That’s the million-dollar question,” he said, smiling.
Though he says the basic concept is not unique, Pedone has some novel ideas about how to expand it. He is patenting a voice activation system for his product, which will work with cell phones. Pedone also has hooked the interest of a local investor.
“Even though there’s no money, it’s still a success,” he said. “The money will come.”
That confidence — and his track record starting two other businesses — are some of the reasons Pedone earned the BusinessWeek nomination.
For the fourth year in a row, the magazine asked its readers to nominate candidates who started and are running companies that show promise. The magazine’s staff combed through the nominees and a trio of experts helped select the finalists, which include aspiring real estate barons, media moguls, fashion designers and even a vintner.
Readers will vote and the winner will be announced later this month, according to the magazine’s Web site.
Pedone said he does not know who nominated him, but the recognition already has made an impact. Visitors to his company’s Web site had numbered in the low hundreds at first. But once news of the nomination started spreading early last week, the number of viewers of his site tripled. It had tripled again by the end of the week.
Prior to ABP, Pedone launched another company, Grad Techs, with fellow Notre Dame and ESU grad Michael Moynihan. That company, which provides plagiarism protection, won the Great Valley Business Plan Competition before he and Moynihan went their separate ways.
Pedone’s way also has led him to the boxing ring, where his nickname is “Fists of Stone.” He said he fell in love with the sport as a teen. Now, he owns a gym, Pedone’s Heavy Hitters on Ann Street in Stroudsburg, where he trains young boxers.
“It was rough at first,” he said, recalling his first trips into the ring. He had his nose broken twice during fights. But he learned to take a punch, not by stiffening to meet the impact, but by rolling with it.
“It’s more mental,” he said. “When you accept it, it’s not that bad.”
Pedone credits his parents for the sunny attitude. Both his father, Anthony, and his mother, Teresa, have worked as computer programmers, and his goal is to be able to support them one day. Both have encouraged him to take risks — especially now while he’s young.
“If you run out of money, it won’t be the end of the world,” his parents have told him.
Still, Pedone said he has weathered periods of doubt. Despite outward trappings of success like his Jaguar and Audi, Pedone has pushed through stretches where the money has gotten tight and new business leads scant, despite his 80-hour workweeks.
“The main thing is to stick with it and know going in that it won’t be easy,” he said. “When it gets really difficult, you know you’re getting close.”