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Entrepreneur:Sean Carton Company: Carton Donofrio Interactive Industry:software and Internet services UMBC Degrees:B.A., 1990, English and Psychology |
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EXPLOITING THE INTERNET'S POTENTIALSean Carton is a modern-day paradox: a literature major in love with language and literary criticism who practically flunked a computer class and is now an Internet guru, marketing whiz, and corporate entrepreneur. Go figure. Actually, despite Carton's academic career in the humanities, he confesses to a life-long fascination with computers. He began on an Apple II+ at age 12, and by college was fooling around with UMBC's arcane UNIX-based BitNet electronic mail system which, he says, "was pretty cool." Carton's identity crisis emerged early: "After a semester in graduate school arguing where the hyphens belonged in Emily Dickinson's poems, I realized this was irrelevant." But computers, he decided, were not. Before he graduated, Carton was deep into hypermedia, and was avidly exploring the ins and outs of the Internet. He became so proficient that within a few years, he was co-authoring books on the subject, such as the Internet Powertool Kit. Meanwhile, he landed a job at the Baltimore ad agency Richardson Myers & Donofrio (RM&D), where his wife, Lorna '88, also works. There, he developed a seemingly modest web site called Cool Tool of the Day, which reviewed on-line tools for web-surfing and web-site creation that he liked. Soon, Carton's hobby was a real business, generating more than $13,000 in advertising revenues each month, hundreds of thousands of visitors, and loads of positive publicity. RM&D executives were so impressed with Cool Tool's initial performance that they offered Carton an equity partnership in a new joint venture -- Carton Donofrio Interactive -- and virtually handed him carte blanche to come up with new Internet services and products. (Cool Tool revenues are ploughed back into the company, not Carton's pocket.) It took Carton Donofrio less than two years to zoom from zero to $1-million in revenues, thanks in part to Cool Tool and Carton's work designing web sites and CD-ROMs for other organizations. Carton, who is not yet 30, takes his success in stride, and attributes it all to old-fashioned hard work and ingenuity. "I just work like crazy. I trust my instincts. When I didn't have a job that was what I wanted to do, I just kept doing what I liked doing and didn't get paid for it." Carton's next big venture for Carton Donofrio is StreetTech, a daily on-line magazine reviewing high-tech hardware. He is also the creator of an innovative web site called Room 411, aimed at helping young teens to avoid becoming sexually active or involved with drugs and alcohol. And five years from now? Sean Carton has definitely begun thinking like a classic entrepreneur: "I guess really my goal is to make this place eventually the biggest interactive company in the world." |
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