Highlighting Veteran Entrepreneur Sonny Tosco
Veteran Business Owner Sonny Tosco is a go-getter. The 30 year-old entrepreneur is not shy about going after what he wants.
That skill came in handy during his time at West Point, his six years of service as an Army operations officer, and most recently in his role as CEO of Limelight Mobile, a social platform that lets users source real-time images from anywhere in the world.
Tosco came from a low income California immigrant family. He knew the only way to get ahead was to attend a top-tier school and excel. In 2002, Tosco was accepted to West Point.
The transition from West Point to active duty had its challenges, and Tosco used his off-duty time to explore entrepreneurship. As a result, not only did he learn a lot of valuable information, his military career began to improve.
During his deployment to Bahrain, Tosco found that the media had misrepresented the situation on the ground. While they were prepared for battle, the areas where he was deployed to still had American families, conducting daily life as usual.
He felt that had Limelight existed back then, things would have been different. The community driven app designed to crowd source photos from anywhere on earth would have allowed him to see anywhere in the world in real time. He would have been able to reach out to anyone on the map and ask them to send a photo of their location. And that quality information would have benefitted pre-deployment preparation.
But life is not without tragedy, and the successive loss of both of his parents, a good friend, as well as the miscarriage of his child left Tosco revaluating his life. In 2012, he decided to transition out of the military. His military career came to an end, but his entrepreneurial journey was just beginning.
Today, Tosco is raising seed funding for the second version of the app. Approximately 35% of all users log in on a daily basis, compared to the 5% for other social platforms.
Tosco connected with Don Faul, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and the COO of Pinterest, who has provided Tosco and his team with guidance.
Sonny Tosco is achieving his dream.
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