Meet Sue Marrone, Founder of Mosaic Junction, and LaunchHouse Flex Member since 2013. Mosaic Junction is a cloud based analytical tool that allows users to visually organize their thoughts with easily retrievable notes. This helps users track information, create multiple scenarios, analyze concepts and broadcast decisions. It is designed to help organize creativity, allowing users to discover new ideas, discuss those ideas with visual layouts, and make fact based decisions. Sue believes that Mosaic Junction will save users an immeasurable amount of time by eliminating the hunt for key information, and keeping them from having to re-learn past lessons.
What inspired Sue to found Mosaic Junction? Shakespeare! “I wanted to explain Shakespeare better. I love Shakespeare. I am proud to say that I have produced his entire canon. Years ago, I sat in the back of the theatre and tried to figure out why I loved Shakespeare and so many others didn’t. What I came up with was that I know a lot more ‘neat stuff’ about the lines, the plays, the characters. So, I wrote a video script to explain ‘Julius Caesar.” The video concept became a computer concept. Then one day I was showing an early version of the program to a friend who said, ‘You know you created a business utility, right?’” Sue may not have initially set out to start a company, but she did by creating something of value!
Shakespeare and drama have influenced Sue’s life in more ways than one. Before founding Mosaic Junction, she was a professional stage manager. She was even a stage manager for President Reagan’s Inaugural Address! Sue has also worked as a professional video producer, an auctioneer, and was a professional theatre producer at Radio City Music Hall’s West Coast office. She also created and ran the Warner Bros. Collectors Guild, taught teachers computer literacy, and managed a wine store. Soon she will be investing in a Bed & Breakfast in Hammondsport, NY.
As you can tell, Sue’s professional background is broad and an accumulation of different experiences have prepared her to launch Mosaic Junction. She is not one to be dead set on any one industry or career path; she follows whatever interests her! She encourages other entrepreneurs is to be patient, keep your eyes and ears open, and be willing to pivot as they navigate the waters of entrepreneurship.
The best advice Sue ever received was from the theater owner and producer during her apprenticeship at a professional theater. She told him she wanted to be a stage manager and producer. He said “fine” and tossed her a broom to sweep the stage. As you can imagine, Sue did not take this very well. But she learned an important lesson: you can’t manage something you don’t know. Sweeping the floors was her opportunity to learn stage management from the ground up. Today, as the owner and designer of Mosaic Junction, she continues to learn. “As the designer of the program, I thought it was very important for me to learn enough about programming to be able to talk to the programmers, to understand the impact each design decision makes and to evaluate the value of that design decision based on the whole.”
Sue is a member of LaunchHouse because she loves the community and the peer to peer interaction. Sue is known for her cheerful personality and extensive knowledge about wine amongst her LaunchHouse friends. When Sue is not working on Mosaic Junction, she is at feeding treats to our favorite LaunchHouse pups, Torrey and Pawly. She is welcomed by all of her LaunchHouse cohorts, but none welcome her more eagerly each morning than the dogs!
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This post is by Marybeth Stucker, Director of Operations and Membership.