Anybody who doubts the entrepreneurial value of a night on the town might be wise to follow the lead of Peter Striano. The chief executive of Unity International Group credits an exhausting schedule of evening hobnobbing as a key reason for winning contracts that have helped turn what was a low-key, two-truck electrical contracting business in 1974 into a global multimillion-dollar, multipronged operation today.
In fact, some of those earliest connections led to Unity's largest clients: blue-chip companies such as JPMorgan Chase. To wit: When it was known as Chase Manhattan Bank, the company hired Striano in the late 1970s to set up fledgling ATM machines. Today, Striano, 77, builds trading floors for the financial-services powerhouse.