Our History

We are only just beginning our history! LongIslandbiz2biz launched in early 2007. Since then we have grown and learned, increasing our membership daily.

The idea of the Longislandbiz2biz.com website started when its founder Dawn Amato - Rudolph  of Sidewalk Designs, Inc. (now Partner and Creative Director of Slightly Mad Communications) realized that her rolodex was getting a lot of spin.  Her 20 plus years of experience helping companies of all sizes and varied sectors had established her as a hub for referrals among her clients.  Mornings were spent doling out phone numbers and referring one client to another. 

On that day she decided to post all this contact information online for her clients to make use of as they needed.  Thus the idea of Longislandbiz2biz.com was born.  Since then it's become so much more.  Not only is it a directory of contact information, it's a place where her clients can interact with each other, support each other and promote each other.

Shortly after the initial launch we realized that we were one of just a few networking opportunities here on Long Island and the few that we could find were so limiting. 

We attended a few local networking events, held by the big guys like BNI and the like -  and we observed.  We watched people struggle with meeting new people and communicating their company's message and value. We listened to others complain about their networking groups, how they were too big - or too small - or required that they bring in new people - or were just expensive. We listened to people tell stories of being rejected by the local chapter because it already had a member in their sector.  We listened as our clients told us they were tired of meeting with the same people at every event - people who weren't interested in hearing their pitch "again". 

We became motivated to create a website that would provide an easy way for Long Islanders to interact and network online. We set out on a quest to form a new kind of networking organization. We wanted to form a networking community that offers a time-effective way to network through the use of new technology.

We did a HUGE amount of research.  We found that the site we envisioned would require much more technology than was available "out of the box". We did more research, and ultimately learned to do the development in house. We learned more lessons and spent more money than we initially bargained for. 

In the months since, we've since expanded our membership from just our sphere of clients, to any Long Islander - whether they are a client of Sidewalk Designs or not - who is genuinly interested in networking.

So here we are today - with a strong site that offers Long Islanders the business networking tools that we believe many Long Island business professionals seek. Through our listening to other business professionals, and through our own professional experiences in networking, researching, and starting-up, we came up with this business model. We still search for new ways to make our member's lives easier and to help them to grow their businesses by increasing and improving our offering.