{"id":1598,"date":"2018-09-28T14:04:13","date_gmt":"2018-09-28T18:04:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jou.ufl.edu\/going-greater\/?post_type=insights&p=1598"},"modified":"2018-09-28T14:04:13","modified_gmt":"2018-09-28T18:04:13","slug":"martin-matak","status":"publish","type":"insights","link":"https:\/\/www.jou.ufl.edu\/going-greater\/insights\/martin-matak\/","title":{"rendered":"Martin Matak"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Denise Trunk Krigbaum, MAMC 1997<\/strong><\/p>\n

What some call a side hustle, Martin Matak, B.S. Advertising 1993, thinks of as a bonus.<\/p>\n

It all started for Matak, founder of wearable tech company VERT<\/a>, when he came to the University of Florida for his junior and senior years. While he earned his degree in advertising, he wanted to maximize his time in college. An article in Advertising Age magazine sparked his interest to pursue a minor in astrophysics.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy philosophy was anyone could take on a business or psychology minor,\u201d Matak said. \u201cI\u2019d read an article in Ad Age<\/em> about how one day there would be advertising on rockets. It made me think. I had a strong interest in space and technology. So, advertising major, astrophysics minor.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was not an ordinary course plan.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had to beg (then Advertising Department Chair) Joe Pisani to make it work,\u201d Matak said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI lived and breathed school and going to UF was icing on the cake,\u201d said Matak. He read his textbooks cover-to-cover, and never missed a class while he worked to finish his degree.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wasn\u2019t just going to class; I was really getting everything out of class,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

When I look back at UF, I remember having great teachers. They nurtured my thirst. They provided the Gatorade.\u201d<\/p>\n

He enrolled in 22 credits a semester and worked two jobs.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy parents gave me $100 per month and the rest of how I paid for college was on me\u201d Matak said.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Martin Matak<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 1991, Fran Ricardo hired him to work at her Gainesville-based company Creative Advertising.\u00a0 \u201cMarty looks at the world with a different perspective from a lot of people,\u201d Ricardo said. \u00a0\u201cHe has a joy to his drive, with a great sense of humor. He was so ahead of his time with the work he was doing. For example, he was developing videos with animation for our clients before the software existed.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the job, he met eventual Heisman Trophy winner Danny Wuerffel. That meeting turned into a side business.<\/p>\n

\u201cUF was National Champions in \u201996,\u201d Matak said \u201cI had an artistic background and did pencil art. I drew a picture of Danny Wuerffel straight from a Sports Illustrated <\/em>cover. I received Danny\u2019s first contract after he graduated and sold hundreds of limited edition pictures outside of games.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a student, he also put in hours at the Career Resource Center, helping other students land jobs. \u00a0\u00a0\u201cAs it turns out, that gave me a pulse, a feeling for the new jobs and markets that were hiring in the field,\u201d Matak said.<\/p>\n

In fact, it lead him to his first job out of college at Wallace Computer Services, a commercial printer. In the five years Matak worked there, he said he gained a thorough education in business.<\/p>\n

He moved to Zimmerman Advertising in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he worked for 15 years in the automotive division. He focused heavily on how consumers react to technology.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter I graduated UF, I was a local community basketball coach because I wanted to stay in shape,\u201d Matak said. \u201cThe kids tried to see who could jump the highest, and I thought, \u2018There should be a way to record that\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wasn’t an early adopter of Blackberry, so when the iPhone came out in 2007, I had an idea of what they would be able to do. I began to invest in patents. In 2007, I began making wireless prototypes. I did not do the coding. I had the idea.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Matak shared the idea with his former Advertising professor Michael Weigold (now associate dean for undergraduate affairs and enrollment management), who gave him advice, as did Joe Pisani.<\/p>\n

\u201cStudents need to make sure they exercise the ability to use the faculty more than they think they can,\u201d Matak said. \u201cSitting down with someone who has the experience is way more valuable that Googling the topic.\u201d<\/p>\n

He hired a Princeton graduate to work on the prototype. Once there was an actual product to see, he was able to raise money with friends and family to produce his first line of VERT technology.<\/p>\n

The wearable devices VERT produces can record the height of an athlete\u2019s jump and the impact of the landing and transfer the data to a handheld device. Now 350 organizations worldwide use VERT products for training and tracking player fitness, explosive effort, and more.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are able to help coaches plan optimal workouts,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n

Over the years, Matak has kept growing the company and improving the technology. He found angel investors, who put up $4.9 million. He hired \u201cthe right people.\u201d Everything is made in-house and manufactured in Baltimore, Maryland, and Ft. Lauderdale, which allows the company to be nimble and quick.<\/p>\n

Hustle is no longer a side project for Matak. It\u2019s an everyday reality he relishes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you have a company, you have to hack and hustle,\u201d he said. \u201cI am surrounded by engineers who have hacking capabilities – Iron Man<\/em> capabilities. We have our own Tony Stark.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was clear on his role in Marvel\u2019s The Avengers<\/em> universe.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m definitely Nick Fury,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Read more <\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1604,"menu_order":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1598","insights","type-insights","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":{"insights_gallery":"","intro_paragraph":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jou.ufl.edu\/going-greater\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/insights\/1598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jou.ufl.edu\/going-greater\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/insights"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jou.ufl.edu\/going-greater\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/insights"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jou.ufl.edu\/going-greater\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.jou.ufl.edu\/going-greater\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/insights\/1598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1804,"href":"https:\/\/www.jou.ufl.edu\/going-greater\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/insights\/1598\/revisions\/1804"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jou.ufl.edu\/going-greater\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jou.ufl.edu\/going-greater\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jou.ufl.edu\/going-greater\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jou.ufl.edu\/going-greater\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}