Hartford Business Journal

14 HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM | JANUARY 17, 2022 By Robert Storace rstorace@hartfordbusiness.com T he son of a prominent Hartford parking magnate, Jonah Lazowski said he learned about the business world, professional relationships and entrepreneurship from an early age. "I like to say that I was born in a parking garage," said Lazowski, whose father Alan Lazowski owns LAZ Parking, one of the largest parking operators in the United States. "My first job was at a ticket booth taking tickets and I also did valet parking." Now Jonah Lazowski, 27, said he's looking to follow in the entrepreneurial footsteps of his parents and sister, who each own their own business. He's launched a startup company called A Lot Media that offers digital and static advertising services at parking facilities and is now in about 150 locations in Connecticut and New York. The company got its start in 2017 with seed funding from Alan Lazowski and is showing some early promise. A Lot Media plans to be in 500 locations in five states — Connecticut, New York, Florida, California and Illinois — by the end of this year, said Jonah Lazowski, whose company has three full-time and 25 part-time employees. "Five years from now, I'd like to have a much larger team of people," said Lazowski, adding his business has seen 50% growth year over year since 2017 and has revenues in the seven figures; he declined to give specific numbers. "I'd like to be in the top 25 markets in the country." Family affair Originally interested in starting his own film production company, Jonah Lazowski, who was born and raised in Hartford and majored in film production at Boston's Emerson College, said he ditched that idea and went to work in marketing and branding at sportswear-apparel company Fila. While at Fila, Lazowski said he helped launch a billboard campaign that sparked his interest in the advertising business. Of course, he already had some background knowledge of the parking industry as well. He founded Hartford-based A Lot Media when he was 22 years old. Alan Lazowski said he admired his son's passion and willingness to forge his own path. The business idea was solid too, so he seeded Jonah's venture. It actually mirrors the way Alan Lazowski got his start in business. In the summer of 1981, while still a student at UConn and with a small loan from his grandfather, Alan Lazowski began parking cars at a restaurant in downtown Hartford. By that summer's end, he was managing five parking locations and 30 employees. Since then, LAZ Parking has grown into a national parking management, transportation and mobility company with managed revenue in excess of $1.8 billion and over 12,000 employees. "He was very creative and wrote this business plan. We loved it," Alan Lazowski said of his son's startup. "I love backing entrepreneurs in business. I mentor a lot of people and back a lot of people in business and certainly will do that with my kids." Entrepreneurship runs in the Lazowski family. Jonah's mother, Marcia, runs an interior decorator business, while his sister, Jesse, owns a jewelry company called Marlo Laz. (Jesse was recently interviewed Entrepreneurial Ambitions Following in his father's footsteps, Jonah Lazowski takes on parking advertising startup Jonah Lazowski, son of LAZ Parking CEO Alan Lazowski, has launched a startup company called A Lot Media that offers digital and static advertising services at parking facilities, including in Hartford. Alan Lazowski HBJ PHOTO | STEVE LASCHEVER

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