Upstarts And Start-Ups; Box Of Rain

Onetime kosher food caterer Leonard Shostak is an entrepreneur to admire. He's constantly on the lookout for profitable opportunities and thinks he found one in Box of Rain, a company he founded last month with David Secrest, owner of UpTop Development, a Lotus Notes and Java developer.

The two-person firm will develop software to allow companies to stay on top of critical deadlines imposed by insurance binders and other time-sensitive documents.

They are now updating an existing package for New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority. "We were the only ones that were willing to change it to the MTA's needs and keep them involved in the design and programming process," Shostak said. The software will be written in Java and run on a Web browser, he said. An ASP version is also planned.