Michael Krasny is an American businessman from Illinois

Illinois

Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...

. He is the founder and former chief executive officer

Chief executive officer

A chief executive officer , managing director , Executive Director for non-profit organizations, or chief executive is the highest-ranking corporate officer or administrator in charge of total management of an organization...

 of CDW Corporation

CDW

CDW Corporation, headquartered in Vernon Hills, Illinois, is a reseller of computer hardware, software and supplies. Along with its warehouse-attached showroom in Illinois, CDW takes orders from its catalog via mail order, telephone and the Internet....

, a direct seller of technical gadgets including computers and networking equipment. Krasny's previous job before creating CDW was that of a Toyota car salesman for his father at Arlington Toyota.

After quitting his job as a car salesman in 1982, Krasny was forced to sell his own computer for cash. Reportedly, so many people responded to his sales ad listed in the Chicago Tribune

Chicago Tribune

The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...

that Krasny began buying computers in order to resell them, taking CDW public a decade later in 1993. According to Forbes, his first caller from 1982 is still a customer (as of 2000). http://www.forbes.com/finance/lists/54/2000/LIR.jhtml?passListId=54&passYear=2000&uniqueId=AAGO&passListType=Person&datatype=Person