MONEY MATTERS.

Selling company turned Marco Cardamone into serious investor

SOUTH SIDE -- "I'm a naive investor," admitted Marco Cardamone.

The 44-year-old entrepreneur didn't get serious about stocks until 1997.

That was the year Electronic Images, the digital media firm he founded a decade earlier, was sold to Internet services provider USWeb/CKS for $65 million.

Just before Christmas 1997, USWeb held a public offering. This provided Mr. Cardamone and his co-owners, who had taken their payment in stock, with considerable financial clout.

"The only companies I ever invested in (previously) were private companies where I could control, to a degree, the destiny," he said. "Thanks to the happy event of the USWeb IPO, I've become an investor, but probably a different one than I would have been if I'd been savvy …