SBS Comms

Summer slow down? We’ve never heard of it. ☀️ We’re excited to announce three new members of the team at SBS Comms: Megan Day joining us as a Senior Account Manager, Haley E. joining as an Account Manager, and Brady Lauer joining us as an Account Executive. 💥 Megan joins SBS Comms from San Francisco. With 5 years of experience in the world of tech PR, she has worked with companies across a variety of industries, from enterprise software to the future of work. Outside of the office, you’ll find Megan at Crissy Field Beach with her golden retriever Bodie, reading a good book, and eating frozen yogurt year round. Hailing from Chicago (but a Bay Area girl at heart!), Haley has helped manage clients across a wide variety of industries including insurance, health, wellness, and sports. She brings unique experience centered around media relations, social media management, strategy development and thoughtful face-to-face client relations. Previous clients include AON Insurance, First Midwest Bank, The Coca-Cola Company, The United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee, and more. When she's not at her desk, Haley probably has ESPN on in the background while she's working out or relaxing on the couch with a strong cappuccino in-hand. Also in the San Francisco crew, Brady joins after spending the past three years supporting some of the biggest and most innovative companies in the country within the consumer technology and fintech industries, including Amazon, TurboTax, and Notion. When he's not working, you can find him catching up on all things Bravo, exercising, enjoying a glass of wine with his friends, and finding any excuse to be outside.

"What do my childhood Candy Land games have to do with startups and venture capital? Well, power outages are still a problem (perhaps more so as warming oceans fuel more hurricanes), and solutions to problems are what the startup game is all about. Dan Wright, the cofounder and CEO of Armada, believes that extreme situations like hurricanes reinforce the need for “edge” computing, the practice of processing data locally rather than sending it back to the cloud. “Lots of oil and gas companies are really very concerned about these types of disasters,” Wright says. “You can’t have any latency. You have to be able to respond in real time.” https://lnkd.in/g6_R4Atn

This July, our SBS for Good donation goes to The Glenn Garcelon Foundation behalf of Kristina Bannan, Director on our OnBoard team. “My husband had multiple surgeries to remove 98% of a benign brain tumor. Even with the best medical staff and support system, juggling recovery, life, and work is incredibly daunting,” Kristy shares. “The GGF, in partnership with the American Brain Tumor Association (ABTA) provides grants to support brain tumor patients and families—everything from rehab to groceries. Thank you for supporting SBS!” The Glenn Garcelon Foundation exists to improve the quality of life of brain tumor survivors, caregivers and their families by providing emotional and financial support. Grants have been used to cover the cost of mortgage payments, rent, insurance, co-pays, deductibles, groceries, utilities, specialized equipment, treatment related travel and lodging expenses, and more – all things that most of us take for granted every day.

Coming in hot this summer: the newest class of Fellows to SBS Comms! Meet Kenneth Prabhakar, Ezra Del Rosario, Anna Klasell, Sarah Rummler and Alyssa De Leon, joining us from East to West to make up our eleventh fellowship cohort! ☄️ 📷 Based in San Francisco, Kenneth is a recent Baylor University graduate with a degree in Public Relations and Business Administration. At university, he served as an award winning Photo Editor for the Baylor Lariat, as well as as social media intern for Baylor Athletics and internal communications intern for FIS. Outside of work, Kenneth loves working out, hiking and photography. 🏎️ Ezra joins us from Los Angeles after her time working with Microsoft at WE Communication and for the International Center for Journalists, in Washington D.C. Ezra graduated from the University of San Francisco with a BA in Media Studies and a minor in Journalism. On the weekends you can find her at a Dodger game, waking up early to watch the Formula One race or soaking up the sun somewhere in LA. ✈️ Signing on from NYC, Anna is a graduate of Purdue University where she studied Public Relations, Strategic Communications, and English. Previously, Anna worked at a PR agency in London in Consumer and Fashion PR. In her free time Anna enjoys reading, traveling, and listening to Fleetwood Mac! 🏕️ Sarah, also in NYC, holds a B.A. in English from St. John’s University. Recent roles include Digital Marketing and Community Engagement Manager at Sound Coffee, Publicity Assistant at HarperCollins Publishers, and Public Relations/Communications Intern at NU Media Marketing. Outside of work, Sarah enjoys making and listening to music, spending time outdoors, and catching up on the latest books, movies, and TV. 🏊 Alyssa recently completed an internship in PR at Highwire after earning a degree in Film and Television with a minor in Public Relations at the University of Arizona. In her free time, you can find her updating her Letterbox with recently watched films, taking cold plunges with the Marina Plunge Club, attending local music festivals, or curating her list of favorite restaurants in San Francisco.

"NVIDIA Corp. Vice President Simona J. is becoming chief financial officer at Lightmatter Inc., joining a chip startup that’s angling to become part of the artificial intelligence computing boom. Jankowski said that she hadn’t been looking to depart Nvidia, one of the world’s most valuable companies, until Lightmatter came along. The Mountain View, California-based startup is attempting to shake up the computing world by letting chips communicate with light, potentially making them faster and more efficient. “It’s just about the only opportunity that I would have left Nvidia for,” she said in an interview." https://lnkd.in/gPtZEAvH

“The problems that matter the most can only be solved if you bridge the digital divide and bring connectivity, compute, and AI to the data – wherever it is.” — Armada CEO Dan Wright Fortune’s Allie Garfinkle with the exclusive on Armada’s $40M Series A extension.

"In order to truly make it accessible, you have to hit it from all angles, all in one. It means one-click trading and easy funding with crypto or fiat. It means easy portfolio management. It means easy taxes... We built a comprehensive platform so that really anyone could invest in DeFi and access yield." – Exponential.fi co-founder and CEO Driss Benamour. 💥 CoinDesk's Sam Kessler with the exclusive on Exponential's investment platform. Now available in 90 countries.

I was lucky to have the chance to sit down with award-winning investor Tasneem Dohadwala from Excelestar Ventures LLC and discuss her amazing career, and outlook on the startup market. Some choice quotes from our conversation: ▶ On her push to promote women in the workplace: "In many ways things have changed; there are so many more female-focused funds. While the numbers are still small in terms of the amount of female-led startups, there are more people looking to invest..." ▶ On Excelestar Ventures: “When we’re doing our due diligence, we’re looking to see whether the company has seen a gap in the market and then innovated, creating a dramatic innovation to address that gap.” ▶ On generative AI: “You have to be really careful with AI, because everybody's trying to figure out a way to weave it into their story. Do I think that AI in general is going to dramatically change multiple market landscapes? Sure. Am I changing my investment thesis? No.” ▶ On her outlook for the year: “We're continuing to see relative tightness in 2024. I think that valuations have continued to stay at that lower range, and are not creeping up in my opinion.” Click below to read more, and as always, thanks to Startup Boston for publishing this one. https://lnkd.in/eFMyPrr2

"Traditional media always finds a way to bounce back." 📺 Our newest edition of Briefing Notes, authored by Randall Woods, explores how traditional media is regaining its influence in the 2024 U.S. election. Check out the full piece for a look into the power shift from social media to mainstream outlets and what this means for the future of political campaigns. 🇺🇸 https://lnkd.in/gUrUwkpf

📣 While the country is deciding which President will guide its future, there's no debate on who will lead ours. Join us in congratulating our first President, Claudia Traverso! Over the past six years, Claudia has been instrumental to our evolution, joining us when we were still in our infancy.  She can be credited with growing our team to more than 40 people across the US, building our culture, and helping SBS mature into who we are today. Anyone who knows Claudia knows that she is a natural leader, a gifted media strategist and storyteller, and champion of all things woo woo! Cheers to the next era of SBS 🥂