This continues a new series of interviews with tech executives who have seen the industry evolve over a minimum of two decades. They have helped analyze, envision, develop and take to market some of the most influential technology the world has seen. And they have done it well mile after mile as elite athletes do. I am honored they spend the time with me reminiscing and star-gazing.
Sabrina Horn is a tech industry communications expert and executive advisor. She founded and ran Horn Group, the iconic Silicon Valley PR firm for over 2 decades during which time she counseled over 500 CEOs and helped bring their companies’ stories to life. Sabrina currently serves as a Senior Advisor to Finn Partners, the firm to which she sold Horn Group in 2015, and resides in Manhasset, NY and San Francisco, CA.
Part 1 of the interview focuses on her career and her mentors. Part 2 will focus on her view of how the industry is evolving and how the marketing function is changing.
Her Career Arc
In looking back on my career, when I started I was 29 years old and I knew just enough to be dangerous, and I really had a head full of steam. I got this idea to start an agency while I was working for another very reputable tech PR agency. Before that, I had worked as a junior account executive for Edelman PR in San Francisco, CA, and had a freshly minted master's degree in PR from Boston University.
I started to think about how I would run an agency differently. I was inspired by my parents, both immigrants and successful entrepreneurs in their own right. And, it was right at the time when the new client-server architecture paradigm was being embraced by the computer industry. But up to that point, there were really no enterprise-class applications running on that paradigm. I was very excited about apps because they enable people get their jobs done. I thought, that’s where all the interesting stories will be!
I came into touch with a little company back then called PeopleSoft, which at that point was only $5 million and 50 people. Dave Duffield asked me if I could write a press release because they were going to port their payroll application onto Sybase SQL Server. I wrote that press release, and his head of marketing, Linda Zecher, called me and asked if I could write a few more of them for the company.
That was when the lightbulb went off. I took a 2-week vacation, wrote a business plan, designed a logo for my new agency, and thought I would try to win the PeopleSoft account to start my own company.
I pitched my heart out to Dave Duffield and his executive team in their boardroom. I probably had about 80 overhead foils, which was the technology of the day for presentations. I got home that night, and there was a message on my answering machine that I had won the PeopleSoft account. It was $7,000 a month, which is still, by many standards today, a respectable retainer for a start up.
I very much believe in doing right by the people that one works with and went to the founders of Blanc & Otus, the agency I worked for at the time. In essence, I asked for their blessing and their support to start Horn Group. They were not too intrigued with payroll software and I think they thought that HR software was kind of boring. They wished me well, offered their advice, and there I was, in business!
We made $1 million in PR fees, I think, by year number three. We set up our offices in Burlingame at 500 Airport Boulevard. We were co-located with ComputerWorld magazine and Meta Group, names which I'm sure you remember.
PeopleSoft went public in 1992 I believe, and the phone lit up like a Christmas tree. We started to build this franchise of companies that were in the application software space, many of whom PeopleSoft actually bought. I began to realize that I had to diversify my client base because all of my clients were getting acquired, whether it was by PeopleSoft or by other companies, like Oracle for example.
I visualized a tech landscape or an ecosystem that became the foundation for our client portfolio: tools and middleware, business intelligence software, workflow/groupware, and then all the business applications on top of them, supported by a strong networking platform. I was introduced to many of the companies through the venture capital community and through the PeopleSoft network. That's how I built Horn Group. I never took one cent of financing from anyone and bootstrapped the business.
My goal was to strategically help these companies achieve their goals, many that no one had ever heard of. Some companies were pivoting or maybe coming out with a second version of their product or going into a vertical market. Others had specific business goals: to go public, to be acquired, to just grow to the next phase, or get a round of funding. All of them wanted to build their brand and their awareness.
Back then, PR was all media relations and analyst relations. There was no social media. The Internet didn't exist, or at least not known to us at that point from a practical standpoint. It was all about how much “ink” one could get. And it was about relationships.
The other piece of our work was to help our clients strategically by fine tuning their marketing strategy, helping them tell more powerful stories to have a bigger impact on the markets they wanted to sell into. It became about so much more than just media relations and going out on press tours. We became strategic advisors to our clients’ executive teams. For this, I added on more senior people. We were a pretty well-rounded agency. We did the tactical work that clients expected, but we also were able to help the CMOs and CEOs of those companies think through their next moves.
Much of it was matching the right strategy with the right tactics. It was really exhilarating!
The third aspect I found exciting about building Horn Group was that I wanted to build a company where employees would stay and build their careers. PR agencies were known then, and many unfortunately still are, for having really high turnover, a crappy culture, and delivering crappy results to clients. I really wanted to raise the bar and create a nice working environment for people where they could stay and build their careers.
In the early 1990s, the idea of having a beer night on Thursdays was a new idea. We implemented all sorts of new benefits and perks for our folks. Some of them stayed with me for almost 20 years. We even won an award for Best Employer in the US in 1998 by Working Woman magazine.
It was a great ride until the dot.com bust. Thankfully, we didn't do a lot of dot-com business and were more focused on deep tech and B2B enterprise software. So, while our business definitely suffered, it was a softer landing than many of my competitors who saw their clients vaporize overnight.
Before the bubble burst, we were up to almost 100 employees and had a growing office in Boston. My business strategy was always to grow the agency along 3 vectors: by service offering, by geography, and by tech sector. We listened to our clients and what they were asking us for. We followed the tech industry and where new hubs were being established. We stuck to our knitting and focused mainly on the enterprise software market and e-commerce companies at that time.
We expanded successfully, to New York in 2002. I told my executive team I was going to open that office myself. I wanted to be close to Wall Street when the market came back. I wanted to play with the big boys on Madison Avenue. And, I wanted to diversify our client portfolio more into what was then just emerging as the new digital media sector that ultimately became the ad tech boom.
We got some space in Lower Manhattan for a great price through the good graces of Mayor Bloomberg who wanted to bring business back to Lower Manhattan after 9/11. I had my Silicon Valley badge of courage and my VC relationships, and I built that office from scratch through my connections.
Through the venture capital community, I was able to get a book of business, and I relocated four employees from our Boston office. They helped me start our New York office. We rented space from Insight Venture Partners on 5th Avenue. One of the firm’s founders, Peter Sobiloff, was very, very kind and took me under his wing. We hunkered down in that space, and we were profitable from day one.
I believe you make your own luck in business and in life. And what you give, comes back to you in some form. We did our homework and found those companies that created new markets. I guess I should say, we helped them make those markets for themselves. Our first client in the adtech space was a little company called Right Media, which ultimately was bought by Yahoo for $800 million.
We built a franchise of companies in content creation, distribution, and monetization. We rode that wave and built a beautiful, incredibly thriving, New York office in Lower Manhattan on Broad Street.
At the same time, the PR industry was also undergoing a lot of change. With the Internet and all the social channels that evolved, we had to change our service offering. But, before digital was really even a word, we started an Interactive group building websites for clients.
This was in 2004. It was a heavy lift. It was really, really difficult because these business models were so inherently different. Building websites, making infographics, even a little-animated video, is a very project oriented business. But PR, as we know, is based on a monthly retainer and an annual contract.
I'm very proud that the Horn Group was one of the first agencies to bring visual communications into the PR fold. We won many awards and, I think, kept our revenues up when many other firms who solely relied on PR retainers did not.
This was a big lesson for me. We help our clients reinvent themselves, but we, as the agency, also have to reinvent ourselves and constantly stay fresh and ahead of things. This is vitally important for employee retention and continuity of business.
Switching gears now to today, what’s exciting is of course everything in the artificial intelligence space. It is the platform for everything. It's in your sprinkler system, in healthcare, in education, even in art. Then there is blockchain, another exciting new platform technology that will change the banking industry and the advertising industry. It will be exciting to see which applications will be reinvented on top of blockchain.
In terms of Horn Group and its longevity, a couple years ago, I started to think about my own plans for the firm. Ultimately, I decided that it would be the most prudent to go down the acquisition route and sought to be acquired. That was a big decision for me, having been so fiercely independent for so, so long.
It was in 2015, after the holidays, I decided, okay, I'm going to do it. I hired a broker. I put together a presentation, was showing it around to various companies, and got it down to a short list. Then I met Peter Finn with Finn Partners. It took us about seven or eight months to do a deal. My key criteria were: will my culture, will my people be a good fit here, and will they want to stay here? Will I be happy because I have been an entrepreneur for so long? It was a very successful deal, and I ended up overseeing the global technology practice for Finn Partners, which is their largest practice area. Now they're about a $100 million company, and I think the tech practice was about 25% of that, maybe more, 30%.
It was a very entrepreneurial position, and it was wonderful to spread my wings and to bring my relationships to the table, but to leverage the power of a much bigger firm from a global perspective. They have a growing digital group, a healthcare group, a consumer group, higher education and even a financial services practice. They continue to grow by acquisition. If I had to do it all over again, I would absolutely sell to Finn Partners. I am consulting for a handful of clients that are still from the Horn Group portfolio in both New York and San Francisco. And, I'm thinking about what's next for me. That's kind of longwinded, but that's a summary of my story.
