Jason Mandell, Partner & Co-Founder

Jason loves a good story. Ever since entering the world of tech PR 15+ years ago, he’s been fascinated by the constant wheels of innovation that push us all to think with wonder about what lies ahead. That curiosity led to his co-founding LaunchSquad in 1999 with a mission of helping new and fast-growing companies share their stories with (and change) the world. Over the years, Jason has worked with a countless number of breakthrough companies and technologies, from software and online marketing to mobile and clean tech. He’s not partial; if it’s fresh, innovative and game-changing, he’s all over it.

Jason is relentless about working with his teams to do whatever it takes to take a company from unknown to market leader as quickly as possible. He’s played a key role in helping LaunchSquad grow to 60+ people over the past twelve years, and has run the financial operations of the firm since day one. He’s also known to use sports analogies (esp hockey) to explain the merits of team-based thinking and a collaborative, we’re-in-it-together philosophy.

Prior to LaunchSquad, Jason spent five years at Schwartz Communications, where he worked with some of the highest flying early web companies, including eBay, Lycos and Flycast. In his pre-PR days, Jason interned for Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut. He has a B.A. in Communications from Boston College.

Follow him on Twitter at @jmandell, or email Jason.

Jason Throckmorton, Partner & Co-Founder

Jason Throckmorton co-founded LaunchSquad with Jesse Odell and Jason Mandell in 1999. Together, the three shared a common desire to work with entrepreneurs, inventors and business leaders that wanted to change the world through technology.

“Throck” has led PR programs for more than 30 companies and brings this knowledge and expertise to help handcraft client programs that bring big ideas to the forefront and drive business success.

A classic early adopter, Throck closely tracks news and developments in the technology industry and works to ensure that LaunchSquad is at the leading edge of technology adoption and engagement. It’s not uncommon for Jason to be familiar with and in many cases have used products and services from even the stealthiest of prospects.

Throck’s true passion is developing personal relationships with the people behind the clients LaunchSquad serves. It’s these connections that provide valuable insight into what makes entrepreneurs tick, the vision behind their products and service, and ultimately helps inform LaunchSquad’s unique brand of storytelling.

‘Throck’ is the reigning idea guy at the Squad, infusing a high level of creativity and new ideas into client and company initiatives. He also heads up the firm’s business development efforts..

Prior to co-founding LaunchSquad, Jason worked at Schwartz Communications and RMR & Associates, two of the nation’s leading high-tech public relations agencies.
Email Jason

Jesse Odell, Partner & Co-Founder

Jesse’s passion for PR began at the age of ten, when his mother Jan, a 25-year PR veteran, took him on his first press tour. Since that time, he has developed a fascination with communicating challenging technology stories to the media. Known for his energy and leadership, aggressive pitching style and no nonsense writing, Jesse has secured feature stories for clients in the nation’s most influential business publications, including The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, Fortune, Forbes and Business 2.0, while placing numerous articles in scores of technology trades and broadcast media.

Jesse’s passion and excitement for new fresh stories pervades throughout the firm on a daily basis. Prior to co-founding LaunchSquad, Jesse was a manager at leading high tech PR firm Schwartz Communications, where he led some of the most successful accounts at the firm, including investment bank Volpe Brown Whelan, LoopNet and Digital Impact. Jesse previously worked at Ford Odell Group, a specialty PR firm in the Bay Area, where he ran the IT practice. He has a B.A. in English from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Brett Weiner, Partner

Brett joined LaunchSquad in mid-2001 as the firm’s fourth partner. Brett’s a talented PR strategist and works hand-in-hand with LaunchSquad clients to craft stories and PR programs. During his career, Brett’s worked with a diverse set of clients, from start-ups to established market leaders, to help create powerful communication programs that define and accelerate their businesses. At LaunchSquad, he also helps drive hiring and new business efforts.

Brett is known for his thoughtful and insightful advice and counsel and his dry sense of humor. Brett’s also a news junkie and still very much enjoys reading old-fashioned newspapers. Originally from the Boston area, he currently lives in the East Bay with his wife Hillary and their three children, Abigail, Hazel and Cameron. Brett is also an award-winning playwright and an avid amateur cook. By amateur, he means he likes to try new gadgets, difficult recipes, odd ingredients, and generally make a royal mess of the kitchen.

Before joining LaunchSquad, Brett was a vice president at PR firm Schwartz Communications. Prior to joining Schwartz, Brett promoted new technologies for Scitex in conjunction with the 1996 Summer Olympics and worked in marketing with Thomson Financial Services. He received a B.A. in English and Creative Writing from Emory University in Atlanta.

Email Brett

Meghan Cavanaugh, Vice President, HR & Operations

Cav joined LaunchSquad in 2008. Since her start at the Squad, she’s played a big role in building the team across three offices and multiple service areas. Cav is often the first and last person applicants communicate with during the hiring process. Besides talent acquisition, Cav oversees the day-to-day operations at LaunchSquad and is committed to making the Squad one of the best places to work. She’s open to suggestions and feedback. Cav’s also been told, she says, seriously, in response to frequently asked employee questions and Brett Weiner’s team building suggestions.

Cav’s work history began at the Jersey Shore where she cleaned houses on Saturday mornings at age 12. From there, she moved on to passing out pretzel samples on the boardwalk, eventually going on to roll and sell the pretzels. By twenty-one, she’d graduated to serving breakfast plates and seafood dinners on a dock. Cav graduated from E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University with a degree in Journalism and French. She started her professional career at Reed Elsevier in Philadelphia where she worked in the Editorial and Marketing departments. When Cav arrived in SF, she worked for a tech start-up where she had the opportunity to do a deep dive into the human resources function of an organization.

When Cav grows up, she wants to be a writer. For now, she enjoys asking questions. What is your birth order in your family? When you sit down at the dinner table, how is the food served and at what point do you eat? What was your first job and how did you get it? If you had a dishwasher, how would you stack it? Tupac: dead or alive?

Stop typing that introductory email. These aren’t Cav’s interview questions.

Brett Marty, Creative Director

Marty is responsible for the creative vision of LaunchSquad’s video productions, overseeing projects from conception to final cut. In 2009, Marty founded the creative department at the Squad. Since then, he has grown the team from the original one-man shop to a full-scale production house of talented filmmakers and artists.

Marty graduated from UC-Berkeley with a degree in Art Practice, focusing on ceramic sculpture, and his career began in photography. After college, he embarked on his first large-scale photography project, which led him to drive a rusty Buick Regal from San Francisco through most of Central and South America, to the bottom of Tierra del Fuego in Argentina. The following year, Marty joined FiveThirtyEight (acquired by the New York Times) as a photojournalist and set out on the campaign trail during the 2008 Presidential Election, traveling through over 25 states. Shortly after inauguration, Marty returned to San Francisco and finished editing his first feature-length film project, Ferlinghetti, which went on to premiere at the San Francisco International Film Festival in 2009.

Marty credits the development of his visual sensibility to the work of his father – a portrait photographer in rural Wisconsin – which surrounded him throughout his childhood. Marty’s favorite childhood toy was the Slinky.

Jeff Davis, Editorial Director

Jeff is busy building a new team at LaunchSquad that offers companies new ways to expand (and mix it up with) the audiences they want to reach — with human-powered, quality content, from original blogs and Web infographics to independent media properties that serve high-level business audiences.

Jeff joined LaunchSquad in 2010 after spending the last decade covering the (chaotic, exciting) intersection of technology and business, from the first dotcom boom (and bust) to the next. He was one of the founding editors of Business 2.0 magazine, working on every issue over its nine-year run , and more recently executive editor of CBS’s top-10 business site BNET.com.

A UC Davis graduate with a B.A. in English, Jeff got his start as an old-school magazine writer and editor – working on the staffs of Harper’s, Esquire, and Mother Jones, and publishing pieces for Outside, Wired, and other pubs. And going to great lengths at times to tell the story has always been part of the thrill. As part of his cover story for the New York Times Magazine, about the new-world aspirations of the native people of Bikini Atoll, Jeff strapped on Scuba gear for the first time and dove 120 feet to the world’s largest nuclear wreck — the carrier USS Saratoga, sunk by an atom bomb at Bikini in 1946 – to get a proper view. The group of sharks circling overhead made the ascent all the more exciting.

Gavin Skillman, senior vice president, NYC

With more than ten years of public relations and marketing communications experience, Gavin has an extensive background in the strategic planning and execution of media and industry analyst relations programs for both public and private B2B and technology companies. At LaunchSquad, Gavin leads the agency’s East Coast operations out of New York and manages several client accounts.

Before joining LaunchSquad, Gavin worked for four years at global PR firm Cohn & Wolfe, serving as a media expert and account manager for HP’s Enterprise Services division, Panasonic’s Toughbook notebook computer business, and MSN. Gavin was responsible for managing day-to-day account activities, developing media strategy, and driving business, trade and customer media relations. His efforts have resulted in feature coverage in major business and technology trade publications including Bloomberg, CNET, Computerworld, Financial Times, InformationWeek, Investor’s Business Daily, Reuters and The Wall Street Journal.

Prior to Cohn & Wolfe, Gavin was marketing director at thoughtbubble productions, a start-up digital media agency specializing in broadband content development, responsible for marketing, PR and Web site design. Gavin also served as PR director at Promotions.com, an Internet sweepstakes and promotions company, where he managed internal and external PR teams, implemented media relations and analyst relations campaigns, and developed a comprehensive corporate communications program during a successful IPO.

A graduate of Boston College, Gavin holds a B.A. in Communications.

Email Gavin

JMike Farber, General Manager, Boston

Mike is General Manager and Founder of LaunchSquad’s Boston office. Working closely with the San Francisco and New York teams, Mike is bringing the passion, ideas and energy of LaunchSquad to the vibrant Boston market.

Prior to joining LaunchSquad, Mike was a senior vice president at Schwartz Communications. In his fifteen years at Schwartz he launched scores of companies, guided four clients through successful IPOs and helped many others become acquired. Mike’s experience spans across multiple types of technologies, ranging from consumer to enterprise software to clean technology. He has also represented many services firms that partner with high-growth companies.

Mike helped lead the growth of Schwartz’s San Francisco office in the late 1990s and while there had the pleasure of working alongside Jason, Jesse, Throck, Brett and Gavin. As the communications world began the big changes it is still undergoing today, Mike spearheaded Schwartz’s efforts in offering new services, leading the government relations and search marketing programs. He has also spent time on the corporate side, serving as director of corporate communications at Revenio, a digital communications software company.

Holder of a JD from the University of Pennsylvania, Mike takes particular pride in orchestrating and helping execute the public communications around a recent landmark United States Supreme Court patent case, Bilski v. Kappos. Mike also has a B.A. in political science and communications from Boston College.

Follow Mike on Twitter: @mfarbs or email Mike.

Daniel Paul, Vice President, Finance

Daniel oversees the day-to-day financial activities for LaunchSquad, as well as contributes to the short and long term financial strategies for the firm. His career spans across 25 years of public and private company industry, in addition to Big Four experience. Daniel has held several senior financial, operational and administrative leadership roles with various high growth Fortune 200, mid-sized, smaller and start-up companies.

Daniel’s career broadly spans verticals including public relations, internet based services, retail, interior design and architecture, not-for-profit, consumer products, home improvement, manufacturing and wholesaling industries.

Daniel is originally from Pittsburgh, PA, where he earned a BS in Accounting and Business Administration from Duquesne University. He then went on to spend 18 years of his executive career in Chicago, IL prior to moving to the Bay Area in 2011.