On a Wednesday morning, a newspaper story changed Ken Gaebler's business. By the end of the day, his small software company had letters of intent for two licensing deals worth $800,000. Annual revenue had been below $1 million. One encounter in an exhibition hallway had produced a rather persuasive argument for getting out of the office.
Gaebler had taken his company's 3D visualization software to the Consumer Electronics Show, despite some nerves about paying for a booth. There he met a Wall Street Journal reporter and pitched the business. The resulting article brought attention, prospective customers and, eventually, a useful new conviction. A founder trained in computer science and finance began taking marketing very seriously.
The episode offers an appealing explanation for Walker Sands, the Chicago marketing agency he would later co-found. But it is only part of the story. Between the software business and the agency came a cosmetics venture, a collapse and a reassessment of what he wanted from work. Years later came another turn: a small movie theater in a former Chicago church.
A computer scientist with advertising to sell
At the University of Illinois, Gaebler studied computer science and found several other ways to keep busy. He played club soccer, sold advertising for the Daily Illini, participated in the student senate and chaired the student IEEE chapter. He finished his degree in three years, graduating in 1985. Even before the agency years, technical work and the business of persuasion shared space on his calendar.
His first job was in Arthur Andersen's information consulting division. Four years later, he joined the Information Consulting Group. An MBA at Yale followed in 1993. Those stops supplied different kinds of business education: systems, consulting and the financial and operational questions that accompany a new company. The degree arrived just as another opportunity was taking shape.
VREAM was building software for virtual reality on personal computers. Edward LaHood had founded it in 1991; Gaebler and Dan Malven joined as co-founders in 1993. This was an early attempt to put interactive, computer-generated environments within reach of ordinary PCs. A name derived from “virtual reality dream” gave the enterprise an appropriately large horizon.
Its work also had practical customers. VREAM made simulations for Bombardier and virtual restaurant prototypes for Burger King. The company sold to Platinum Technology in 1996. Gaebler stayed with the buyer until 1998. Looking back, he gave luck and timing substantial credit alongside execution. Success, in his telling, had required good decisions and favorable circumstances to arrive together.
The cosmetics education
His next industry required a different reading list. Preparing to sell beauty products online, he read Cosmopolitan and Vogue on the train, attracting some puzzled looks. He studied financial reports and distribution channels too. A consultant's willingness to learn an unfamiliar business could make a commuter's magazine selection unexpectedly interesting.
BeautyJungle's appeal was easy to explain. Cosmetics could carry attractive margins, while small, lightweight packages suited delivery. The difficult part was getting access to the products. Prestige manufacturers guarded their distribution carefully. A promising spreadsheet could not persuade a supplier on its own; the team had to convince brands that an online retailer would protect their standing.
Gaebler returned to familiar collaborators, recruiting former VREAM employees and using the old office. BeautyJungle raised a $3.6 million Series A in June 1999 and launched that November with a 72,000-square-foot distribution and customer service center. It was a considerable commitment to an industry he had recently begun studying.
Then the dot-com market broke. BeautyJungle closed in November 2000 and sold its assets to Fashionmall. The sequence matters because the next chapter was built after that disappointment. A founder who had experienced a software acquisition now had experience with a business that did not survive. Any account of his career that includes only the exit price misses an education he actually paid for.
Three companies, fewer grand promises
By 2001, Gaebler was pursuing three ventures: Astute Diligence, Grand Roads Executive Search and Walker Sands Communications. Their work concerned due diligence, executive recruiting and marketing. The mix was decidedly practical. Customers already needed these services; the challenge was to win work and deliver it well.
He described wanting businesses that supplied customer value and generated reasonable cash flow. Starting in a downturn had attractions, too: available talent, modest initial costs and time to learn. There was still risk in trying several businesses at once. But his questions had shifted toward the conditions under which a company could keep operating. A balance sheet had become part of the plot.
Walker Sands, co-founded with Ellen Hanson, would become the long commitment. Starting a marketing agency after the software publicity breakthrough has a pleasing logic. Yet the more revealing detail is duration. After changes of industry and the abrupt end of BeautyJungle, Gaebler spent roughly twenty years as the agency's CEO. The repeat founder stayed.
A payroll company becomes a news story
In early 2002, Gaebler met SurePayroll CEO Michael Alter for lunch. Alter wanted his company considered alongside established payroll providers. Payroll processing had no shortage of commercial importance, but it was unlikely to sell itself as entertainment. Gaebler saw an opening in information the company already possessed: its customers' payroll data.
Aggregated figures could describe changes in small businesses, giving journalists a reason to pay attention beyond a product announcement. That work developed into the SurePayroll Small Business Scorecard. National findings could be broken down by geography, supplying local angles as well. The approach connected a company selling payroll services to a wider conversation about work.
There was an engineer's streak in the execution. Excel formulas helped turn regional figures into English sentences, making localized accounts easier to produce. The insight was editorial, the delivery partly mechanical. A payroll database became a repeatable way to tell an economic story. For someone whose career crossed software and marketing, the combination was well suited.
- 01Aggregate data
- 02Find the trend
- 03Make it local
- 04Repeat the report
Common sense, with a search box
Gaebler's writing about marketing often gets down to ordinary questions. In 2013, he argued that a public relations firm should understand search engines, ask clients which search phrases mattered and make their websites useful to reporters. A media placement and a searchable page belonged in the same discussion.
There is a practical impatience in that advice. An agency could write articles and arrange interviews, but it should also understand how people would discover the work. Gaebler thought PR, search and social media needed to work together. He summed up the integration with a short verdict: “I call it common sense.”
“I call it common sense.”
Ken Gaebler, on connecting PR with search, 2013
In his 2015 advice on reaching chief information officers, he started with the buyer's situation. A list of product features was an insufficient opening. Understanding the executive's priorities had to come first. That same year, he interviewed former LVMH watches and jewelry CIO Pierre-Albert Carlier, asking how vendors earned trust and which mistakes cost them access.
His questions explored relationships, priorities and the realities inside a large organization. Those are useful concerns for a founder selling to businesses: the person across the table has colleagues, deadlines and problems of their own. The sales pitch has to survive contact with that working day.
He also documented changing his mind. In a 2018 essay, Gaebler described having treated sales enablement as marketing's territory. Reading Byron Matthews and Tamara Schenk's book led him to see it as a distinct discipline. The admission is a welcome detail in a field where opinions can become job descriptions. He could advocate firmly and still revise the map.
Leaving the CEO chair occupied
On January 1, 2021, Mike Santoro succeeded Gaebler as Walker Sands CEO. Santoro had joined the agency in 2007. The handover therefore put the business in the hands of someone who had helped build it over fourteen years. Gaebler continued on the board at the transition.
The agency then had 130 team members across Chicago, San Francisco and Seattle. It had recorded eight consecutive appearances on the Inc. 5000 and revenue growth of 7.1% in 2020. These were company achievements, shared across a growing leadership group. Their place in Gaebler's story is straightforward: the business he had helped start had acquired scale, colleagues and a future beyond his daily leadership.
The next audience fits in a small room
In September 2026, a different project brought his name into Chicago's cultural conversation. Gaebler was developing La Reina, a movie theater and community gathering place in Humboldt Park. The proposed venue would occupy a former church on Grand Avenue in a building with its own earlier cinema history.
Plans called for roughly 55 to 60 seats, independent and Spanish-language films, and space for community activities. His Chicago Helpers organization was also expected to use the building. The League of Historic American Theatres listed the project as not yet operating. It remained a plan in progress, with a neighborhood audience to earn.
A software company, an online cosmetics retailer, a marketing agency and a small cinema make an unusual working life. Yet the theater gives the opening anecdote a useful echo. Gaebler once discovered what could happen when a business reached an audience. Now he is working on a place where an audience can sit down together. The screen is smaller than the early virtual reality dream. The doors will be real.