west-hollywood
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Shelley Reinstein and the table that kept getting bigger
Shelley Reinstein started Autumn Communications around her kitchen table. As brands asked for more, she built an agency where publicists, creators, producers and affiliate specialists could work on the same brief.
The Woman Who Learned Brand Strategy in a Soap Opera Wardrobe
BRAND AMBASSADOR sells a rare kind of access: the judgment to place a luxury brand in the right room, on the right person, and inside the right story.
The deFIANT Knows the Red Carpet's Most Valuable Inch
A West Hollywood agency built a business by noticing what the cameras were cropping out - then turning those details into culture, commerce and coverage.
Fingerprint Communications knows the value of an invitation
A television in a Malibu beach house. A snowboard lesson at Sundance. Fingerprint Communications builds publicity around experiences people have a reason to talk about.
Ballantines PR learned publicity by selling a place to stay
Before Marriott came calling, there was a retro hotel in Palm Springs. Ballantines PR grew from that experiment into a communications agency with a useful instinct: give people something worth talking about.
H+M Communications knows who brings the crowd
A superhero without its stars. A sequel with Miami in its corner. Inside the PR agency that makes cultural belonging part of the marketing brief.
Bollare knows who gets the second look
A fashion PR firm born inside online retail has spent 20 years arranging introductions. Its real craft is making a product worth another look - and giving the right person a reason to take it.
The Company That Made Hollywood Lighting Cheap Enough for the Rest of Us
A camera-accessory side hustle turned into the lighting brand on more film sets than almost anyone else. The trick was refusing to charge ARRI prices.
The Beauty Lab That Builds Brands, Then Lets Them Go
Ben Bennett's West Hollywood accelerator spots gaps on the shelf, hands them to founders with real equity, and points each new brand toward an exit - Naturium sold to e.l.f. Beauty for $355 million.
Will Kim
Will Kim is the co-founder and co-CEO of Karat Financial, the West Hollywood fintech that treats YouTubers, streamers and TikTokers as the businesses they actually are. After watching top creators with great credit scores get rejected for ordinary credit cards because banks called their income 'risky,' Kim and co-founder Eric Wei built a credit card, then a bank, underwritten on social-media metrics instead of W-2s. Karat has issued more than $1.5 billion in credit and advances, counts Alexandra Botez, Ludwig and Nick DiGiovanni on its roster, and raised a $70M Series B in 2023 backed by Union Square Ventures, SignalFire, Will Smith's Dreamers VC, Biz Stone and Steve Chen.