Brutal Transparency

RBM has been in the B2B marketing space for a long time, most notably around HRTech and TATech. Over the course of the last 15 years or so, I, Maren Hogan, have had the opportunity to work at and for some of the most preeminent brands in the space, and thus gain equity and/or exit successfully. As you’d expect from a firm working with many MANY startups, RBM, as an entity, has also been offered equity from clients, in lieu of, or in addition to, our agency membership fees.

I want to ensure total transparency in companies in which I have, have had, or intend to have a stake in. These are companies I have invested in, as an individual, and none of them are current clients for that very reason.

• Recruitingblogs.com – Equity stake, exited. Now RecruitingDaily.com
• Recruiter – Hold public stock. Now JobMobz, still listed.
• Athyna – Seed round investment
• Elev8 (parent company of Calibr8)- Seed round investment
• PoetryHR – Investment round

From the RBM perspective, we no longer accept equity deals in lieu of payment, but in the past, we have held:

• Vitru – Equity stake, shuttered. Now defunct.
• iRevu – Equity stake.

Brutal Transparency (minus the Brutal these days but we already had t-shirts made) is a big part of RBM, so I wanted this posted somewhere public where folks could refer back to it. If I (personally) promote these products, it is as an investor and an individual, not on behalf of RBM.

Often, my personal brand can become inextricably intertwined with that of RBM (tangled in the Branches, you might say), so I wanted to ensure my position (and integrity)  is crystal clear.

— Maren