Welcome Nick Bell and Ashlyn Gentry
We’re Adding a Market Category & Expanding West!
Two more amazing humans are joining the Human Ventures family, and expanding Human’s mission to take on how people spend their attention.
We are thrilled to announce today that Nick Bell and Ashlyn Gentry are joining Human Ventures to lead a new market category and mission: fixing the attention economy.
This is not only a massive business opportunity, but a socially important one that, done right, could help people live better. We’d be hard pressed to find two people more suited to this cause. Both Ashlyn and Nick have been at the forefront of how people spend their attention and the businesses built around attention.
Ashlyn brings to Human perspective from a diverse number of powerful industries, and a PhD focused on political attention. As SVP at Palantir’s commercial headquarters in New York, she led growth strategy teams working with clients representing the top media companies and brands in the world. Previously, Ashlyn served as Vice President in the Chairman’s office at Hill+Knowlton Strategies in Austin, TX.
“The Human Ventures approach of infusing purpose into building is in total lockstep with what I wanted to work on,” says Ashlyn. “A team that values support and network is paramount to achieving our goals, and because of HV’s infrastructure, we’re already so much further along than we expected to be at this point.”
Meanwhile, Nick spent his last several years shaping how a new generation of mobile first consumers spends its leisure time. As VP of Content at Snap, Nick and his team created new revolutionary content formats and franchises for digital devices. Prior to Snap, Nick was SVP of Digital Products for News Corp, one of the largest and most powerful news organizations in the world.
“When I heard about Human, I saw a massive opportunity to steer an entire industry,” he said. “It’s a rare moment in time, and there are so many brilliant, talented entrepreneurs waiting to be discovered and build future digital businesses.”
That expertise will serve Nick and Ashlyn well as they endeavor to build and support businesses that create a better attention economy. Specifically, as Managing Directors of our newly minted Attention portfolio, Nick and Ashlyn will focus on the impact these shifts have on the current media and start-up landscape.
The addition of our new ‘Attention’ category is not only a logical next step for the Human Ventures portfolio, it’s a necessary one. Every company build — in fact, every company around the world — requires attention to run. Attention is a finite resource, and as a startup studio, we recognize the value of capturing, holding, and rewarding the attention that our consumers choose to give us. We’re delighted to have Ashlyn and Nick on board to add such an important perspective to all of the work that we do.
Also, Human’s Going West!!
Alongside this category expansion, we’re also pleased to announce a geographic expansion as we open our first west coast office in Los Angeles. Nick will lead Attention operations from the west coast location, giving our studio fresh access to top entrepreneurial talent in media and technology, as well as a new investor community. Ashlyn will lead the Attention portfolio from New York where she will leverage her access to founders and investors right here at the epicenter of advertising and finance.
Welcome, Nick and Ashlyn, to the Human Ventures family! And hello, L.A.!
