SABRINA HORN - HORN GROUP
CEO Interview - published 05/05/2004

DOCUMENT # YAD108

SABRINA HORN is the President of Horn Group. Ms. Horn has 20 years
management and public relations experience working with both start-up
and Fortune 1000 technology companies. At Horn Group, Inc., she provides
strategic consulting to select clients and guides the firm's operations,
business development and long-term vision. She also currently runs the
firm's New York office. Previously, Sabrina held senior management
positions at Blanc & Otus and Edelman Public Relations, both in San
Francisco. She holds a MS in Public Relations from Boston University and
a BA in American Studies from Hobart and William Smith Colleges Sabrina
has authored several research papers including "Public Relations for
Emerging Growth Technology Companies," and "Advertising in the People's
Republic of China." Sabrina is accredited by the Public Relations
Society of America  marketing industry conferences. Sabrina was named to
the Silicon Valley Hall of Fame in 1997 and received the award for Best
Employer in the US by Working Woman in 1999. She was also recently
recognized as one of the PR industry's most successful entrepreneurs by
Inside PR magazine. Sabrina enjoys painting and playing with her two
daughters.

Sector - Business services

TWST: Sabrina, can we start off with a brief historical overview of the
Horn Group?

Ms. Horn: Horn Group was established in 1991 and are headquartered in
San Francisco. We opened an office in Boston in 1996 and New York in
2002. We currently have about 55 employees supporting about seven
million in billings, and are specifically focused on providing public
relations services to technology software companies.

TWST: Can you give us a brief description of some of the services and
the solutions that you provide for your clients?

Ms. Horn: We cater to young, emerging growth companies who have just
received a round of venture financing as well as older, 100M+
established companies. We provide services including messaging and
positioning to companies who want to fine tune what they are saying to
the market. And we develop integrated PR and Web communication programs
to get those messages out. We work primarily with the press and analyst
communities on their behalf, and also offer investor relations support
if the company is publicly held. We offer executive media coaching to
help our CEOs communicate more effectively with the media. We develop
presentations and write their press releases. We arrange corporate
events such as user conferences and sales meetings. We design Web sites.
We do graphic design. Those are some of the services. Basically we help
companies communicate more effectively with all of their constituents,
from the media to wall street, and from their customers to their
employees and business partners.

TWST: There are many companies in your space. What is it that makes Horn
stand out? What is your competitive advantage over them?

Ms. Horn: We focus on three things. First, we focus exclusively on
technology software companies specifically in the enterprise software
space. Number two, we have developed a skill in creating new categories
and in setting industry agendas for our clients. So, for example, for a
little company called PeopleSoft back in 1991, that was our founding
client, we put them on the map as a leading provider of human resource
application software and then as an ERP vendor, and helped to really
create that category. We did the same thing for Commerce One in 1998 to
position them as a leader and build out the e-commerce space. Creating
industry categories that support and promote our clients' technologies
helps to turn those companies into market leaders. And number three, we
are different because we provide both strategy as well as execution. We
are unlike consulting firms that will only tell you what to do (but
won't do it), and we are unlike firms that will just do what you tell
them to do (but can't think strategically). We do both of those things
and we need to do them both very well for our clients. That is our brand
and our reputation.

TWST: What do you see as some of the major challenges that are facing
the Horn Group in the next year to year-and-a-half?

Ms. Horn: As the market comes back from the recession of the last few
years, I would say it is primarily rebuilding the firm's infrastructure,
adding new people, assimilating them into our culture, and bringing on
the new technology companies that are coming up on the horizon.
Companies in this market also require a different level of service that
we need to provide. They want more value for their dollar. They also
want more in terms of choice and types of service offerings. To that
end, we just added web site and graphic design capabilities to the
services we offer. So now, if a company comes to us and says, `Hey, I
need some PR but can you also help me design my new Web site?` We can
say yes. That's important to our future growth.

TWST: Excellent. Sabrina, does the international market play a large
role in the Horn Group?

Ms. Horn: Yes, it does. The first thing many US companies do when they
reach a certain stage is attempt to sell in the UK and/or the
Netherlands. We have a responsibility to help them get their message out
over there and partner with firms in-country share the same service
approach or clientele. At some point, we might choose to have a direct
presence overseas, possible in London, but for now we have enough to do
on our own backyard.

TWST: So you do lots of joint ventures. Are there any acquisitions that
are coming up that you can see?

Ms. Horn: Possibly in a couple of years, but not in the immediate
future.

TWST: Sabrina, can we have your take on some of the key issues you see
affecting your whole area today?

Ms. Horn: From a PR standpoint, public relations still tends to be
underestimated in terms of its strategic value at the C-levels within
the corporation and at the board level. In many older corporations, the
function can be viewed as a press release department that is a necessary
evil. Public relations is actually very strategic. It is the face of a
company and the image that a company presents to the outside world. The
PR industry needs to continue to advocate for itself and show the real
value of the function through return-on-investment case studies. On the
technology side, it has been pretty gloomy for the last couple of years
and IT spending is just starting to come back. The venture capitalists
are starting to invest in companies again. Looks like the IPO market is
coming back, slowly. One of my concerns is the tech industry is a highly
impatient industry. We just want things to be great, now. But in truth,
we wouldn't want to go back to those crazy days because it wasn't
sustainable and it became fueled by greed as opposed to innovation. The
technologies we need today are the ones that help companies make better
use of the technology they already have. We have the Internet now as a
computing platform. That's done. What we need to do now is build it out
and create the network and integrated wireless infrastructure to take it
to the next level.

TWST: Where do you see the Horn Group being in the next two to three
years? Can you give our readers a little bit of a background of the
strategic direction of the company?

Ms. Horn: Our firm can grow in three ways: geographically, through new
service offerings, and by moving into other tech sectors. On the
geographic side, we can simply open offices and transplant what we do
well in existing tech-rich markets. Number two, we can grow by adding
our new services like the Web design capability I told you about. And
number three, we can move into tech segments other than enterprise
software like telecommunications or storage. So I would say within two
to three years, Horn Group is twice our current size. We will have
offices, in addition to the three we already have , in Chicago and
Virginia, with services in Web design and graphic design, investor
relations, executive coaching. From a tech segment standpoint, I think
we are probably looking at having a stronger footprint in
telecommunications, financial services, publishing, and I would say also
systems technology. So not just software, but the hardware that it runs
on.

TWST: Can I have a little background on yourself and some of the other
key personnel at the Horn Group?

Ms. Horn: Sure. I am one of the few people I know in our industry that
has a Master's Degree in Public Relations (from Boston University). I
have a Bachelor's in American Studies from Hobart and William Smith
Colleges in Geneva, New York. I started my career in Public Relations in
San Francisco at Edelman Public Relations and then went to Blanc & Otus,
which is also a specialty boutique in the area of enterprise software
PR. I started Horn Group in 1991.

TWST: Anyone else you'd like to mention?

Ms. Horn: I have a great operations team. I have a CFO who has been with
me for five years. I have several senior directors and principals of the
firm who have been with me anywhere from five to ten years and they each
have enjoyed different roles in the firm over time. I have a partner in
San Francisco and a partner in Boston. It is a great team and we are now
in a position where we can add more people to our management team
because we are growing and we need the senior staff to support the
business.

TWST: Is the Horn Group doing anything at the moment to get their
message out to the rest of corporate America?

Ms. Horn: We have our own marketing effort and do our own fair share of
PR. We put out press releases about client wins that we've gotten or new
services we are offering. I'm in regular contact with the trade media in
the PR industry. I write articles on occasion about important topics
that I think would be a value to the people that we serve and I'm still
a very firm believer in the employee experience and in having a great
place to work for our people. So, I'm always talking at different
industry conferences about that topic.

TWST: Excellent. Sabrina, you get the last word. Anything you like to
add?

Ms. Horn: The last word. I would say I have three principals of doing
business. One, you've got to know what you don't know. Two, it's never
over until the check clears the bank. Three, the day you think you've
made it is the day you should quit your job.

TWST: Thank you (JM)

SABRINA HORN
 President
 Horn Group
 612 Howard Street
 San Francisco, CA 94105
 (415) 905.4000
 (415) 905.4001- fax
 www.horngroup.com

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