Back to School Shopping as the Days of Summer Dwindle
Main Street was busy this afternoon as many of the downtown merchants offered discounts and sales as the community’s kids head back to school this Tuesday.
Carleigh Welsh: Supporting Decades of Levitt Pavilion Shows
Carleigh Welsh, the Levitt Pavilion’s Director of Development and Marketing, addresses the crowds ahead of Gunsmoke’s performance Saturday night. Welsh has been involved with the Levitt since she was a child, as her mother Freda continues to manage the venue as its Executive Director. With excitement and gratitude before every show and behind the scenes breakdown work long after the crowds have gone, the Welsh family and their staff at the Levitt have continued the tradition of live music for decades through renovations, demolitions, and now a pandemic. Photo by JC Martin for WestportLocal.com
No Beach? No Problem. Longshore Pool Open until 8PM Daily
Longshore Pool was calm before opening this morning as lifeguards prepared the deck for guests. With local beaches closed to swimming, Westport residents can still enjoy a cooling swim while enjoying views of the Long Island Sound. The Longshore Pool is open to residents with Parks and Recreation handpasses from 11:00 AM until 8:00 PM through August 29th, after which date the hours transition to 4 - 7 PM weekdays, 11AM - 7PM weekends. WestportLocal.com photo
Blue Skies End the Day over Compo Beach
After a turbulent 24 hours of storm prep, the day ended with blue skies and sun peeking through over the Long Island Sound. WestportLocal.com photo
Enjoying the Day Off
With many stores closed and schedules cleared ahead of the forecast storm, many community members enjoyed the newfound time-off as Westport escaped Henri’s damaging winds and storm surges that are battering the northeast. Compo Beach was busy with pedestrians earlier in the day as the skies were calm for several hours, with the historic pavilion sheltering friends from the midday drizzle. WestportLocal.com photo
Birds Fly as Rainbow Adds Color to Evening Sky
At about 6:00 this evening, a rainbow could be seen lighting up the cloudy sky over the Saugatuck neighborhood. Photo by Preston Siroka For Westporlocal.com
Staples Grad Drops out of College, Builds $44 Million Company Based on App Designed at Staples
Saturn co-founders Max Baron and Dylan Diamond (Staples 2015). Contributed photo from joinsaturn.comFrom Forbes Africa, Alexandra Sternlicht, 08/19/21Forbes Africa: Social Calendar Platform Saturn Raises $44 Million From Benioff, Bezos, And Von Tobel, Among Others
In October 2015, the halls of Westport, Connecticut’s Staples High School looked like those of any other well-to-do American school, abuzz with 1,800 students rushing from class to study hall to extracurricular activities. But while other schools’ teens connected through Snapchat and Instagram, Staples’ entire student body was hooked on what would become Saturn, a social calendar app built by junior Dylan Diamond.
“People would send around pictures of their schedules and say, ‘Hey, are you in my class?’ They’d send around these ad hoc spreadsheets, group chats and posts; there was no coherent solution,” says Diamond, now 22 years old. “So I created a Web app just for my school that showed me where my friends were and what was going on in the community.” That app became Saturn, named after the Roman god of time. High schoolers use Saturn to manage their calendars, learn about community happenings, chat with friends, see their calendars and real-time whereabouts.
Diamond graduated from Staples in 2017 and enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied engineering and business. On the side, he developed Tesla Toolbox, an app for Tesla drivers to control their vehicles from Apple Watches and share drive data—he describes this as Strava for the Tesla community. Tesla discovered the app and hired Diamond as the company’s youngest full-time employee. Though his weekly commutes from Philadelphia to San Francisco prevented Diamond from having much of a social life, fellow Whartonite Max Baron, who was similarly running a full-time social media consultancy with buy-in from Dr. Dre and Snapchat, messaged Diamond on LinkedIn to connect about business opportunities.
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Over coffee on Penn’s campus, Diamond showed Baron Saturn—which he’d subsequently turned in a mobile app-—and Baron was floored. “It was very obvious to me that the slope of whatever we could build together was much higher than whatever I could find in either a classroom or commercial setting.” With Baron as COO and CSO and Diamond as CEO, in 2019 the two closed a $9 million seed round from TQ Ventures, General Catalyst and Ashton Kutcher, propelling their pre-revenue company to a $40 million valuation. After Diamond won a Thiel Fellowship in 2020, the two dropped out of college to build Saturn into what they say will be the next Facebook.
Today, the company announced it’s raised an additional $35 million, bringing total funding to $44 million, led by General Catalyst, Insight Partners and Coatue, with participation from Bezos Expeditions, Marc Benioff, Dara Khosrowshahi, Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary’s Sound Ventures, Inspired Capital, Mike Vernal, TQ Ventures, SV Angel, Dick Costolo and Adam Bain’s 01 Advisors, Robert Downey Jr., Elad Gil, Jerry Murdock, Hadi Partovi and Dylan Field.
“Dylan [Diamond] is a prodigy in many ways,” says Alexa von Tobel, founder and managing partner of Inspired Capital. “When you see data like Saturn’s, it honestly reminds me of my days as a Harvard undergrad—Mark Zuckerberg was a classmate—and I remember what the early adoption of Facebook felt like, when the user base is not only demanding, but thirsty for the product.”
Though Saturn declined to share metrics on its user base, at present, a few hundred schools use Saturn to manage their social and academic calendars, message students and work through homework and extracurricular to-do lists within the platform. Saturn brings high schools into its orbit by hiring unpaid student ambassadors, a strategy meant to make it feel by and for students, rather than administrators.
Though the cofounders have attracted a slate of blue-chip investors, the company has no monetization model—or plan to move beyond high school users—at present. “There are a lot of things in play, but to be honest, [monetization] is not our immediate priority at the moment,” says Baron, who is more focused on retention and engagement. Investors are banking on Saturn becoming the next great social network, and in such a reality, monetization is light-years away. For context, Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook in 2004, but did not attempt to generate revenue until 2012.
“When you invest in things like Twitter, which I did when it was only 30 people, we had no idea how we’re going to make money,” says Insight Partners’ cofounder Jerry Murdock, who led the round, but invested as an individual. “Within something that has a high degree of engagement, and you see there’s a lot of utility, there’s an implied sense that monetization will be there when you need to get there.”
The SoHo, New York-based company plans to use much of its $44 million injection to pay its 30 employees and hire to fill 13 new roles. “If we double down on performance and make sure that Saturn can scale flawlessly to thousands of schools,” says Diamond. “There’s a lot of work ahead, but we’re excited about where we are.”
New Neighbors: Sir Knottingham the Opossum joins Earthplace
Earthplace announced yesterday the arrival of a new member to their Animal Hall: Sir Knottingham, a Virginia Opossum. Sir Knottingham was taken in by the local non-profit nature center due to a tail injury, which prevents him from being able to balance while climbing trees - critical to his independence in the wild. The wide-eyed new neighbor will join over 30 other animals, from frogs to American Eagles, and will continue the center’s tradition in education the public and its preschool students through discovery and nature. Community members are welcomed to visit Sit Knottingham and his neighbors during the center’s museum hours, which reopened after a long hiatus to to COVID-19 precautions.
Westporter Drew Angus to Sing National Anthem at Mets v. Giants Game this Afternoon
Musician Drew Angus will be at Oracle Park this afternoon to sing the National Anthem ahead of the MLB game between the San Francisco Giants and the New York Mets. Angus, a Staples High School class of 2007 graduate, has traveled the country for his music - appearing on shows like Saturday Night Life and becoming a finalist on American Idol. The San Fransisco home game begins at 3:45 today.
Photo by WestportLocal.com, Westport Fine Arts Festival