CT United Ride Rumbles across Post Road as 9/11 Tribute Tours Connecticut
Members of the CT United Ride head over Post Road on Route 33 as they headed for Wilton this afternoon. The annual ride featured thousands of motorcycles from across the region and was nearly 45 minutes long as it motored through local communities. Starting at Sherwood Island, the ride continued through Fairfield County until it ended at Seaside Park in Bridgeport. The bikers were escorted by dozens of law enforcement and first response motorcycles, including Westport Police, Fire, and EMS personnel. Community members lined the routes throughout the State to wave flags and pay respect to the motorcade on the 20th anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks.
The first ride was held on September 30th, 2001 and has continued and grown since then - with all funding collected going towards family emergency relief funds for CT Police Officers, CT Fire Fighters and two local United Ways. WestportLocal.com photo
Paulie Pushes through Westport on His Way to Honor Fallen Flight Crew on 20th Anniversary of 9/11
Paulie Veneto pushes his car through Westport today - starting in Bridgeport and ending in Norwalk with the help of a first responder escort - and support from the community.
Veneto, a former United Airlines flight attendant, completed the Boston - Los Angeles flight route September 10th, 2001 and went home. The next morning his coworkers were lost as their plane on the same route struck the south tower at 9:03. Following the attacks, he battled drug addiction until becoming clean in 2015. "I can now finally give tribute to my fallen crew members."
Paulie has been pushing a airline beverage cart from Boston's Logan International Airport - the origin for Flight 175 - until he arrives at Ground Zero in time for the 20th anniversary of the 09.11.01 terrorist attacks. His walk is raising money for survivors' families and the Power Forward foundation for sober living.
To learn more, donate, or to track Paulie’s progress, visit his website here.
Cooking with Sam Seideman: Basic, Delicious Hummus Recipe
Chef’s Tips:
Use this recipe as a basic hummus recipe.
Sam likes to add ingredients like sun-dried tomatoes, pesto, roasted garlic, etc. to this hummus to jazz it up a bit.
For a creamier hummus, save chickpea liquid. Then, add a little bit to the hummus after adding your olive oil.
Click Here for Westporter Sam Seideman’s Basic Hummus Recipe
Basic Delicious Hummus Recipe:
Ingredients:
⁃One (14oz) can of chickpeas
⁃1/3 Cup tahini
⁃Juice of one lemon
⁃2 large garlic cloves
⁃Cilantro
⁃1/3 Cup Olive oil
⁃Cumin
⁃Salt
Directions:
1. Add lemon juice and tahini to the food processor, mix on high for one minute
2. Drain and rinse chickpeas. Add to food processor and mix until smooth
3. Drizzle in olive oil and allow to mix.
4. Add cilantro, salt, and cumin. Mix until smooth
5. Put hummus in bowl, top with a drizzle of olive oil, paprika, and cilantro or parsley
6. Enjoy!!
Hundreds Join Bluefish Tournament as a 17 Pounder Tops the List for $25k Prize
After hundreds joined in on the Long Island Sound Bluefish Tournament this weekend, Joseph Gallo pulled up this 17.27lb blue this afternoon that topped the charts as he weighed in at Fisherman’s Paradise in Milford. The grand prize for the tournament is $25,000, with dozens of Westporters heading onto the Sound today for their chance at the cash after yesterday’s small craft advisory forced many boats to remain at port. Photo by Fisherman’s Paradise.
High Flying
Staples Senior Nic Roland soars over a wall at the Compo Skate Park this afternoon. WestportLocal.com photo
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
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
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.
Click here to expand article.
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.”