AtomicPR Gets Yaga Gig

By Andrew Gordon

San Francisco-based AtomicPR has picked up Yaga, a startup provider of infrastructure for publishing, searching and retrieving digital files, as a client.

AtomicPR, formerly known as HypeLab, will help Yaga with PR surrounding upcoming product launches, as well as ongoing representation.

"Atomic has a clear PR vision and an up-to-date understanding of how the media and client worlds have changed along with the evolution of the Web," says Yaga CEO and co-founder Chris Kitze, a former CEO of NBCi, in a statement.

Arnaud Fischer, senior director of product marketing at Yaga, says AtomicPR is a good match since "they could think along the lines we were thinking. We wanted someone who could think out of the box, think like a startup, and approach this more from a grass-roots level." He also credits AtomicPR for coming up to speed quickly and becoming an integral part of Yaga almost overnight.

Yaga had previously used a "big, national PR firm," but Fischer declined to name that firm.

AtomicPR CEO and co-founder Andy Getsey says his firm is working with Yaga on its analyst communications, and has been briefing the media about Yaga's upcoming products.

It is AtomicPR's job to make sure analysts and the media don't hold a startup like Yaga to the standards of a much older company, says Getsey. With the downturn in the economy and the rush back toward business fundamentals such as profitability, many analysts and business journalists are lumping start-ups in with more established businesses.

"The challenge for all startup companies is to communicate the fundamentals to customers and journalists and analysts, without the hype," says Getsey. "It's different from the past. It has to be done without the hype."

AtomicPR began working with the 1-year-old company, based in Foster City, Calif., in September.

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