One man.
One vision.
Many associates.

Tanner Ashby-Vance was born in Los Gatos in 1994, already disappointed by the user experience of being a baby. By age six he had redesigned his crib's onboarding flow. By twelve he had his first exit (from Boy Scouts, citing "misaligned values"). At nineteen he enrolled at Stanford and dropped out after one lecture, explaining that the professor was "describing something I had already intuited."

His first company, Feelr, was Uber for feelings. You opened an app, and a stranger arrived to have your feelings for you. It raised $11 million. It had four users. Two were Tanner.

Feelr pivoted to the blockchain and became FeelCoin, a decentralized ledger of emotions. At its peak, one FeelCoin was worth $3,400 and the specific sensation of being picked last in gym class. Then the market crashed, and so did the feelings.

The Vision

In the summer of 2019, Tanner wandered alone into a dust storm at a desert arts festival he still insists on calling "the burn." For nine hours he saw nothing. Then, in the tenth hour, he saw everything.

A great bull, made entirely of circuitry, glowing a very specific shade of cyan. It stood atop a cloud. The bull looked at him and said nothing, which Tanner later described as "the most articulate thing anyone had ever said to me." Then the bull wept a single tear. And Tanner understood.

"Engineers deploy code. Nobody deploys feelings. The bull wasn't crying because it was sad. It was crying because nobody had embedded with it to understand its requirements." — Tanner, at least forty keynotes

He returned to the Bay that week, sold his Cybertruck, bought a second Cybertruck, and founded what would become Serious Business Security & Associated.

The Name

Tanner wanted a name that said: we are serious, we mean business, and you are secure. His lawyer suggested "Serious Business Security." Tanner insisted on adding "& Associated," because "nobody does anything alone. Except me. A lot. In a sensory deprivation tank."

The acronym was brought to the board's attention eleven months later by an intern. Tanner maintains it was intentional. It was not. The intern has since been promoted to VP of Brand Coherence, in exchange for an NDA.

The Logo

The bull represents relentless forward progress. The circuitry represents intelligence. The cloud represents the cloud. Any other interpretation of the shape the bull is standing on is yours and yours alone, and says more about you than it does about us.

The First Associate

Tanner's first hire was his yoga instructor, Sage. She had no engineering background, which Tanner considered "a massive unlock." He deployed her to a mid-size logistics firm in Sacramento to "feel out their requirements." She is still there. They have tried to give her a farewell party three times. She attended all three, cried at each, and came back Monday.

That was the moment Feelings Deployed Engineering was born — and with it, a new paradigm in customer retention. Everything else followed: the Wet Noodle (invented at lunch), the Singularity Monitoring Service (invented at a slightly later lunch), and a $41 billion valuation (invented by Tanner, in the car, on the way to the pitch).