The Science of Strategic Communications

Rocket Science partners with ambitious companies from Series A through exit to engineer how they show up in the marketplace, stand out, and earn outsized valuations.

Rocket Science rocket dude logo

As seen in

Ad AgeAssociated PressAxiosBloomberg TelevisionBusiness InsiderThe EconomistForbesFox NewsThe Huffington PostMashableThe New York TimesNPRReutersRobb ReportTechCrunchThe VergeThe Wall Street JournalWired

We build revenues, reputations, and enterprise value

We don’t just tell better stories—we influence how markets perceive our clients. We leverage communications to accelerate growth, create strategic relevance, and ultimately drive enterprise value.

Scale-ups launched
31
Scale-ups launched
Exits guided
15
Exits guided
IPOs
3
IPOs

What we do

Revenues, Reputations & Strategic Storytelling

Converting market visibility into pipeline velocity, shorter sales cycles, and buyer/investor trust.

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Whether for fundraising or go-to-market, narratives are not marketing fluff; they define how the market perceives your company and where it competes. We craft authentic storytelling and build aggressive communications architectures that shorten sales cycles, build trust, and convert visibility into revenue. Over 25 years and 30+ brand launches across North America and Europe, we have helped early-stage disruptors and scaling mid-market enterprises out-punch competitors with 10x their marketing budget.

Culture Hacking & Category Creation

The ultimate competitive moat is owning the defining idea for your entire category

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When you define the problem, you own the solution. We engineer high-impact storytelling and cultural narrative shifts that reset industry agendas, turning challengers into category benchmarks. It is how we helped Adblock Plus scale to 1.3 billion downloads with zero paid advertising, and why Harvard Business Review cited our PR methodology as “…the most successful in history.” We don’t just secure news cycles; we build enduring intellectual property and reputational dominance.

AI Authority & Discoverability

Ensuring your narrative is what LLMs and answer engines cite as the category standard.

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Strategic communications in the generative AI era requires a fundamentally different architecture. Earned media accounts for 84% of all cited links, while paid content is just 0.3% (Muck Rack 2026 study). Traditional press releases no longer suffice when enterprise buyers and investors query Perplexity, ChatGPT, and Claude to build vendor shortlists. We design high-authority earned media and industry discourse specifically engineered to be ingested and synthesized by the LLMs as authoritative ground truth. By dominating the earned editorial footprint that AI models crawl, we ensure your company is cited as the benchmark in your space.

Valuation Engineering & Exit Readiness

Are you contemplating an M&A or IPO exit one day? We shape the perception drivers that position your company for optimal valuation.

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Earning a strategic valuation can be the difference between a 'good' exit and a life-altering, generational wealth-building transaction. Our Valuation Engineering approach focuses your company reputation around your strategic value, using earned media, analyst relations, and industry narrative to position your company as an indispensable strategic asset rather than a commodity product or accretive revenue tuck-in. With a track record of 12 M&A exits and 3 IPOs (including AVG’s NYSE listing and FOTO’s Carlyle Group exit), we orchestrate market momentum that brings multiple qualified suitors to the table.

Honors & recognition

50 PROs award
50 PROsTop 10 Firm – 2026
M&A Global Award award
M&A Global AwardBest M&A Communications – United States
Webby Awards award
Webby AwardsSilver Medal – Best Earned Media Campaign
Bulldog Reporter award
Bulldog ReporterGold Medal – Best Response to Breaking News
Business Marketing Award award
Business Marketing AwardGold Medal – Best PR Strategy
Bulldog Reporter award
Bulldog ReporterGold Medal – Best PR Campaign
Harvard Business Review award
Harvard Business ReviewHBR Case Study - 2018
PR News award
PR NewsPR Platinum – Best Event Marketing
PR Week award
PR WeekGold Winner – Best PR Website

Results that are measurable

AVG Technologies

M&A, PE + IPO Exits

$200M PE investment & NYSE IPO

+300% global press · 500,000+ organic users · $200M pre-IPO investment

FOTO

M&A, PE + IPO Exits

A data-driven pivot. A Carlyle Group exit.

22M patient outcomes · Net Health acquisition · Exit within 12 months

Adblock Plus

Scale & Revenue

1.3 billion downloads. Zero ad spend.

700+ stories per month · 25,000+ press articles · Harvard case study

MarketLive

M&A, PE + IPO Exits

350% higher valuation; exit to Vista Equity

+400% media coverage · E-Commerce Index · Vista Equity acquisition

Beddit

M&A, PE + IPO Exits

From Indiegogo launch to Apple acquisition

US retail distribution · Misfit Wearables partnership · Acquired by Apple

AAVA Mobile

Category Creation

An invisible technology becomes a global launch

500+ launch-day articles · Exclusive Intel licensing · Flextronics partnership

Insights

From the Rocket Blog, by Founder & CEO Mark Addison.

Rocket Blog

YOUR NEXT M&A BUYER MIGHT MANUFACTURE SEAT BELTS

During San Francisco Tech Week I overheard that a Nordic manufacturer of automotive seat belts was reportedly scouting for an AI company to acquire. Seat belts? AI? Whaaat? A little research reveals two such manufacturers, Autoliv and Holmbergs,¹ both based in Sweden. I also learned that Volvo is already using billions of real-world driving data …

Rocket Blog

The Audacity to Become #1

With all the noise in the marketplace it can require some audacious claims to stand out and be a sector leader. However, doing so with technical integrity and authenticity is what achieves true competitive advantage vs. being a short-term PR stunt. Nick Uresin from interviewed me about our real-life success examples for his Audacity of …

Rocket Blog

ROAS vs. Revenues

An EMARKETER analysis published today contains a remarkable statistic: social media captures nearly 30% of all U.S. advertising dollars while accounting for only 12.5% of adults’ daily media time. And they expect that imbalance to grow. [1] How can businesses justify such an imbalance, and yet keep spending? One big reason, because it happened to …

Rocket Blog

Communications Strategy: New Rules for Crisis Comm’s

IN ALL OUR YEARS working among cybersecurity companies and other clients with ‘high reputational risk,’ the first rule of crisis communications was containment. This month we saw two examples of disclosures that appear to have flipped the script entirely, and it’s a fascinating analysis. Typically, when a product malfunctions or servers are breached or something …

Rocket Blog

EBITDA Multiples Arbitrage: How PE Buyers Get Higher Valuations for “Free”

TL;DR: Private-equity roll-ups create value two ways: 1) increasing EBITDA at each of the acquired companies; and, 2) moving the combined company into a higher valuation tier. The second method is essentially “free” and a lot less work than growing revenues. While you are working 996 to grow your EBITDA from $2M to $4M to …

Rocket Blog

Communications Strategy Part 2: How Storytelling is Key to Harnessing Cultural Narrative

This is the second in a series of excerpts from my podcast interviews where I am asked about Communications Strategy. Q: Mark, an article in the Harvard Business Review describes your work as “the most successful (strategy) in human history.” What is that all about? A: That HBR article was about a grass-roots “protest movement” …

Frequently asked questions

What does Rocket Science do?

Rocket Science is a strategic communications and PR firm. We help CEOs and CMOs to grow revenues, build & manage corporate reputations, and ultimately increase enterprise value — from Series A through M&A or IPO exit.

What is Valuation Engineering?

Valuation Engineering is our approach to long-term M&A readiness: our 'Levers Audit' uncovers strategic assets that command valuation premiums, we vet the buyer rationale via our network of buy-side experts, then we craft the forward valuation narrative and use earned media to mainstream the story — positioning your company as a strategic asset rather than an accretive tuck-in or standard sector multiple over EBITDA.

What types of companies does Rocket Science work with?

We like to work with ambitious and innovative companies, typically VC-backed and PE-backed scale-ups (Series A or B) or established middle-market firms that are at a strategic inflection point in their business: a significant product launch, and upcoming fundraise, a critical market pivot, or contemplating their exit alternatives.

In which sectors & domains does Rocket Science specialize?

Over 25 years we have built deep domain authority across seven primary sectors:

  • Enterprise & B2B SaaS — workflow automation, data platforms, developer tooling and enterprise infrastructure
  • Cybersecurity & Cloud — endpoint protection, network security, privacy protocols and compliance
  • Consumer Apps & Digital Products — high-volume user acquisition, consumer utilities and lifestyle platforms
  • Mobile Platforms & Wireless — connected devices, embedded systems and mobile software ecosystems
  • E-Commerce & Retail Tech — omni-channel platforms, merchant technologies and digital merchandising
  • Healthtech — digital health platforms, clinical outcomes data, connected health devices and wellness science
  • Deep Tech & Applied Sciences — life sciences, hardware innovation, research commercialization and frontier technologies

Each sector has its own buyer dynamics and technical nuances, but our playbook for category creation, earned media velocity and valuation engineering translates directly across all seven.

What results has Rocket Science delivered?

By the numbers, we have delivered 31 brand launches, 15 exits including 3 IPOs, thousands of press articles, and $1.9 Billion in aggregate enterprise value for founders and investors. The case study examples in our Results section show many more deliverables. 

How does PR influence AI search and answer engines?

We build narratives designed to be cited. Instead of using traditional search keywords, PR pros now shape the information input that trains and fuels Large Language Models (LLMs). AI models heavily prioritize trusted, tier-one news outlets and primary sources (i.e. earned media) for their training data and real-time citations. AI engines build consensus by looking at what multiple credible sources say about a brand, making widespread digital PR essential.

Who leads Rocket Science?

Founder & CEO Mark Addison, a communications strategist and marketing expert recognized by Harvard Business Review and a featured speaker at the Goldman Sachs Technology & Internet Conference.

Let's engineer your next chapter

Scaling, fundraising, or preparing for exit? Tell us where you're headed.

Rocket Science
315 Montgomery Street, Suite 900
San Francisco, CA 94104