What is Jony Ive planning at LoveFrom?

In 2022, Tim Cook, Laurene Powell Jobs and Jony Ive joined Kara Swisher to talk about Steve Jobs

It emerged this month that Sarah O’Brien, a former Apple employee who worked closely with then CDO, Jony Ive as communications lead for Apple Watch has a new job at Jony Ive’s new company, LoveFrom.

LoveFrom now has a communications lead

When this was announced the news didn’t really pick up too much traction as Apple-focused media churned out stories about iPhones, but this may yet turn out to be significant.

This is because O’Brien is the first communications hire LoveFrom has recruited. And what matters about that is that in the background Ive’s company has allegedly been talking about designing products with OpenAI. (Another earlier win was with Airbnb.)

We don’t know if anything will come of those talks, even if they did take place.

Who is Sarah O’Brien?

It is worth noting O’Brien’s trajectory. Ive has grabbed her from Rivian, before which she was Meta’s VP executive and product communications, and before that was Head of Communications at Tesla.

Prior to which she led communications for Apple Watch, and worked to support the launch for the iPhone, iPad, App Store and iTunes Music Festival. She was in iPhone PR when she left Apple in 2016. She’s a Brit, went to the Brit School and studied in the wonderful city of Liverpool.

She even spent time working at EMI, which potentially means we were both in the room when iTunes went DRM-free and The Good, The Bad, and the Queen played a brilliant gig in the company of Steve Jobs.

O’Brien has extensive experience, and presumably an extensive contact book to match, taken from across the tech ecosystem, including forces both positive and less positive about Apple.

That doesn’t imply anything, of course, but does seem to be an incredibly deep moat of experience to deploy in support of Ive’s 50-strong company.

“Immoderate ambition…”

This news was originally reported by Axios, which also seemed to have a unique statement from Jony Ive in support of the hire.

Among other things, he expressed pleasure that O’Brien, “a friend”, will join the team to help it with “our immoderate ambition to be useful in the future.”

Now, I don’t want to read too much into any of this, but I can’t help but join a multitude of dots on strength of this news. O’Brien may well be there to help Ive’s team promote its work across other clients, most recently including a snazzy button design for Moncler and the Red Nose.

Those are both great designs, with simple lines that help such mundane objects resonate, somehow.

But perhaps LoveFrom, whose slogan is “Love and Fury”, has another story to tell?

I imagine a host of Apple watchers will be curious to hear that story – or stories – once they emerge. I thought some of my readers might want to know.

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