KBS+P’s entrepreneurial chief digital media officer Darren Herman is the mastermind of agency’s new investment arm called kbs+p Ventures. Herman–who joined KBS+P four years ago and whose digital media firm, Varick Media Management, is also housed under the MDC umbrella–will serve as managing director of Ventures while maintaining his current post at Kirshenbaum.

The goal of this new unit is to back up early stage entrepreneurs and startups in the ad technologies, mobile and UX/UI sectors. Those who receive funding from Ventures will also be able to access resources from KBS+P and sister agencies within MDC. Ventures’ first investment is an on-demand realtime media intelligence platform called Yieldbot. The latter’s CEO Jonathan Mendez says in a statement, “Over the past five years or so, I’ve bumped into Darren at all different tech and advertising conferences. We struck up a friendship and when I started building YieldBot, he was one of the first people I met with to tell our story and he instantly understood it. We’re excited to have him and his firm on board.”