Some entrepreneurs build their careers around a single company or industry. Steve Jbara has taken a different path. His portfolio spans professional sports, marketing, artificial intelligence, climate technology, venture investing, and consumer brands, yet the businesses themselves are only part of the story. The common thread is a philosophy centered on building long-term value through strategic ownership, trusted partnerships, and businesses with the potential to grow far beyond their initial opportunity.
That mindset has guided nearly every major decision throughout Jbara’s career. Rather than pursuing ventures for immediate financial gain, he looks for opportunities where his expertise can help create sustainable enterprise value. Whether leading a professional sports franchise, advising technology companies, or working with startups, the objective remains remarkably consistent: become invested in long-term success rather than short-term transactions.
Jbara’s entrepreneurial journey began after graduating from Trine University with degrees in marketing and computer science. Following early roles at Ford Motor Company and R.L. Polk, he made an unconventional leap into professional basketball by acquiring a struggling NBA Development League franchise in 2013. After relocating the team to Grand Rapids and rebranding it as The Drive, he transformed it into one of the league’s strongest business organizations through sponsorship growth, community engagement, and a disciplined operational strategy. The experience reinforced his belief that sports franchises are far more than entertainment properties. When managed effectively, they become platforms that strengthen brands, create community partnerships, and generate lasting business value.
That perspective continued when the franchise transitioned to become the Grand Rapids Gold, the Denver Nuggets’ NBA G League affiliate. While the team itself evolved, Jbara’s approach remained the same: build organizations that are positioned for sustained growth rather than short-term success. His continued involvement in sports, including his ownership interest in Detroit’s WNBA franchise, reflects a broader belief in the long-term potential of professionally managed sports organizations as appreciating business assets.
The same philosophy extends well beyond athletics. In 2019, Jbara co-founded Atomic Honey, a Detroit-based advertising agency built on a services-for-equity model. Instead of charging traditional agency fees, Atomic Honey partners with emerging companies in exchange for ownership stakes, aligning its success with that of the businesses it helps grow. The model challenges the conventional client-agency relationship by emphasizing shared outcomes instead of one-time engagements, creating opportunities for long-term value creation on both sides.
For Jbara, the concept is straightforward. Businesses with strong fundamentals often need strategic expertise as much as they need capital. By contributing marketing, branding, and growth support in exchange for equity, Atomic Honey participates directly in the future success of its clients while allowing founders to preserve valuable cash during critical growth stages. The result is a diversified portfolio built not through traditional acquisitions, but through long-term partnerships.
His investment philosophy has been shaped by experience as much as strategy. After co-founding a peer-shopping technology platform that was later acquired by Amazon, Jbara chose to retain a portion of the proceeds in Amazon stock rather than taking a fully cash-based exit. The decision reflected his conviction that ownership in a growing business can create significantly greater value over time than maximizing immediate liquidity. It is a principle that continues to influence how he evaluates opportunities across industries.
Today, Jbara’s work spans a diverse range of sectors. As Chief Strategy Officer for WaitTime, he helps guide an artificial intelligence company whose crowd analytics technology serves major sports venues, entertainment destinations, and public spaces. He also serves as Chief Strategy Officer for a climate technology business that transforms captured carbon dioxide into commercially viable products. Alongside these roles, he has interests in venture investing, consumer brands, and organizations that support entrepreneurship and community development.
Despite operating across multiple industries, Jbara’s decision-making framework remains remarkably consistent. Rather than pursuing businesses because they fit within a particular sector, he looks for organizations with strong leadership, scalable business models, and opportunities where strategic guidance can create measurable long-term value. This approach has enabled him to build a portfolio that is diversified by design while remaining grounded in the same core principles.
Equally important has been his emphasis on relationships. Throughout his career, Jbara has cultivated a network of investors, founders, executives, and partners who have collaborated across multiple ventures. Those long-standing relationships have created a repeatable model for identifying opportunities, assembling expertise, and supporting businesses through different stages of growth. Instead of treating each investment as an isolated transaction, he views every successful partnership as the foundation for future opportunities.
As industries continue to evolve, Jbara’s career offers a broader lesson about modern entrepreneurship. Sustainable success is rarely built by chasing the next trend or maximizing short-term returns. It comes from recognizing opportunities where strategic thinking, operational discipline, and aligned incentives can create value that compounds over time.
While his portfolio continues to expand across sports, technology, marketing, and emerging industries, the underlying philosophy has remained unchanged. For Steve Jbara, building businesses has never been about collecting companies. It has been about creating lasting value, one partnership, one opportunity, and one long-term investment at a time.
