[HN Gopher] PR for startups: is it only for the rich and famous?...
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PR for startups: is it only for the rich and famous? (2020)
Author : AnhTho_FR
Score : 61 points
Date : 2022-12-06 16:24 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (anhtho.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (anhtho.substack.com)
| geocrasher wrote:
| How about a bootstrapped startup that's past $1MM ARR. No
| external investors, no big agencies, just a well placed PR.
|
| https://rocket.net/blog/how-rocket-net-bootstrapped-our-way-...
|
| FD: I work at Rocket.net, but did not work there at the very
| beginning.
| xcambar wrote:
| So far, my wealth did not correlate to my number of PRs on
| Github, unfortunately.
|
| /s
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| My favorite PR stories will always be the "self-made millionaire"
| who managed to get himself a multi-million dollar startup
| valuation via his personal investment from his trust fund and
| another investment from his father's hedge fund.
| lefstathiou wrote:
| I can't think of any company that fits that profile that I've
| come across PR from. Mind sharing a few names?
| gnicholas wrote:
| I won't name names, but I know of a founder who raised tens
| of millions without a whisper of a product, any technical
| chops, or even an impressive resume. His dad was very well-
| connected in SV, though.
|
| I've followed the son's career, and it seems that he has
| squandered tens of millions of dollars over the course of a
| decade. Glassdoor reviews are not kind to his company, or him
| specifically. Apparently he lies to employees and recruits
| about milestones and such. I have wondered if his gravy train
| will ever run out of steam. So far, it hasn't -- he lives in
| a multimillion dollar house and drives fancy cars. Oh, and
| his startup was covered in TechCrunch, of course!
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Depending on who his dad is, losing tens of millions over a
| decade on the son could be worth it. A lot of bribery works
| by giving money to family members. The gravy train might
| only end when his dad is no longer in a position to repay
| people with favors.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Not the one I'm thinking of, but Kylie Jenner is referred to
| as a self-made millionaire:
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesdigitalcovers/2018/07/11/.
| ..
|
| For reference, she had a 9 figure trust fund when her father
| passed away.
| TenJack wrote:
| Kylie Jenner's father is still alive (Caitlyn Jenner). But
| yea, not self-made.
| nylonstrung wrote:
| Do you have any actual examples of this?
| yamtaddle wrote:
| The SV version of getting your kid a "VP" job at a golfing
| buddy's firm, straight out of graduating from their 2rd-tier
| rich-people private university, I suppose.
| gpt5 wrote:
| I wasn't sure what universities fall under the "2rd-tier
| rich-people private university" category, so I asked ChatGPT
|
| > According to recent reports, several second-tier private
| universities have gained a reputation as being "rich people
| universities." These schools include New York University,
| Boston College, and the University of Southern California,
| among others. These institutions are known for their high
| tuition costs and their large endowments, which are often
| funded by wealthy donors. While they may not be as
| prestigious as Ivy League schools, they are still considered
| to be among the top tier of private universities in the
| United States
| gnicholas wrote:
| There have only been two founder-spam emails I've received that I
| ever followed up on, and one of them landed me a feature in The
| Atlantic and an interview on NPR.
|
| I got an email from a guy who was launching a PR startup, which
| basically helped founders create relationships with journalists
| via cold email outreach. I was very early stage and figured it
| was worth a shot (I think they had a free trial).
|
| I used the platform to email several dozen technology-oriented
| journalists. Although most of them did not email back, James
| Hamblin from The Atlantic did. He really liked our innovation,
| which partially overlapped with his medical reporting beat (our
| tool makes reading more cognitively efficient, both for
| neurotypical readers and those with dyslexia, ADHD, or other
| challenges).
|
| It took a couple months of follow up, but he eventually wrote a
| solo feature about BeeLine Reader in The Atlantic. [1] The next
| morning I got an email from a producer on a nationwide NPR show,
| [2] who heard about us through The Atlantic. It was an amazing
| couple weeks, and we have benefitted greatly from being able to
| point to these pieces as social proof in the years since.
|
| The lessons for me were:
|
| * it's a numbers game -- you have to reach out broadly to get any
| leads
|
| * even when a journalist is interested, it will still typically
| take months to get something written
|
| * there is momentum in media, so try to get follow-on coverage if
| you are able to get that first hit
|
| * once in a blue moon, founder-spam is actually worth reading
|
| 1:
| https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/05/a-bet...
|
| 2:
| https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/takeaway/segments/eurek...
| illegalmemory wrote:
| That is exactly the reason I am building
| https://presscatalog.com , I think solo founders can benefit by
| pitching to journalists directly. I would really really love if
| you can give me some feedback.
| holler wrote:
| Interesting, have you had any success stories?
| elorant wrote:
| Do you get consent from journalists for listing their emails?
| I thought about building something like that in the past but
| then the GDPR law took effect in EU and I was scared I could
| find myself sued to oblivion.
| illegalmemory wrote:
| I have been reaching out to some journalists over Twitter
| and most of them have been supportive. In case they are not
| I remove them from the list. I am yet to cover all, but I
| intend to abide by GDPR as much as possible.
| ghaff wrote:
| And the fact is that there are all manner of lists out
| there of various levels of quality. I get emails every
| day even though I'm not a regular journalist.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Happy to!
|
| The first thing I noticed is that the pricing is monthly (and
| not trivial, at $90/mo to start). Do you expect folks to use
| the product for a short time when they're focused on PR, or
| would this be an ongoing thing? I can imagine that there
| would be periods where startups wouldn't want to be spending
| that much when they're focused on other things (product,
| fundraising).
| illegalmemory wrote:
| Thank you very much, for now, it is monthly pricing, but
| certainly an area of improvement. The plan is not to charge
| in case there are no exports in a month.
| gpt5 wrote:
| One way to prove that your product works would be to get your
| company to featured by journalists :)
| ghaff wrote:
| >it's a numbers game -- you have to reach out broadly to get
| any leads
|
| A caveat to that is that it's a little bit like job hunting. On
| the one hand, you don't want to stake everything on getting
| that feature article in The New York Times. At the same time,
| that doesn't mean you have to blast out the same low quality
| generic pitch to every email you can get your hands on.
|
| The good PR people I know have relationships with journalists,
| tend to know what things I'm interested in, the type of
| coverage I do, etc. You're still going to drill a lot of dry
| holes, but there are certainly PR folks that I'll listen to if
| they reach out even if I ultimately decline.
| carom wrote:
| What was the PR startup?
| gnicholas wrote:
| Honestly, I don't even know. I tried searching my inbox for
| my first contact with James Hamblin, but it looks like they
| ran the initial outreach through their servers.
|
| After the pieces in The Atlantic and NPR came out, I circled
| back with the startup and offered to give an enthusiastic
| testimonial, but I never heard back.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Here's an example of effective startup PR that was followed by
| rapid growth (August 7 2019). Note how they get the tone just
| right: a big challenge, a dedicated leader, working around the
| clock:
|
| https://www.theblock.co/post/35056/inside-the-derivatives-ex...
|
| > "But new Asia-based crypto derivatives exchange FTX has
| accepted the challenge and has bolted out of the gate; born out
| of U.S.-trading firm Alameda Research. In the three months since
| launching, it's turned over up to $200 million in daily volumes,
| allegedly KYC-ed 10,000 clients, and conducted its own token
| offering. It's perhaps little surprise, then, that CEO Sam
| Bankman-Fried answers the phone at 1:00 a.m. local time, still
| chained to his desk."
|
| That's the kind of marketing approach you need to be a real
| success!
| SQueeeeeL wrote:
| >Explain why the problem you're solving is impacting society,
| rather than brag about the amount raised, valuation, or the VCs
| pedigree
|
| I feel like this fundamentally misunderstands the purpose of
| "startups". Startups exist to make fast cash for investors, with
| the downside of often being vaporware and being worth nothing.
| This is * _not*_ a model in which solving a problem is your
| objective, your objective is to capture a market or (most likely)
| be bought by a bigger company who has more confidence than you
| do. Accept that and producing a shiny toy for the VC ecosystem to
| play hot potato with.
|
| If you want to * _solve*_ a problem, you should form a business
| with the expectation of slow, but steady growth and long term
| objectives (or if you 're feeling really bold, a 501c3). Anything
| which can be created by 2 fresh college grads in 6 months isn't
| solving anything major, honestly it's probably just a wrapper
| about some POSIX and a few APIs.
| prottog wrote:
| > (or if you're feeling really bold, a 501c3)
|
| The profit incentive is a powerful one that often leads to
| solving real problems. Some of the worst-run, most ineffective
| organizations in the world are nonprofits, so you'd have to be
| very bold indeed to go that way.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > Anything which can be created by 2 fresh college grads in 6
| months isn't solving anything major, honestly it's probably
| just a wrapper about some POSIX and a few APIs.
|
| Um, Google? And yet it solved something major - better search
| results.
| SQueeeeeL wrote:
| Larry Page was literally a PhD student studying search space.
| From a basic search, it looks like page rank took at least 3
| years to become something coherent and implementable.
| paulgb wrote:
| And then once it was coherent and implementable, he took
| venture funding to scale a business around it. I'm not sure
| I see your point.
| gumby wrote:
| > I feel like this fundamentally misunderstands the purpose of
| "startups". Startups exist to make fast cash for investors...
|
| No, a startup is a company intended to grow large (or be bought
| out on the expectation of same). It may be small early on but
| it's different from a small business. Intel and Cisco are
| classic startups that didn't grow like lightning but were
| intended from the start to be very large companies. Obviously
| the investors would like sooner rather than later, but
| ultimately the intent is larger returns than you'd get in the
| open market.
|
| The term "startup", like "entrepreneur", has been seriously
| diluted over the past 10-15 years so any old business is now a
| "startup" when it begins; while any business person is by
| definition an "entrepreneur", the old definition of that in
| English has been watered way down.
|
| There's nothing wrong with small business -- it's the backbone
| of normal society. But these small businesses designed to flip
| aren't startups in the classical sense. In particular, in
| Europe, 99.999% of what I see touted in the blogs and at
| conferences are simply small businesses that happen to have a
| web site or API.
|
| Having founded startups both bootstrapped and venture funded I
| know the difference. A lot of it comes from scratching an itch
| rather than starting with a desire for cash.
| bombcar wrote:
| This is it exactly - "startups" that are concerned with solving
| a problem and NOT with playing with VC are just bootstrapped
| companies, doing business things.
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