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Use this instead of press releases
- ramon 11y agoThis was straight forward and funny! :) Great!
- audace 11y agoYeah - delivery was a bit controversial and not too "entrepreneur-first" but the content was definitely insightful
- fnordsensei 11y agoVery good point! But for a text talking about how long-winded, somewhat rambling and hard to skim press releases are, I found it quite long-winded, somewhat rambling and hard to skim.
- strictnein 11y agoEspecially WITH all of THOSE randomly capitalized WORDS!
- raldi 11y agoIndeed. Did anyone manage to find what the "this" in the headline refers to?
- ksenzee 11y agoIt's apparently an "opening pitch," which you should write according to a checklist you will find at the very bottom of the post. Whether the checklist itself is useful or not, I leave as an exercise for the reader.
- deepfriedbits 11y agoSame. And if you used his max sentences for each answer in his template, you'd end up with the War and Peace of press releases he so (justly) despises.
- josefresco 11y agoI read it in the voice of a 15 year old girl. The WORD emphasis and attitude that PR people should telepathically know how to communicate uniquely with every "journalist" made it quire appropriate.
- mfoy_ 11y agoA lot of the suggestions in this carry over to almost every human interaction.. in addition to his "Can I send you a press release?" gripe, I have a couple to add: "Can you do me a favour?" Why don't you ask me to do something and I'll decide whether or not I want to. "Can I ask you a question?" Really? You're asking me if you can ask me something? Just ask it.
- audace 11y agoCompletely true - Adam Grant recently wrote a piece on when people approach him asking if they can 'pick his brain'... simply ask what you want to know!
- localcrisis 11y agoI think most of the time people just want to speak with that person. They don't know what they're looking for, just that this person is smart and hope they'll provide direction/insight/promotion. Forcing someone to ask what they want is great because it forces them to actually think about what they want.
- cortesoft 11y agoMy personal least favorite is "Are you doing anything on <day or time>?" Well, I will always be doing SOMETHING, even if that something is relaxing at home. How about you propose your plan, and I decide if I would like to do it with your or not?
- tyre 11y agoFirst things first, consider why you are pitching this reporter in the first place. For most companies, TechCrunch is a waste of time (see his note on press releases designed to stroke the writer's ego.) They are probably not your market. Your market is the people you help. Those people — small businesses, local governments, regular people, video game enthusiasts, whatever — probably don't read TechCrunch. Find what they read and pitch there. But what about gaining respect in the Valley? No one whose respect you care about will respect you for seeing your funding round in TechCrunch. Focus on building your business. Focus on building your product. Telling stories is important, but only when you're talking about things that matter. Funding is a means to doing other things, not an end in itself. Hiring? When I was at ZenPayroll, the toughest time for hiring was right after our Series A. We had tons of people who applied because we had just raised $20 million and they saw us in TechCrunch. They wanted to join a rocketship (literally heard that in an interview.) We wanted to help small businesses, very different motivations. Pitch your impact. 99% of the time, you are not yet making a big impact. That's okay. Focus on making one, not making up a story as to why you're making one.
- anonbanker 11y agoMan, why can't anyone on HN say that TechCrunch is useless without being karma-bombed?
- mindcrime 11y agoTechCrunch is useless for many startups. I won't make a blanket statement that it's useless, because I think it does matter for some startups. If your "thing" is a new consumer facing web app or mobile app that needs to be presented to a lot of fairly tech-savvy "early adopter" types, then sure, TechCrunch is great, because those are the people who read TechCrunch. But... if you're a B2B startup whose target customers are manufacturing companies, logistics companies, retail firms, finance companies, health-care companies, pharama companies, academia, etc., then TechCrunch likely isn't the best place to reach your potential customers. Sure, their base of readership is broad enough that some of your targets probably read it, but if I want to reach executives in the textiles industry, I'm better off getting something ran in "Textile Manufacturing Today" or a general purpose business publication like Forbes.
- phil248 11y agoThat first paragraph is a chore to read. Parentheses, caps, asterisks, hyphens, quotes, slashes... it's like bad ASCII art.
- calcsam 11y agoWhy doesn't he make this a Google Form and respond to all cold-emails with the form link?
- JeffreyKaine 11y agoWe could turn this into an interesting side project. sign up with this stuff as a "profile" of sorts, then update your profile with anything news worthy. Charge for exposure to journalists.
- 6stringmerc 11y agoOr, conversely, set it up as a form, have an Editor review the text, and only allow the submitter 3 "undo" edits before sending it through the portal. The submitter could pick a maximum # (3-5?) of targets from a list that has agreed to participate in the format (e.g. publication editors) so there's some element of exclusivity. Then the editors can respond within a timeframe of "interested" or "pass" and if more than one is interested, the first one who replied gets the opportunity, and if they don't capitalize within 3-5-7 days, it goes to the next (in an ideal world). This way there's value added for the submitter (prompts, editing for errors and audience, pathway to exposure) and a buffer intake system for editors who want good, new, exclusive content of this sort. I could probably sketch this out on a whiteboard in an afternoon, would be pretty fun. ...but since I'm writing this out publicly, as part of a group musing an idea, if I find anybody whole-cloth takes this concept and uses it without collaboration or any semblence of attribution, karma will catch you, and your future will be cursed and doomed in equal parts. Don't violate the Bill & Ted rule of "Be excellent to each other"
- martin-adams 11y agoI was thinking along the same lines. If the problem is that there is no structure to acquire the data he needs to do his job, then isn't that one of the use cases that computers are very, very good at. Make a submission form, let them fill out the answers.
- ianstallings 11y agoIf I wasn't a salty startup founder, I might be offended. But after my 500th rejection letter, with much more terse language, I can handle it. These are all good tips.
- dlsx 11y agoPeople still read TechCrunch?
- amingilani 11y agoI thought "this" would be a PR template, or a service or platform to issue good press releases for startups. What I got was a man screaming for attention. -1 for the title
- aerovistae 11y agoThe hilarious thing about this is that he's complaining about pitches not being concise enough, but his suggested template literally asks for a full-length essay. If you add up the suggested sentence limits, you get over EIGHTY SENTENCES and at least a dozen paragraphs. Jesus!
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- mindcrime 11y agoThere's some good stuff there, but this gets me: WHAT IS THE NEW ROUND OF FUNDING? (Required: Specify Seed, Series A, etc) WHO ARE THE INVESTORS? (Required) HOW MUCH FUNDING (in $) DOES IT HAVE IN TOTAL? (Required: Specify Seed, Series A, etc) This suggests that really, the only thing they care about, is stories about people raising money. Like, that's the only thing that matters in the world. In reality, who you're funded by is trivia. Yeah, I said it. It's fucking trivia. It's not going to make a difference in whether you succeed or not. IMO, to the extent that it matters, it's a microscopic factor. You would think that a news outlet would be interested in the what of a company, less than "who's funding it?", ya know? I mean, if somebody has created a ground-breaking new app, (or something they think is ground-breaking) then the app either is news-worthy, or it isn't. You don't need to know who they're funded by, or if they're self-funded, to decide that. I've said this before and I'll keep banging this drum until I drop... the goal of a startup is to make money, not to raise money. To the extent that you do the latter, it's in service of the former. But raising money is a tactical objective, not the end goal.
- ekpyrotic 11y agoMike is thinking about his readers here. TechCrunch is essentially a business-to-business publication, which provides market intelligence on technology companies. It might be 'sexier' than The Aluminium Times or Mining Today, but it's effectively serving the same role -- to inform the industry, and those working within it, about important sector news in a timely way. People who aren't strictly working in the industry read it too because they're interested in tech more generally, or getting involved in it, or want to know the coolest things to download. For that reason, TechCrunch publishes the occasional entertaining piece. But it's primarily purpose is to brief tech entrepreneurs, C-suite executives and VCs who are active in the industry. So, what are these people interested in? They are /absolutely/ interested in who is participating in funding rounds, as well as the level of their contribution. If I run a fashion start-up, for example, and spot on TechCrunch a story about another fashion start-up securing $5m in Series A funding, the first thing I'm going to ask myself is... who participated in this round? Then I can ping them an email to get on their radar. Who is investing is crucial market information for tech decision-makers. It's certainly not just a bit of trivia.
- bozho 11y agoTech journalists keep ranting about the bad pitches they receive. They publish tips and guidelines. But even if you follow those, they still don't read the pitches. And rarely have any idea about technology http://web.bozho.net/?p=336 http://web.bozho.net/?p=336
- mildbow 11y agoThis guy has a megaphone that you are trying to rent. Why are you trying to rent TC's megaphone? It is TC's megaphone right? Dude's got quite a few asks for being a rando-pseudo-journalist. So, I suggest you take that time and pipe it to figuring out what your market/marketing channel is so you can invest those cycles better. Do some research on exactly how many useful signups TC drives (spoiler: nearly 0, craigslist is probably better (LOL!)[0] ). Is your target market is even reading TC? Probably not. Which market segments, exactly, read TC? I barely read it. I doubt most people read it, much less for actual insight or anything resembling journalism. I would steer clear of accept-all startups du jour megaphones (signal:noise is crap) and instead concentrate on outlets your customers care about. BONUS: those will have less prima donna attitudes with silly headshots. GO! [0] article referencing ironic LOL!. Enough internets for me for today :)
- grimmdude 11y agoHe must be very good at what he does.
- acgourley 11y ago"50% of being a startup is about communication" - this is only true if you believe being a startup is about being in the tech news cycle, which I guess he does.
- scrozier 11y agoIOW, write my article for me, so that I don't have to do any actual reporting.
- eistrati 11y agoLots of "smart ass" comments, but effective :)
- codingdave 11y agoI think the article is looking at it backwards - techcrunch is not a singular target audience for press releases. A press release is more like throwing spaghetti up on the wall to see what sticks. It is a grab for free marketing, blasted to anyone who might care, with the knowledge that many will ignore it. Now, if people are writing up direct pitches to this guy and calling it a press release, then they are simply giving it the wrong label, and then his advice may be applicable. Or maybe he gave his article a bad label. Or he only gets crappy press releases. Whichever. But declaring that the entire mechanism of press releases is outdated just because he doesn't like them... well, he did say that it was all incredibly arrogant.
- lazyant 11y agoTL;DR: doing the work for me has the most chances of being in my media
- vortico 11y ago> Many opening Hacker News posts are very simplistic titles which don’t answer basic questions, like "Use this instead of press releases". Many even say (WHY?!) "Would you like to read my entire rant about how important I am to not have time to converse with humans about their heart-felt ideas?". He could have titled this "An email template for best chances at reaching entrepreneurs" and removed the crap at the beginning.
- polysaturate 11y agoI've witnessed some titles being changed to a very simplistic phrase. Perhaps moderation to let the best content rise on its own merits?
- kordless 11y ago> I’m UTTERLY SICK and TIRED of dealing with MILLIONS of tech entrepreneurs (these days there are a HELL of a lot of you) and (some) PR people who have ZERO clue how to pitch me/TechCrunch/the media. His business is writing about (or dealing with) tech startups. He make money doing this by being paid for advertising, etc. If he is sick of dealing with us, that's his problem to solve, not ours. Coaching us to target him better doesn't mean that we'll be successful with another reporter with the same approach. Asking us to improve the efficiencies of our pitches only serves to increase his own success - it doesn't actually raise the chances we'll get the exposure (given probability and math happens). And yes, this general approach would work with PR firms, but then again we're paying them for that service. I had a call with a PR firm a few weeks back and they were struggling to understand what a container stack was and why it is important. They eventually got it, but it took some time. Sometimes complexity happens. Instead of offloading his work onto us, why doesn't he figure out a way to scale what his is suppose to be doing (listening) better? I have no idea how to solve this, but it doesn't start by telling us his is sick and tired of dealing with us and how we can do a bunch of work to make him not sick of us. That's just rudely blaming us for something that brings him suffering. BTW, I totally get where he is coming from, but still. Tone it down a bit.
- MichaelApproved 11y agoHe addresses the tone you're referring to >A final word: > A lot of this may sound incredibly arrogant. Perhaps it is. > I don’t dig coal for a living and the Taliban doesn’t shoot at me as part of my job. I’m lucky. > But Journalists have to parse a lot of information quickly now. It helps the sender out if they are told, in black and white, the best way to get noticed and maybe even read. That’s what this exercise was about.
- CurtMonash 11y agoIf you send me something according to this template, you are very unlikely to get a favorable response. Moral: Treat people as individuals.