6 ms·

PR for startups: is it only for the rich and famous? (2020)

72 points by AnhTho_FR 4y ago

SQueeeeeL 4y ago
>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.
- bombcar 4y ago
  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.
- prottog 4y ago
  > (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.
  - edmundsauto 4y ago
    Since some of the biggest money losing ventures are similarly poorly run (ftx, Uber, we work, etc).. wouldn’t it be better to not look at charter type and instead find something that actually differentiates the good from the bad?
- AnimalMuppet 4y ago
  > 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 4y ago
    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 4y ago
      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 4y ago
  > 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.
MisterBastahrd 4y ago
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 4y ago
  I can’t think of any company that fits that profile that I’ve come across PR from. Mind sharing a few names?
  - gnicholas 4y ago
    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 4y ago
      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 4y ago
    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/how-20-year-old-kylie-jenner-built-a-900-million-fortune-in-less-than-3-years/?sh=408400c7aa62 https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesdigitalcovers/2018/07/11/... For reference, she had a 9 figure trust fund when her father passed away.
gnicholas 4y ago
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-better-way-to-read/482127/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/05/a-bet... 2: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/takeaway/segments/eureka-moment-makes-reading-easier https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/takeaway/segments/eurek...
- carom 4y ago
  What was the PR startup?
  - gnicholas 4y ago
    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.
- 4y ago
xcambar 4y ago
So far, my wealth did not correlate to my number of PRs on Github, unfortunately. /s
geocrasher 4y ago
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-to-1mm-arr/ 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.
photochemsyn 4y ago
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-exchange-hoping-to-rival-bitmex-its-secret-a-wealth-of-liquidity-and-a-kyc-miracle 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!
jongjong 4y ago
The stuff about dealing with journalists is pure bs... As soon as they find out that your project isn't funded by big VC, they ghost you. The role of the modern tech journalist isn't to bring attention to new/interesting technologies, they're an extension to the PR arm of big VCs. I've seen a tech journalist in the software development niche being reprimanded (they shut down their blog) shortly after they wrote an article covering one of my open source projects. In the closing article they said something like "I made a few bad decisions..." - It was crystal clear to me what they meant and I suspect they were covering too many indie projects.
calltrak 4y ago
I built a linkinbio tool https://Bigger.Bio https://Bigger.Bio for adding multiple links to your social medial profiles to help people get more followers and cross promote all their social media. Will it change the world? No. Can I get any bloody coverage in any of the media? That's a big fat no also.
- gnicholas 4y ago
  I'd think that journalists (who have historically been big on Twitter, though less so in the recent month) would be interested in using a tool like this to grow their own following. I wonder if you could pitch it to them not as something they should cover, but something they should use? Then if they like it they might cover it also.

72 points by AnhTho_FR 4y ago

>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.

bombcar 4y ago
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.
prottog 4y ago
> (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.
- edmundsauto 4y ago
  Since some of the biggest money losing ventures are similarly poorly run (ftx, Uber, we work, etc).. wouldn’t it be better to not look at charter type and instead find something that actually differentiates the good from the bad?
AnimalMuppet 4y ago
> 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 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    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 4y ago
> 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.

MisterBastahrd 4y ago

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 4y ago
I can’t think of any company that fits that profile that I’ve come across PR from. Mind sharing a few names?
- gnicholas 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    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 4y ago
  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/how-20-year-old-kylie-jenner-built-a-900-million-fortune-in-less-than-3-years/?sh=408400c7aa62 https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesdigitalcovers/2018/07/11/... For reference, she had a 9 figure trust fund when her father passed away.

gnicholas 4y ago

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-better-way-to-read/482127/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/05/a-bet... 2: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/takeaway/segments/eureka-moment-makes-reading-easier https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/takeaway/segments/eurek...

carom 4y ago
What was the PR startup?
- gnicholas 4y ago
  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.
4y ago

xcambar 4y ago

So far, my wealth did not correlate to my number of PRs on Github, unfortunately. /s

geocrasher 4y ago

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-to-1mm-arr/ 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.

photochemsyn 4y ago

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-exchange-hoping-to-rival-bitmex-its-secret-a-wealth-of-liquidity-and-a-kyc-miracle 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!

jongjong 4y ago

The stuff about dealing with journalists is pure bs... As soon as they find out that your project isn't funded by big VC, they ghost you. The role of the modern tech journalist isn't to bring attention to new/interesting technologies, they're an extension to the PR arm of big VCs. I've seen a tech journalist in the software development niche being reprimanded (they shut down their blog) shortly after they wrote an article covering one of my open source projects. In the closing article they said something like "I made a few bad decisions..." - It was crystal clear to me what they meant and I suspect they were covering too many indie projects.

calltrak 4y ago

I built a linkinbio tool https://Bigger.Bio https://Bigger.Bio for adding multiple links to your social medial profiles to help people get more followers and cross promote all their social media. Will it change the world? No. Can I get any bloody coverage in any of the media? That's a big fat no also.

gnicholas 4y ago
I'd think that journalists (who have historically been big on Twitter, though less so in the recent month) would be interested in using a tool like this to grow their own following. I wonder if you could pitch it to them not as something they should cover, but something they should use? Then if they like it they might cover it also.