Our product (distilbio.com) is in good enough shape to be exposed to the whole wide world (we think :)) and we'd rather have top rate criticism sooner than later. Is it ok to just cold-mail Techcrunch and others, or is there a better protocol? Comments from fellow HN readers much appreciated.
My guess: you'll almost certainly not get covered by those guys unless you can find an angle that is interesting to their audience. You might think that it's the blogger's job to find the interesting bit-- but it's actually yours.
This is an empathy exercise. What's THEIR motivation? Turns out it's pageviews, retweets, likes, comments, and FAVORS (more on favors in a minute). So your goal is to hand them a gift-wrapped story that will perform above average on their site. Do you have that story? It's certainly not "ditilbio is ready for top rate criticism!". What's the STORY? PR and social media marketing is a storytelling exercise. Some businesses lend themselves well to that... Some don't. But you can do it with ANY business (37Signals and Zappos had epic PR with fairly mundane markets). Again: hand a blogger a story that will make them look like a hero (by the metrics they care about) and you win.
The only exception here is if you can get someone important to ask them to cover it. If one of your investors is Ron Conway, you can almost certainly get covered if he makes the ask.
Related: Don't pitch it yourself. Get your most famous friend/advisor/investor to pitch it.
Yep, this is very good advice -- especially the last bit. An intro from an entrepreneur we know already, or a respectable VC, is the best way to grab our attention for a closer look.
DO NOT COLD E-MAIL US with a single, vague paragraph. It will go into the bowels of oblivion into [email protected] where we get 95% crazy and 4% decent and 1% awesome information.
You should find the writer that most appropriately fits what you want to do. We all have different styles and interests. Josh does a lot of FB-related stuff, I do a lot of mobile & finance-related stuff, Leena does some more enterprise, Alexia does culture, Sarah Perez does mobile stuff.
Establish a relationship with them for future coverage. Many of our e-mails are just our first name followed by @techcrunch.com
In terms of explaining what you do, we basically ask the same questions that PG or any investor would.
1) Who are you? Tell us about your team and why they are interesting or uniquely positioned to build this.
2) What is the idea? How did you pick this problem?
3) Why is your solution better executed than everyone else in the space? Eg, tell us about your product. Why is it built this way and what does it let you do? Where do you think your competitors fall short and who are they?
4) What is the market opportunity?
5) How does the revenue model work if you have one? If you don't, what do you think it could be?
6) How do you acquire users? Most people do not have a thoughtful answer to this and it makes me very sad. Especially people who want to "launch this cool app" or whatever. The world does not work like this.
7) Do you have evidence of traction? If you provide arbitrary vanity metrics, I will go crazy (unless you have a really good explanation) for why you need to deviate from the standard engagement metrics like DAU/MAU/uniques/# of transactions/monthly or annual revenue, etc. In your case, sheer DAU or MAU may not really be that relevant since you have a very specific target market.
8) Do you have investors or advisors? How much did you raise and why did you take money from these people?
This was essential reading for me on a couple of launches.
As to Mashable in particular, they have a startup coverage series 'Spark Of Genius.' Was a dead simple pitch (it is a form) and coverage for me there really got the ball rolling.
For other bloggers find someone how covers your niche and pitch them --- never pitch the general email address of the publication.
And one last thing - it might be worth it to pick one primary target of the big tech news sites. Once one covers you they usually all jump to follow (ie weeks old emails suddenly returned requesting interview ASAP)
One thing I've discovered from this thread is that Mashable is influential! It had never been in my radar, except in name. It might make the most sense for us, as TechCrunch is too mainstream.
I think you'd be better served pitching to influential blogs with sizeable readership in your area of business, rather than aiming for a TC or Mashable post. Bloggers specializing in your space are always happy for tips and have more relevant, concentrated attention. Getting relevant readership aware of and promoting your product for you will eventually lead TC much easier, as you'll have a link history.
Cold emailing with a short pitch of what you are and do (hitting the 5 Ws), and short description with useful press material like logos would go a long ways to getting coverage with Biology and search related blogs. Good luck!
Thanks. Our product is somewhat specialized (bioinformatics) and we've gotten some traction among that demographic. Was wondering if Reddit/Digg will boost it much :)
On 2nd thoughts, you're right. I will go submit on Reddit and friends. More eyes on it the better.
If you can use what you've learned from your startup to tell a story about something bigger than your startup, you're more likely to get some coverage, both about your company and the broader story you're telling.
I did well when I was running an iPhone analytics startup not by pitching our boring software but by talking about what we knew about the iPhone app ecosystem as a whole.
If another outlet has published it before, we are not inclined to rehash them. Maybe Mashable will, but we won't unless you can provide super interesting, exclusive information (eg a funding round, new product, key hire, passing a traction benchmark, or even interesting ideas for feature stories).
so basically: do not pitch a product or your startup, pitch a story, distribute widely.
said that: every time i pitched a company i was consulting, the success was not as easily as with my private (weekend project) approaches, most products/companies aren't a good story.
I agree. OP does not need tech crunch, although it would certainly be a nice ego boost to be featured there.
I think there are two sides to the startup world. The glam side: featured in TC, gets lots of early funding, and is visible in general. Sold right away, for a large amount of money. Think instagram. The other side of the coin is the army of startups that no one really talks about. These startups bootstrap, they have customers, they make money, and they create jobs. They are the unsung heroes of the startup world. They are often focused on professional verticals that are otherwise not super interesting to the general audiences of tech crunch et al. They are the companies that employ many of us.
At the end of the day this is not a beauty contest. It is about providing a valuable service to your customers.
The point is to always be strategic about why you want press and what you hope it will achieve. For some companies, TC is very relevant for acquiring customers. For others, it serves as validation for prospective investors and employees.
If, say, you're a women's fashion app, we would probably reach a small subset of your target market and it would probably be smart to have a broader strategy that reaches powerful fashion blogs.
May I suggest consolidating some of the links on the home page? Stuff like contact and about are usually together, and right now everything around the border is distracting me from the main product.
That is a pretty great article for this topic from the cofounder of Buffer who is really good at gaming the tech media.
Here is the condensed version I emailed to a friend who had just raised a big funding round:
Target writers themselves, not the publications they work for. Reach out to them on Twitter, ask if you can contact them about your story (so your email gets opened). Don't go after famous bloggers/writers (they are super busy). Choose timing carefully (friday > monday).
[+] [-] webwright|14 years ago|reply
This is an empathy exercise. What's THEIR motivation? Turns out it's pageviews, retweets, likes, comments, and FAVORS (more on favors in a minute). So your goal is to hand them a gift-wrapped story that will perform above average on their site. Do you have that story? It's certainly not "ditilbio is ready for top rate criticism!". What's the STORY? PR and social media marketing is a storytelling exercise. Some businesses lend themselves well to that... Some don't. But you can do it with ANY business (37Signals and Zappos had epic PR with fairly mundane markets). Again: hand a blogger a story that will make them look like a hero (by the metrics they care about) and you win.
The only exception here is if you can get someone important to ask them to cover it. If one of your investors is Ron Conway, you can almost certainly get covered if he makes the ask.
Related: Don't pitch it yourself. Get your most famous friend/advisor/investor to pitch it.
[+] [-] pramodbiligiri|14 years ago|reply
Will see what's the best "angle" we can come up with, without being fake of course.
[+] [-] loyalelectron|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ktothemc|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ktothemc|14 years ago|reply
You should find the writer that most appropriately fits what you want to do. We all have different styles and interests. Josh does a lot of FB-related stuff, I do a lot of mobile & finance-related stuff, Leena does some more enterprise, Alexia does culture, Sarah Perez does mobile stuff.
Establish a relationship with them for future coverage. Many of our e-mails are just our first name followed by @techcrunch.com
In terms of explaining what you do, we basically ask the same questions that PG or any investor would.
1) Who are you? Tell us about your team and why they are interesting or uniquely positioned to build this.
2) What is the idea? How did you pick this problem?
3) Why is your solution better executed than everyone else in the space? Eg, tell us about your product. Why is it built this way and what does it let you do? Where do you think your competitors fall short and who are they?
4) What is the market opportunity?
5) How does the revenue model work if you have one? If you don't, what do you think it could be?
6) How do you acquire users? Most people do not have a thoughtful answer to this and it makes me very sad. Especially people who want to "launch this cool app" or whatever. The world does not work like this.
7) Do you have evidence of traction? If you provide arbitrary vanity metrics, I will go crazy (unless you have a really good explanation) for why you need to deviate from the standard engagement metrics like DAU/MAU/uniques/# of transactions/monthly or annual revenue, etc. In your case, sheer DAU or MAU may not really be that relevant since you have a very specific target market.
8) Do you have investors or advisors? How much did you raise and why did you take money from these people?
[+] [-] eps|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ktothemc|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jsm386|14 years ago|reply
This was essential reading for me on a couple of launches.
As to Mashable in particular, they have a startup coverage series 'Spark Of Genius.' Was a dead simple pitch (it is a form) and coverage for me there really got the ball rolling.
For other bloggers find someone how covers your niche and pitch them --- never pitch the general email address of the publication.
And one last thing - it might be worth it to pick one primary target of the big tech news sites. Once one covers you they usually all jump to follow (ie weeks old emails suddenly returned requesting interview ASAP)
[+] [-] pramodbiligiri|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ColonelRetard|14 years ago|reply
http://goldmanosi.blogspot.com/2012/02/mashable-shills-hard-...
[+] [-] eddie_the_head|14 years ago|reply
Cold emailing with a short pitch of what you are and do (hitting the 5 Ws), and short description with useful press material like logos would go a long ways to getting coverage with Biology and search related blogs. Good luck!
[+] [-] speg|14 years ago|reply
Step 2: blogs like Mashable and TC see popular post and pick it up
Step 3: mainstream media see it spreading through blogosphere and pick it up.
[+] [-] pramodbiligiri|14 years ago|reply
On 2nd thoughts, you're right. I will go submit on Reddit and friends. More eyes on it the better.
[+] [-] gyardley|14 years ago|reply
I did well when I was running an iPhone analytics startup not by pitching our boring software but by talking about what we knew about the iPhone app ecosystem as a whole.
[+] [-] pramodbiligiri|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SuperChihuahua|14 years ago|reply
http://youtu.be/HbUnatPfSgg
[+] [-] pramodbiligiri|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SuperChihuahua|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pramodbiligiri|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] philco|14 years ago|reply
1) Gave the exclusive to the author we thought had the most influence in our target demo. (Sarah Lacy + Erin Griffith at Pandodaily).
2) Leveraged that story into a blog post, that got retweeted by Eric Ries. (http://blog.meeteor.com/18-days-from-sxsw-mvp-to-launch-our-...)
3) Leveraged that momentum into stories at other outlets.
[+] [-] ktothemc|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pramodbiligiri|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] luckystrike|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pramodbiligiri|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] franze|14 years ago|reply
made a page/webapp that
a) is basically a story in itselfand
b) it's all about distribution
most of the time i got covered by the big guns, after some other tech blog picked me up. (http://www.makeuseof.com/ and http://www.freewaregenius.com/ are good starting points)
so basically: do not pitch a product or your startup, pitch a story, distribute widely.
said that: every time i pitched a company i was consulting, the success was not as easily as with my private (weekend project) approaches, most products/companies aren't a good story.
[+] [-] ishwarn|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marban|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] readme|14 years ago|reply
I think there are two sides to the startup world. The glam side: featured in TC, gets lots of early funding, and is visible in general. Sold right away, for a large amount of money. Think instagram. The other side of the coin is the army of startups that no one really talks about. These startups bootstrap, they have customers, they make money, and they create jobs. They are the unsung heroes of the startup world. They are often focused on professional verticals that are otherwise not super interesting to the general audiences of tech crunch et al. They are the companies that employ many of us.
At the end of the day this is not a beauty contest. It is about providing a valuable service to your customers.
[+] [-] ktothemc|14 years ago|reply
The point is to always be strategic about why you want press and what you hope it will achieve. For some companies, TC is very relevant for acquiring customers. For others, it serves as validation for prospective investors and employees.
If, say, you're a women's fashion app, we would probably reach a small subset of your target market and it would probably be smart to have a broader strategy that reaches powerful fashion blogs.
[+] [-] rmATinnovafy|14 years ago|reply
The page does not load on my android phone (2.2).
You do not really explain what you do in simple words. I honestly feel dumb after reading it.
Before going after some PR, please fix that.
Good luck.
[+] [-] pramodbiligiri|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jcollins1991|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pramodbiligiri|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] huhtenberg|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] markkat|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DavidAbrams|14 years ago|reply
Thanks, but I'll just forego their "coverage" instead.
[+] [-] wilfra|14 years ago|reply
That is a pretty great article for this topic from the cofounder of Buffer who is really good at gaming the tech media.
Here is the condensed version I emailed to a friend who had just raised a big funding round:
Target writers themselves, not the publications they work for. Reach out to them on Twitter, ask if you can contact them about your story (so your email gets opened). Don't go after famous bloggers/writers (they are super busy). Choose timing carefully (friday > monday).
[+] [-] SpaceDragon|14 years ago|reply