11 Steps to Get Your Raise in The News Without a PR Firm

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Jun 09, 2022

After closing our round, we immediately started looking to build our team. However, hiring when you’re an unknown startup is challenging for many reasons, mainly because people have never heard of you. A quick way to increase your credibility is to have well-known news outlets cover your startup.

Press coverage is also helpful for other reasons like:

More people knowing about you can lead to new opportunities (team members, customers, investors, etc.)
Backlinks help with SEO
Increases your credibility with candidates already in your pipeline

We were fortunate to have a PR firm help us with the process, but other startups can easily follow the process we used. Here’s how we did it.

1. Write a press release

The first step is writing a press release. At first, it may feel intimidating but just look at a few press releases from startups that have recently raised to get a feel for the format. Here are some example seed-stage press releases:

After reading a handful of similar press releases, you can pretty quickly get a feel for the “Mad Libs” type format (What does your company do, who are your investors, what do you plan to do with the money, a quote from each founder, a quote from the lead investor, etc.). Then, circulate the press release with your team to proofread it and get feedback.

2. Take high-quality team & product pictures

Similar to the press release, look at pictures of other startups that have recently raised in TechCrunch or your outlet of choice to get a feel for their style. You can then find a friend with a nice camera or use a service like Snapper to take some high-quality team pictures. It’s also good to have some high-quality product screenshots ready for the reporter.

3. Research the ideal reporter to cover your story

Now that we have a press release and high-quality pictures to go with it, it’s time to find the ideal reporter to cover your story. First, go to TechCrunch’s website or whatever publication you’re looking to get into and start looking for stories similar to yours (i.e., they’ve covered seed raises, your industry, similar narratives, or your competitors). You’re looking for anything to give you an angle when pitching them to answer the question: Why should they cover your story? Using Stripe as an example, the topics may be:

Payments
Dev Tools
Irish Founders
YC Founders
Stripe’s competitors (Paypal, Braintree, Adyen, etc.)

Put the list of articles in a spreadsheet to start to identify who the ideal reporters are to cover your story. Once you have a shortlist of reporters that would be a good fit, research them on Twitter, LinkedIn, Google, and their official bios to find out more information about them to better identify who would be the best starting point.

4. Identify intro paths (not required, but very helpful)

At the same time you’re researching the reporters, you can also identify intro paths to the reporters. For example, see if they have written about your friends’ startups or have mutual connections on Twitter or LinkedIn. As with most things in business, a warm intro is usually much better than going in cold.

However, do not be afraid to reach out cold. Just because you don’t have an intro path doesn’t mean you shouldn’t reach out cold. For example, one of the publications we got into was simply the result of me doing some quick research on who looked most likely to cover the story and then sending a short message directly to the reporter.

5. Reach out with a pitch

Now that you’ve identified who you want to reach and high-quality intro paths, it’s time to reach out with your pitch. For example, if I were the founder of Notion, below is an example email to send to someone I knew that was connected to a reporter.

Hello,
I was wondering if you could make an intro to {Reporter’s name} to see if they would be interested in covering our recent raise?
I think they would be interested in covering our raise because I saw that they covered several seed raises for no-code startups over the last year. I also noticed that they tweeted about using Notion a couple of weeks ago!
If {Reporter’s name} agrees to cover our raise, they would have the exclusive. My co-founder and I would be happy to hop on a quick call as well as share pictures of our team and product if helpful.
Thanks!

The goal is to keep the pitch short, but informative. You also want to make the value clear to the reporter (first dibs on the story) and make it as easy as possible for them to write the story (available for a call, have the pictures, etc.). For us, it was a well-placed intro that led to the interview.

As with any good pitch, put yourself in the recipient’s shoes. Reporters need to write stories every day, but finding and writing good stories takes time. If you’re able to help the reporter solve that problem — by putting an exciting story in their lap and then making it super easy for them to write, you’re going to increase your odds of success.

6. You got an interview! (Prep for the interview)

If all goes well, this will lead to the reporter probably wanting to schedule an interview where they will ask you about your company. Before the interview, I’d recommend sending your press release, but not the pictures, so they have some additional context but not everything they need to publish the story.

To prep for the interview, have someone ask you some basic questions, such as:

What does your company do?
What did you raise the money for?
How long have you been in business?
Why are you the company to solve this problem?
How are you different than your competitors?

Also, prep for questions that you may get asked but may not want to explicitly answer, such as:

What was your valuation?
How much revenue did you make last month?
How many customers do you have?

With questions that you may not want to answer directly, the goal is to develop responses that answer the question without giving up information you don’t want to, but also not saying “I’d rather not say”. So, for example, instead of saying the exact number of customers you have, you could say how many states you’re in or name a lighthouse customer or two.

7. Doing the interview

If you can, invite your co-founder or a key investor to join the call. During the interview, focus on getting them excited and telling a compelling story. Try to avoid industry acronyms and jargon on the call.

At the end of the interview, I’d recommend asking two things:

When do you plan to have the article out? So then you have an idea of when to be looking for it to send out to your network or to nudge them if it isn’t out by a certain date.
Would you like me to send over some pictures after the call? They will probably say yes, but it’s good to confirm.

8. Follow up after the interview

After the interview, follow up with a quick email that includes the pictures and the date they expect to have the article out, so you have something to refer to if the article is delayed.

9. Track when the article goes live

When the article goes live, they may or may not tell you. So to know when the article is live, it’s a good idea to set up a Google Alert for your name or startup and/or keep an eye on the reporter’s profile page on the website to see when the article is live.

10. The article is live! (Share with your network)

Once the article is live, share the article with your network and ask them to share it on Twitter, LinkedIn, and other networks. Ideally, have an email newsletter already prepped and ready to go so that when the article is live, you can immediately email it out. It is important to get as many people sharing and engaging with the article at the same time so that it gets boosted on the different platforms.

11. Share with other reporters and VC newsletters

Now that the article is out though, it’s just in one publication. Follow a similar but abbreviated process to get your story in other publications.

Identify reporters that you want to reach out to
Reach out to them directly and share a link to the original story
Personalize the pitch

Once the story is out, speed is what matters as the story gets increasingly stale. So if you have good intros, go for them, but mostly just send the story to as many people as you can as quickly as possible. Ideally, build a list of these people ahead of time so that when the story is out, you already know who to go to. Although these outlets will often cover the story in a much smaller way, by having them include you in lists of recent raises and roll-ups, you’ll be able to say you’ve been covered by those publications and get high-quality backlinks from them.

Here are some of the daily venture deal roll-up newsletters you can reach out to. Sign up for their newsletters, and they usually have info on how to send them tips or reply to the newsletter and ask who to send tips to.

Lastly, this video from Kat Mañalac with Y Combinator on PR mistakes is excellent and mirrored our experience.

Key Takeaways

Getting press coverage for your startup’s raise can be daunting, and you may think you need a PR firm to do it. However, I think it’s possible to get solid coverage by leveraging your own connections and sending thoughtful messages to reporters.

A PR firm helps, but isn’t needed to get coverage of your raise
Put together your press release and pictures ahead of time
Research reporters as well as intro paths, then send thoughtful messages
Once the article is out, be ready to share it with your network and other outlets

First-Time Founder

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