
A Guide to Pitching Funding and Launch Stories - lainon
http://blog.ycombinator.com/a-guide-to-pitching-funding-and-launch-stories/
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bluehat
I don't think I'd ever do an embargo in a cold pitch. My experience is that
cooperation is best assured with an incentive structure, and you don't really
have the power in a cold email to assure any kind of incentive structure.
Unless there's a compelling follow-up story or they fear the wrath of somebody
you are associated with, the reporter has zero reason to care what you think
or ask for. Being too aggressive in demanding an embargo can come across as an
idle threat, which is somewhere between a turn-off and dangerous.

My solution to this is to pitch stories that don't require embargos. "We
exist, and we are great" is generally not a tactic I have had much success
with anyway. Your affiliations and successes serve as credibility the week of
your funding/launch just as well as they do on the day of your funding/launch.
The only thing you're gambling on is the time-sensitivity.

I solve this by focusing on the angle. If you tie yourself into an existing
popular media narrative/topic/event with a short lifespan, they have to cover
you promptly. You also increase your chances of being covered because now
you're offering an educated hot take on something everybody is already
scrambling to cover. This also boosts social engagement, if you're going for
that.

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awwstn
Overall this post has some helpful advice, but the advice regarding embargoes
is entirely wrong.

Before a reporter has explicitly agreed to an embargo, he or she is under no
obligation to keep a story under wraps. So, in the example email from this
post with EMBARGO at the top of it, the journalist could immediately publish
your funding amount, investors, etc. without breaking any of the established
norms around embargoes.

The correct way to do this is: write an email with _very_ little information
("we just raised a round from a top VC") and ask for explicit agreement ("if
you can agree to an embargo of date_time, we'll send over all the details")

edit: I've used Upbeat and think the product is really cool – so while I find
this post to be lacking I don't mean to diminish the team that worked on it.

~~~
replicatorblog
I used to write for Wired and fielded thousands of pitches. A lot of the
advice in this post is good, especially giving reporters a week or more to
work on the story, but the embargo advice is not great.

It's not a problem with the honor code, it's the overhead. Don't make writers
interact with you. You'd be surprised by how little TechCrunch writes about
early-stage startups anymore. In a given week of 250-300 stories, there might
be 10-20 that are early-stage companies who have raised <$10M and don't have a
truly novel hook (our co-founder used to be in prison!).

Send over the entire press kit, full description, etc. in the first email.
Generally, if you tell the reporter you're announcing on X date, they'll not
publish before that. Especially if you're launching a new product or
something, they don't want to link to your site when the newsworthy bit isn't
live.

My advice for most startups is to reach out to TechCrunch, the best
publication in your vertical (e.g. Skift for travel), and a local tech
paper/site. For something as routine as a small fundraise or YC announcement,
try to get three good clips. In a given YC class there are literally dozens of
companies with the same basic story so don't try to position yourself as
you've got inside info on the new iPhone.

If your company is legitimately novel, so novel that your grandparents would
get the pitch and be interested, by all means go wide, but for the average "We
help people find cheaper airfare" or some SaaS thing just choose a few high-
value targets and get back to work.

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leoschwartz
This is good advice, although I would also caution that every journalist has
different habits. Some journalists will only publish news that's under
embargo, others will only publish news that's happening that day. Some want
assets included right in the email, some won't open it if they see there are
attachments. After working on hundreds of campaigns, we believe that this
embargo strategy is the most effective. Per your advice, this is why we also
recommend reaching back out right when the the embargo lifts with the full
media kit.

The insight here into TechCrunch is too true unfortunately. It's every
startup's dream to be in TechCrunch, but we see publications like VentureBeat
have much better engagement.

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dtran
David, one of the founders at Upbeat here! Our media strategy lead Leo wrote
up some advice about two of the most common stories to pitch. Obviously there
are stories beyond announcing funding or launching out of an accelerator, but
a lot of the advice here applies generally. If you have any specific
questions, we'll be checking in here throughout the day to try to answer!

~~~
thisisit
Can you talk a bit more about your company? What does "Upbeat is a _software-
powered PR agency_ " really mean?

~~~
dtran
Hey thisisit, happy to! Leo replied with more specifics in the sibling comment
to this, so I'll try to talk about the high-level aspects very briefly,
although I'm working on a post titled "PR from first principles" that will do
a better job of explaining.

The "software-powered PR agency" is more a description of the
appartus/mechanism rather than the goal, so perhaps it'd be more useful to
start with our mission. We want to _enable anyone with a great story to reach
those who want to hear it_. Rather than trying to build up the audience
yourself, we believe that it is much more effective to connect sources of
great stories with storytellers who 1) already have an audience, and 2) can do
a better job of telling the story for that audience than you can.

This is the role that today's PR agencies occupy as middlemen. However, they
come with prohibitive price tags that restrict access for most stories, and
their principle means of making these connections is through individual
relationships with both sources and journalists, much the same way it has been
done for decades. We think it's time for a change.

The software-powered part comes into play because we ultimately want to create
a marketplace that more efficiently facilitates these connections— using both
public and proprietary data, we're starting to get a really good understanding
of what stories specific storytellers are looking for, and we connect them to
the best sources.

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jamesfe
Well, not everybody who dug for gold in the gold rush got rich, but those who
sold shovels certainly did. Nice job.

