

Why Your Startup Doesn’t Need a PR Agency - sliggity
http://bostinnovation.com/2011/02/14/7-reasons-why-your-early-stage-startup-doesnt-need-a-pr-agency/

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evansolomon
I'm sure his conclusion is correct for most people reading this, but is logic
is garbage. It's like saying you don't need a VP Engineering because a founder
should do it. Completely fine conclusion if it works, as it often will, but
still total nonsense.

If you're paying a PR agency $10k-$20k per month and they're getting your
company into blogs where the author reads every comment, you're getting
screwed. No doubt about that. And if you can do it yourself through networks
and hard work, then paying someone else to do it might not make sense.

But to argue that PR firms are not effective is just a lie. I won't go through
linking to the major news coverage that any startup would kill for that PR
firms got, but there is plenty.

There are two interesting dynamics at play in this sort of post, which comes
up every week or two.

1\. No one ever seems to question the source, which seems odd. We have a
journalist telling companies how to run their PR. Talk about the fox watching
the hen house. I'm not saying this guy or any of the others that write this
same blog post on other blogs are being disingenuous, but the conflict of
interest is certainly there. It's worth pointing out in my opinion.

2\. PR firms, ironically, suffer from being in a position to almost never get
positive word of mouth (at least publicly). When they succeed, you never know
they're involved; go read the front page of the NYT business section, I
promise it produces lots of PR high fives every day but almost no one reading
it will ever know that. When a company succeeds with a PR firm, there's not
much incentive in beating their chests about it, but when the relationship is
a failure it's become fashionable to...well, write something like this except
from the company's perspective. To top it off, the really great PR firm
successes often masquerade as the sort of companies that are just great
stories told by great founders (Mint and Pandora come to mind, both of which
use agencies).

I used to work at a PR agency about 2 years ago, but don't any longer and have
absolutely 0 financial stake in this sort of thing. I still help/advise a lot
of friends on PR and I really just think this is overly generalized advice
that leads to a nasty case of groupthink. First principles, guys.

~~~
sliggity
I did write this piece so my comment is bias...The first piece of logic makes
sense in early stage startups. If you are looking for a technical cofounder
you should stop searching and learn to code. And while just building your
founding team and trying to get press in its earliest stages you should not
hire a VP of engineering and do it yourself. The same with PR. It does require
some blood and sweat, but that is the sweat equity that every founder must
endure.

In the article, I don't mention anything about the effectiveness of PR firms,
we all know that they are good at what they do, but at a cost. And I keep
seeing big name firms repping pre-funded startups, which is a death wish in my
opinion.

You bring up a great point of having a journalist telling companies how to run
their PR. There should be more of this. Companies and PR firms just throw up
garbage press releases a lot of the times and this could be some valuable
feedback for them.

Great point, we did publish an article about Why Your Startup Does Need PR
though.

[http://bostinnovation.com/2010/12/17/why-your-startup-
needs-...](http://bostinnovation.com/2010/12/17/why-your-startup-needs-pr/)

Thanks for the input.

~~~
evansolomon
"If you are looking for a technical cofounder you should stop searching and
learn to code."

Maybe you should, maybe you shouldn't. I just can't get my head around
thinking otherwise. Can it work your way? Yup. Can it work other ways? Yup.
All over-generalized advice works some of the time, that's why it exists in
the first place. It probably even works most of the time. My problem isn't
with the advice's hit rate--nothing is perfect--it's with the logic behind it.

"I keep seeing big name firms repping pre-funded startups, which is a death
wish in my opinion."

If a big name firm is working for a startup before it's funded I'd bet a lot
of money that they're doing it for stock or deferred comp. That's almost never
cash. Whether that's a good deal depends on the firm, the startup, the deal,
etc, but no agency is getting $20k/month out of a startup that hasn't raised
anymore unless it's very well self-funded.

"Companies and PR firms just throw up garbage press releases a lot of the
times and this could be some valuable feedback for them."

Lots of agencies suck at this is an example of it. No disagreement here. And I
don't think advice on PR from a journalist is necessarily bad, but I believe
not enough scrutiny is directed at the source. To be fair, I say the same
thing about fundraising advice from VC's. Not a bad thing, just silly to take
it on face value.

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tptacek
One of my oldest HN comments:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=66284>

A few years ago, Graham sounded a warning about PR firms but hedged by saying
he liked Viaweb's firm (Schwartz, which FWIW was not well-liked by many of the
PR/MR/AR-types I've known). From my vantage point, it looks like PR firms
(and, let's be candid, PR FT roles at startups) mostly pay off in the form of
pay-for-play "op-ed" pieces in trade pubs and in stories you'd have gotten
anyways.

PR firms also "offer" a lot of ancillary "benefits", like positioning reports
and news alerts and trend analysis, virtually none of which are going to help
most startups.

Finally, like fancy offices in SFBA and sexy logos, press is part of the
"startup daydream" and is thus inherently suspect. For every truly important
writeup out there (and there are many), there are 1,000 press hits that do
nothing for your business. You can waste a lot of time chasing this stuff.

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bpeters
Not only does working with a PR agency cost the company money, but it allows
employees and founders to get lazy on the continuous selling that needs to
occur.

Everyone in the company should be able to pitch and sell the startup and
should to everyone, including the press and media.

~~~
sliggity
Absolutely agree with that. Sales is an enormously underrated skill set that
all startups employees should focus on.

Also it promotes bad habits like just pushing and forwarding emails to PR
companies. I can't stand waiting around for a PR firm when I know the employee
has read my message.

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localhost3000
Worked at a failed startup that invested rather heavily in a PR firm. We
received top tier press but it never came close to paying off from any
business POV. It felt nice, but running out of money felt like shit...I do
think there is a critical mass of press that can propel a co to success or
atleast longevity, take for instance Quora, or twitter a few years ago.
Unfortunately most will never hit that tipping point where the press can
compound on itself and translate into growth.

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farlington
Posts like this make it all sound so simple.

Of course you don't need a PR Agency if you're good at PR and you're going to
do it yourself. Just be prepared to allocate time and resources, and to not
lose your head during the occasional shitstorm.

~~~
nhangen
My problem with self-PR is that it requires a lot of energy and breaks up my
workflow, keeping me from being focused on the product. Sure, I could do it
myself, but I'd rather not.

The issue then is how much to pay, and when should you pay. I'm not sure,
though I'd love to hear from someone's experience.

