
Ask HN: How did you hack the press when you launched your startup(s)? - akos
How did you get on TC, RWW etc? Did you know your journalist before pitching him/her? How many signups/users/downloads did the post refer? How did it affect the future of your startup?
======
espadagroup
I launched a t shirt line a bit ago and got press in a decently hackerish way.
The t shirts were geared toward gamers so I went to Alltop.com and scraped all
of the blogs in the sections of gaming, t shirts, etc.. Used amazon turk to
turk for the emails of those blogs, about 300 or so. Created a unique promo
code for a percent off that was derived from the blogs name in the url. Used
mailgun to construct and send the emails to all of the bloggers. Since the
code was personalized, most thought they were receiving a personal email. The
end result was about 15 blogs writing about the shirts, some of which were
referred to me by the original bloggers, some of which held contests. One even
interviewed me at a larger blog she does a column for.

~~~
dudurocha
Please, expand in the amazon turk to turk for getting emails.

~~~
espadagroup
On Mturk you upload a spreadsheet of the urls. Set up the "hits" so as to ask
the worker to go the url and try to find a contact email. If they find the
email they enter it in the "hit", if they find a contact form, they select
contact form, if there's nothing they enter in an X or something else, you can
decide. For just an email you can pay anywhere between 1-3 cents. For 300 urls
you get this done in a day usually. You can put in filters for the quality of
workers, I usually keep them pretty strict. You are suppose to go back and
check the quality of the workers and approve or reject an answered "hit",
though for the $3 - $5 that you'd be paying for this, it's not worth it, just
approve all. After the turking you end up with a spreadsheet of all the urls
and emails.

~~~
ionwake
Is it possible to setup a turk where an ad is submitted to a message board? If
so how?

Thank you

~~~
espadagroup
Not entirely sure what you mean. Mturk has an api, a lot of people use it for
quality assurance, like checking images for nudity or stuff like that.

------
j45
It's not just about hacking the press. Sometimes it's plain just learning to
interface with people and having a unique angle on a story.

Most press I've seen from friends being TC'ed is minimal. Unless your
customers are people who read TC, the effect is minimal to converted
customers. They had a ton of visitors which might have increased mindshare. TC
can be a vanity metric if you're not careful, especially if TC's audience is
not your paying customers. It helps be legit in having (some) press coverage,
but it doesn't last if you can't back it up and delight people.

If you're doing what everyone else is doing to get coverage in the same
places, the chances are greater you'll end up like everyone else (a startup
that doesn't get where it needs to).

Focus on learning who your customers are, where they truly hang out, get their
attention in those places, be it through story placement or advertising since
not all sites use adsense, and some very successful sites have their own
advertising engines.

Quality of eyeballs on your site is a far better metric to pursue than
quantity.

~~~
dasil003
Yes, I think most first-time entrepreneurs have a fantasy about how all they
need to kickstart the viral growth is a bit of coverage in the major tech
blogs. But the reality is that unless your site is squarely targeting early
adopters (the ficklest of markets) and your product is knocking the socks of
jaded San Francisco tech hipsters (well-nigh impossible against such
perpetually-bored countenances), then this coverage is going to net you next
to nothing.

In the reality you should take the time when your traffic is small to reach
out to customers and get early feedback and polish the product as much as
possible. The more work you put into based on real feedback from real users
before the numbers get big, the greater the quality of the first impressions
as your target audience trickles in.

Once your product is good enough, there are many ways to get users in. Press
is one of them, but in my experience it comes on its own and is not worth
putting much time in compared to more targeted user acquisition. In general,
word of mouth will always always be the best, and that takes a great product.

~~~
yoduh
Very well said.

~~~
adambenayoun
Let me say it clearly: I've had more visitors from being featured on HN than
from TC and mashable together.

I'm not even talking about the conversion rates and the quality that HN brings
over TC/Mashable.

------
asanwal
I agree with J45, but if you really want to get press, here are some
strategies that we used early on.

1\. Do searches on Google News for topics or companies you compete with. See
who has covered them and create a spreadsheet with their names, contact info,
etc -- This tells you they might be interested in what you have

2\. Reach out and personalize -- Show them you've seen and taken time to
understand their perspective on the industry or competitor. In a nice way,
suggest an angle that you feel is more interesting or which often gets
overlooked which hopefully dovetails with your product and piques their
interest. This helps the blogger/journalist think about the storyline and
whether readers would find it interesting quickly and not your X, Y, Z feature
which only you care about.

3\. The angle should ideally be something you have unique insight into. It
might be directly related to your product or just something you have data on
because of your product.

4\. Use data as possible. There are lots of unsubstantiated claims out there
so journalists/data appreciate useful facts supported by data. Warning: Don't
make data/facts up or don't try to draw inane trends from 2 data points as
smart journalists/bloggers will see through that. Yes, hack doesn't mean being
dishonest. You're trying to build a relationship based on trust so don't be
short-term greedy and try to kickstart things on a lie.

There are some downsides to this. The biggest being that your data might get
featured and not your company. This may not be what you want. But, at the same
time, you may become a resource for the journalist which means mentions over
time, they may come back to you for additional data and you get mentions. This
has happened for us. We're a data company so we might not be apples to apples
for you, but we're a go to resource for journos/bloggers and see mentions 1-2
per week in a slow week in major media because of early legwork we did (note:
our press page is hopelessly outdated so don't judge us based on that)

Hope this helps. Good luck.

~~~
Evbn
Journalists do not see through BS data. Any data is good data for news hits.

In a previous life I created data for media, and my attempts to provide
correct analysis and context were disregarded or shut down.

~~~
asanwal
Perhaps, but we're optimizing our journalist/blogger relationships for the
long-term, i.e., when they have a question on X topic, they will call us
first. Sure - they might not write about everything we offer them, but we want
everything we send them to be seen as credible, interesting, and sometimes
contrarian. I'm not sure a few extra press hits will be worth the hit to
credibility of taking a short cut.

------
brackin
Just honestly build these relationships. I use Twitter and events to do it,
just speak to journalists honestly about what you're working on without full
on pitches.

Roughly 25 useful tech journalists are following my progress via Twitter and I
regularly reply offering my perspective on stories. With a few from time to
time I'll ask for their advice when they can add value and eventually when I
have something fit for a piece I'll get in touch having already validated my
experience and progress.

It's much better than cold emailing asking for a story about your launch. They
want to help you but you have to help them finding a story out of your launch.
If they know a little about your history it will help this is why building a
prior relationship helps.

~~~
orangethirty
Upvoted becuase this is the sinsible approach to the issue. Though it takes
time and the OP may not have enough time to nurture a relationship. Good
points regarding how to interface with the press.

------
mikeindustries
At Newsvine, we capitalized on an opportunity when John McCain and his
campaign people hijacked some graphics from my MySpace design tutorial without
permission. He referenced/hotlinked images hosted on my server on his own
MySpace page so one day I "hacked" his site by changing the graphics. The
prank got us on TechCrunch immediately (no surprise), the local news in
Seattle (kind of a surprise), and then featured on The Daily Show (huge f'ing
surprise and still a career highlight!). Here is the coverage:

TechCrunch: [http://techcrunch.com/2007/03/27/john-mccains-myspace-
page-h...](http://techcrunch.com/2007/03/27/john-mccains-myspace-page-hacked/)

Local News:
[http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2007/03/king-5-co...](http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2007/03/king-5-covers-
mccain-myspace-prank)

The Daily Show: <http://www.mikeindustries.com/scratch/dailyshow.mp4>

~~~
e03179
OT: But wow at the blog spam on the old TC articles.

------
kamens
It's not as "hack"-y as a HN reader might like, but the bottom line is you
should help your journalist tell a story. That's their job, so make it easy.

When we launched Precorder, we got little (and so-so) press by describing a
newly launched app w/ X Y and Z features.

When we started telling writers that we saw the camera technology used to
capture great white sharks jumping out of the ocean and ported it to iPhones,
we were covered by Kottke (<http://kottke.org/11/01/precorder>) and other
influential photography bloggers who immediately triggered a long wave of
follow-up press.

~~~
missechokit
This, this, this. If you subtly lay out the possible angles and all the
interesting data for a journalist, they will be that much more likely to cover
your product. Don't make them do too much research.

------
irisshoor
The key thing which helped me reach bloggers was understanding that they're
not interested in covering my start-up, but in getting more people to read
their blog. Give them all the materials they need to write a good post - great
story, something personal, good images, video, and you have a much better
chance to get covered. Good materials helped me increase my success rate by
about 5X. Even though most of your future users will not come from TC or RWW,
it builds your company resume. It's much easier to approach medium-small blogs
with a TC/RWW reference, than the other way around. It also helps when raising
(more) money.

------
clamprecht
This AirBNB Mixergy interview is a must-watch - they explain how they hacked
their way onto top news sites like CNN & NYTimes (start watching at 31 minutes
in):

<http://mixergy.com/airbnb-chesky-gebbia/>

They explain how to get press coverage using the "pyramid" method: start at
the bottom, with small bloggers in your space. Email them, ask them to cover
you. Then move up the chain. At the top of the chain are the big media people
like NYTimes, CNN, etc.

~~~
taigeair
good share

------
orangethirty
Do something outrageous. Something so big, so daring that people will not have
an option but to cover the story. Though this takes balls/ovaries of steel and
a clear and defined strategy to reduce to amount of negative press you will
get. It should also be done off-line, as in outside. Internet news get less
coverage than real world news. If your outrageous idea happens somewhere real
(like in San Francisco) then people will be able to relate to time/place where
the news happened. Something that is lost on cyber space.

Just don't do anything too crazy. You don't want to go to jail or hurt
anybody. Keep it legal and moral, and you should be on your way.

 _Edit_

Also, giving early access to smaller blogs/bloggers will allow you to create a
given amount of buzz around the product. When reporters research your
offerings (using Google for 99.99% of the work), they will get a lot of
favorable hits about your product from these smaller blogs. Plus since they
are smaller, they dont take away from the big news chance they might have with
your story. Just be careful about who you contact, and be aware that some
people will write about anything. They might write nicely about you in one
post, and then praise Hitler in the next thus putting you in very very very
very bad light.

------
torrenegra
We "hacked" Fred Wilson's blog for PR, which in turned helped us get to
TechCrunch. Here is the story:

Without the knowledge of Fred, we created an automatic podcast for his blog,
AVC.com, using our API. We had no idea how he would react. It was weeks of
effort, time, and money spent to build AVC.fm with the hope that Mr. Wilson
would love us (or at least not send us a cease and desist!) And then, there
was the tweet that made the weeks of brainstorming, trials and errors, and
late nights, all worth it:

"AVC.fm, the unofficial blogcast of @avc created by @VoiceBunny avc.fm via
@VoiceBunny." by — Fred Wilson (@fredwilson) February 21, 2012

Fred tweeted our work and our name to his 207,000+ fans. That day,
VoiceBunny.com got a huge amount of visits, with most coming out of Silicon
Valley. We, of course, reached out to Fred right away and a few emails later,
you can now hear AVC.fm right on Fred's blog at AVC.com.

Before you get into the “how” of a PR stunt, you must first figure out the
“why”. You don’t want attention just for the sake of attention. You have got
to capture the attention of the right people. And for VoiceBunny both Fred and
his audience were the right audience.

The VoiceBunny team is a big fan of Fred Wilson’s work and especially his
blog, AVC.com, but we didn’t always have time to read it everyday. So, we
thought it would be great if AVC.com had a podcast so we could listen on our
commutes or while we were working. So we thought, let’s make one for him! What
better way to show off our technology and get the attention of the VC
community? Mr. Wilson is a big supporter of the “freedom to innovate” and
that’s why we felt creating AVC.fm was the perfect project for VoiceBunny.

So, since Mr. Wilson publishes under a Creative Commons license, we did not
have to worry about getting his permission first. The VoiceBunny API
automatically pulls the text from AVC.com after Fred posts and posts a
project. One of our voice talents accepts the project and uploads a finished
read. It is then screened for quality and automatically uploaded to SoundCloud
and AVC.fm.

We wanted to make it very obvious we did this as a tribute, not to capitalize
on his name or work. Yes, we did it to show off our technology, but, we
created something of value to him and to the community. We also made it very
easy for him to add to his blog if he chose to do so. We included a link
asking, “Are You Fred?” that included instructions on how to embed the widget
onto his blog.

On his blog, Fred said:

"In any case, I like they way they used a stunt to get my attention. So much
more effective than sending me an email saying “I’d like to come talk to you
about a new project we are working on”. So I’m going to start auto-embedding
the avc.fm voice overs at the end of the posts on AVC (via the SoundCloud
embed of course)."

You can read his entire post at [http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2012/02/feature-
friday-listen-to-thi...](http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2012/02/feature-friday-
listen-to-this-blog.html)

~~~
larrys
"(or at least not send us a cease and desist!) "

Actually being sent a cease and desist by Fred would have given you an angle
to get publicity if things didn't end up the way they did. But I'm actually a
little surprised that since you say "The VoiceBunny team is a big fan of Fred
Wilson’s work and especially his blog" you should have known that it was
highly unlikely he would have done something like that.

Outcome 1: What happened, you got what you wanted

Outcome 2: Cease and desist - if that had happened, may hay with it.
Mentioning if anyone else has this outcome.

Outcome 3: Ignore your "hack". The worse outcome. But in that case you have to
be more proactive and approach him, several times (once again if you
understand the way he rolls you realize he declares email bankruptcy and
actually appreciates follow up emails.

~~~
torrenegra
Thank you Larry. You are right. If Fred didn't like what we were doing,
probably he would have not sent a formal "cease and desist". He is not that
kind of guy ;)

------
sadow
Perhaps you're asking the wrong question. It often should be "How do I get ___
to be interested in reporting on me?" rather than "How do I get on?"

Think of it as a value equation: you want the reporters to help you get press
and make people think you have something cool on hand; they want something
cool to share with their readers.

So, one way to do it is - as most of the comments have suggested - use
guerrilla tactics to get to the journalists/writers/topics that are often
covered.

But, what if you created or generated something that is really unique and
content-worthy? We did this recently with my product, and ended up with an
unsolicited TC piece.

How'd it work? We showed-off the types of awesome things our product could do,
and it caught the writer's interest.

So, I'd say find a way to show-off why what you're doing deserves coverage,
and then take some steps to help get that in front of people (that's where
Twitter, HN, etc. comes into play).

Also, quick note, but the traffic you probably expect from TC coverage may not
be accurate.

------
kranner
I made comics deriding IT recruiters; this was to promote my programmer-
testing web app (now defunct). This HN thread persuaded me to find them in the
blog archives. Here they are:
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/46384225@N00/sets/7215763148518...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/46384225@N00/sets/72157631485182590/)

There were also text articles on the blog, one of which was even on the HN
front-page for over 24 hours (it reported some friendly social-engineering by
a then-competitor, now a YC company). The comics significantly outperformed
the text articles in terms of engaged readers, though I didn't run the whole
thing long enough to be of any practical help.

My partner and I are releasing an iPhone game soon, and we're planning to
repeat this experiment but with somewhat longer-form comics. The idea is to
communicate the human story behind the making of the app. If anyone is
interested, my email is in my profile.

~~~
pbiggar
Loving those comics, are there more?

~~~
kranner
Thanks! These are all I made.

------
bravura
I'm building a tool that helps you figure out which journalists you should
target.

It figures out which journalists write about your space / niche, and also
figures out what their reach is and how busy they are.

If you're interested, shoot me an email: joseph at metaoptimize dot com.

------
fourstar
I made a satirical hot or not type site called hipster or homeless. Perez
Hilton retweeted it and I ended up using that to as a segue to contact
different news organizations. Being in the SF Bay area, there is an
omnipresent homelessness problem here, so NBC bay area decided to relate the
website to raising awareness of the homelessness problem. They did a news
segment on it and interviewed actual homeless people.
[http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Hipster-or-
Homeless-124...](http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Hipster-or-
Homeless-124735334.html) is the segment.

------
columbo
The system I'm working on got press via the local news a few times (they love
running scrappy tech startup stories, so it was one 30 second Channel 5 type
interview and a news story). There wasn't a direct bump in sales because of
it.

Everything I work on is B2B so 100% of sales are done via a conversation and
not someone landing on the site and clicking "sign-up" so YMMV. The news
articles was only important to solidify ourselves as a legit operation, and
not really for the press it generated.

~~~
ryetoasthumor
We had similar success! CBS local Pittsburgh Website Simplifies Car-Buying
[http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2012/08/17/local-website-
simp...](http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2012/08/17/local-website-simplifies-
car-buying-experience/)

------
mirsadm
What we did was ensure we could have a story behind the product we were
building. From the start we knew exactly what angles we can approach the press
with for our app. In fact the timing was perfect for us and we managed to get
a lot of good press (AllThingsD, CNET etc).

Unless you have the perfect product don't expect anything but a spike in
downloads/visitors to your product. For me it has been an excellent learning
process and every time I release something I get better and better at it.

------
benologist
All they want from you is pageviews. Just come up with something that has a
high chance of getting them pageviews.

A probably easy angle would be, "Rejected from YC, now Bigger Than Jesus". A
well-baited hook for HN and bonus SEO on YC.

------
jnazario
bring them something they can use, like stats, insights, or an edge on a story
that no one else has. they have pressures like everyone else from their bosses
to produce and deliver, and they're competing for an editor's story approval.
help them be your story's advocate by being their source for data and insights
that's unique.

~~~
digisth
To add to this (and as patio11 has said several times in his articles) OKCupid
does this with regularity, and has provided a people with great deal of
entertainment and information value, and have been covered many times in the
press. They've also possibly indirectly helped their business doing this.

<http://blog.okcupid.com/>

KISSMetrics is another:

<http://blog.kissmetrics.com/>

------
ecaron
Step 1: Live in San Francisco (or at least have a remote office there).
Physical, accessible presence is key.

------
wilfra
I've had some success with <http://www.helpareporter.com/>

Reporters post there looking for sources for their stories. If you match what
they are looking for, you email the reporters.

I've gotten myself and my co-founder quoted in a bunch of publications this
way. Hard to tell how much traffic they've generated though since it's been
mostly print publications, so no link.

