

Ask HN: Best practices when pitching your startup to Techcrunch, Mashable etc? - pramodbiligiri

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.
======
webwright
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.

~~~
pramodbiligiri
Thanks, that's the kind of perspective I was hoping for. Hm, 37Signals did an
amazing PR job, come to think of it.

Will see what's the best "angle" we can come up with, without being fake of
course.

------
ktothemc
DO NOT COLD E-MAIL US with a single, vague paragraph. It will go into the
bowels of oblivion into tips@techcrunch.com 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?

~~~
eps
What's your general take on covering startups that haven't launched yet, but
that have an interesting idea and/or a credible founding team?

~~~
ktothemc
We cover lots of companies that haven't taken funding or (even launched yet)
but they need to have an interesting founding team or concept.

I covered a company the other week from the FB engineer who built Presence
(hasn't launched) and another wearable computing company that was built by a
very, very interesting team (hasn't launched but took funding). We've also
written plenty about Airtime (from Shawn Fanning, Sean Parker + some early
Facebook design talent) but it hasn't launched yet.

If you were early and instrumental at a profoundly successful company or were
key to a big project at a giant co like Google, then we'd be interested.

These are all examples though, we'd be flexible in how we think about it.

------
jsm386
One of the best sources, brought up here every now and then is from Peldi at
Balsamiq: [http://blogs.balsamiq.com/peldi/2008/08/05/startup-
marketing...](http://blogs.balsamiq.com/peldi/2008/08/05/startup-marketing-
advice-from-balsamiq-studio/)

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
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.

~~~
ktothemc
TechCrunch is "too mainstream"?

~~~
pramodbiligiri
Oh. I just meant its audience is really broad, like I mentioned in my other
reply to you (not saying that's a bad thing!). It's like the NYT of startups.
Practically everyone who wants to consider themself clued in reads it (or in
the case of NYT, pretends to ;)). Naturally it's competitive to find a spot in
it.

------
eddie_the_head
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!

------
speg
Step 1: get popular on user driven site. (HN, reddit, digg, etc...)

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
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.

~~~
fab1an
You might be aware of this already, but when posting to Reddit, make sure to
use the appropriate subreddit - in your case
<http://www.reddit.com/r/bioinformatics>, which has 2,790 subscribers. Posting
to Reddit generically won't get you anywhere. If your product has a certain
application angle that could be interesting/funny/relevant to larger
subreddits you could try to create an infographic hosted on imgur - as cool as
Reddit's community is, their attention spans are rather short and most people
won't read / upvote a lengthy article (safe specific subreddits, I bet things
over at r/bioinformatics are different.) Good luck with your startup.

EDIT: semantics.

~~~
pramodbiligiri
I read /r/programming regularly. Hadn't thought of looking for
/r/bioinformatics!

Btw, EyeQuant looks nice, but the activation email went to Spam (Y! Mail for
small businesses), and the password in there isn't working :(

------
gyardley
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.

~~~
pramodbiligiri
Tell me about it! :) Our current blog (<http://blog.metaome.com/>) is too
product focused. Have some ideas in the works..

------
SuperChihuahua
Watch this video: Mike Arrington speaks at Startup School 2008 about how to
get, and how to respond to press for your startup.

<http://youtu.be/HbUnatPfSgg>

~~~
pramodbiligiri
Just finished watching that. He's surprisingly down-to-earth. And holy smoke,
from 7:20-8:15 he precisely predicts an Instagram!

------
SuperChihuahua
12 Tips for Getting Your Startup Featured on Mashable:
<http://mashable.com/2008/04/10/get-your-startup-on-mashable/>

~~~
pramodbiligiri
Wow that's nice. I especially liked the Don't Be section.

------
philco
This is what we did:

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-...](http://blog.meeteor.com/18-days-from-sxsw-mvp-to-launch-our-stats/))

3) Leveraged that momentum into stories at other outlets.

~~~
ktothemc
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).

------
luckystrike
This related thread also has some useful comments:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1351460>

~~~
pramodbiligiri
Oh, Paras Chopra! He's quite a popular blogger now. Didn't know he had to
start off so humbly too :)

------
franze
i have been covered by techcrunch, mashable, boingboing, lifehacker, ... a few
times, here is what i did:

made a page/webapp that

    
    
      a) offers an iteration on an existing popular product
      b) pitched every good damn techblog out there
     

a) is basically a story in itself

and

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
How To Get Media Coverage For Your Startup: A Complete Guide
[http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/80121/How-To-Get-
Media-...](http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/80121/How-To-Get-Media-
Coverage-For-Your-Startup-A-Complete-Guide.aspx)

------
marban
if you need techcrunch, you're doing something wrong.

~~~
ktothemc
I disagree.

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.

~~~
pramodbiligiri
I view TC as a parallel to HN, but on the user side. While this forum gives
the best value for time in terms of startup operations, TC readers would be
people who have heard of similar products, seen companies getting Dead Pooled
in that category etc (though not always genuine end users, like that women's
fashion example).

Just on a lark, is "BioInformatics" with a strong Semantic Web angle to it, of
particular interest to anyone among your group?

~~~
ktothemc
Send us an e-mail with answers to the eight questions above. Put my name "kim"
in the subject line and send it to tips at techcrunch dot com. I will find it.

We do cover some health and biotech (particularly if it's something that could
be consumer-facing or doesn't require like a 10-year FDA clinical trial). We
wrote about Dr. Chrono, which was a YC company.

~~~
pramodbiligiri
Cool! Will get on it.

------
rmATinnovafy
The copy on the website is hard to read.

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
How do you feel about the content on the Help page
(<http://distilbio.com/help>)? Do you want to see some of that on the homepage
itself?

~~~
rmATinnovafy
I can't access it from my android phone.

Shoot me an email.

rm at innovafy dot com

Ill look into it with you.

------
jcollins1991
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.

------
pramodbiligiri
The URL above wasn't clickable: <http://www.distilbio.com> By the way, is
there some list of such blogs/sites which profile startups?

~~~
huhtenberg
That would be <http://betali.st>. All other similarly themed sites (launchsoon
& co.) appears to be scraping/re-publishing their content.

------
markkat
Be funded, or they generally don't give a damn. That seems to be their MO.

~~~
DavidAbrams
Which means don't be self-sufficient. Sell out. Don't go into an enterprise
with the necessary resources yourself.

Thanks, but I'll just forego their "coverage" instead.

------
wilfra
[http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/80121/How-To-Get-
Media-...](http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/80121/How-To-Get-Media-
Coverage-For-Your-Startup-A-Complete-Guide.aspx)

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
Buffer is a really great app too, so that helps the cause immensely.

