First things first, consider why you are pitching this reporter in the first place.<p>For most companies, TechCrunch is a waste of time (see his note on press releases designed to stroke the writer's ego.)<p>They are probably not your market. Your market is the people you help. Those people — small businesses, local governments, regular people, video game enthusiasts, whatever — probably don't read TechCrunch.<p>Find what they read and pitch there.<p>But what about gaining respect in the Valley? No one whose respect you care about will respect you for seeing your funding round in TechCrunch. Focus on building your business. Focus on building your product. Telling stories is important, but only when you're talking about things that matter. Funding is a means to doing other things, not an end in itself.<p>Hiring? When I was at ZenPayroll, the toughest time for hiring was right after our Series A. We had tons of people who applied because we had just raised $20 million and they saw us in TechCrunch. They wanted to join a rocketship (literally heard that in an interview.) We wanted to help small businesses, very different motivations.<p>Pitch your impact. 99% of the time, you are not yet making a big impact. That's okay. Focus on making one, not making up a story as to why you're making one.
There's some good stuff there, but this gets me:<p><pre><code> WHAT IS THE NEW ROUND OF FUNDING?
(Required: Specify Seed, Series A, etc)
WHO ARE THE INVESTORS?
(Required)
HOW MUCH FUNDING (in $) DOES IT HAVE IN TOTAL?
(Required: Specify Seed, Series A, etc)
</code></pre>
This suggests that really, the only thing they care about, is stories about people raising money. Like, that's the only thing that matters in the world.<p>In reality, who you're funded by is trivia. Yeah, I said it. It's fucking trivia. It's not going to make a difference in whether you succeed or not. IMO, to the extent that it matters, it's a microscopic factor.<p>You would <i>think</i> that a news outlet would be interested in the <i>what</i> of a company, less than "who's funding it?", ya know? I mean, if somebody has created a ground-breaking new app, (or something they think is ground-breaking) then the app either is news-worthy, or it isn't. You don't need to know who they're funded by, or if they're self-funded, to decide that.<p>I've said this before and I'll keep banging this drum until I drop... the goal of a startup is to make money, not to raise money. To the extent that you do the latter, it's in service of the former. But raising money is a tactical objective, not the end goal.
The hilarious thing about this is that he's complaining about pitches not being concise enough, but his suggested template literally asks for a full-length essay. If you add up the suggested sentence limits, you get over EIGHTY SENTENCES and at least a dozen paragraphs. Jesus!
Very good point! But for a text talking about how long-winded, somewhat rambling and hard to skim press releases are, I found it quite long-winded, somewhat rambling and hard to skim.
> Many opening Hacker News posts are very simplistic titles which don’t answer basic questions, like "Use <i>this</i> instead of press releases". Many even say (WHY?!) "Would you like to read my entire rant about how important I am to not have time to converse with humans about their heart-felt ideas?".<p>He could have titled this "An email template for best chances at reaching entrepreneurs" and removed the crap at the beginning.
> I’m UTTERLY SICK and TIRED of dealing with MILLIONS of tech entrepreneurs (these days there are a HELL of a lot of you) and (some) PR people who have ZERO clue how to pitch me/TechCrunch/the media.<p>His business is writing about (or dealing with) tech startups. He make money doing this by being paid for advertising, etc. If he is sick of dealing with us, that's his problem to solve, not ours. Coaching us to target him better doesn't mean that we'll be successful with another reporter with the same approach. Asking us to improve the efficiencies of our pitches only serves to increase his own success - it doesn't actually raise the chances we'll get the exposure (given probability and math happens).<p>And yes, this general approach would work with PR firms, but then again we're paying them for that service. I had a call with a PR firm a few weeks back and they were struggling to understand what a container stack was and why it is important. They eventually got it, but it took some time. Sometimes complexity happens.<p>Instead of offloading his work onto us, why doesn't he figure out a way to scale what his is <i>suppose</i> to be doing (listening) better? I have no idea how to solve this, but it doesn't start by telling us his is sick and tired of dealing with us and how we can do a bunch of work to make him not sick of us. That's just rudely blaming us for something that brings him suffering.<p>BTW, I totally get where he is coming from, but still. Tone it down a bit.
This guy has a megaphone that you are trying to rent.<p>Why are you trying to rent TC's megaphone? It is TC's megaphone right? Dude's got quite a few asks for being a rando-pseudo-journalist. So, I suggest you take that time and pipe it to figuring out what your market/marketing channel is so you can invest those cycles better. Do some research on exactly how many useful signups TC drives (spoiler: nearly 0, craigslist is probably better (LOL!)[0] ).<p>Is your target market is even reading TC? Probably not. Which market segments, exactly, read TC? I barely read it. I doubt most people read it, much less for actual insight or anything resembling journalism.<p>I would steer clear of accept-all startups du jour megaphones (signal:noise is crap) and instead concentrate on outlets your customers care about. BONUS: those will have less prima donna attitudes with silly headshots. GO!<p>[0] article referencing ironic LOL!. Enough internets for me for today :)
I thought "this" would be a PR template, or a service or platform to issue good press releases for startups. What I got was a man screaming for attention.<p>-1 for the title
A lot of the suggestions in this carry over to almost every human interaction.. in addition to his "Can I send you a press release?" gripe, I have a couple to add:<p>"Can you do me a favour?" Why don't you ask me to do something and I'll decide whether or not I want to.<p>"Can I ask you a question?" Really? You're asking me if you can ask me something? Just ask it.
"50% of being a startup is about communication" - this is only true if you believe being a startup is about being in the tech news cycle, which I guess he does.
Tech journalists keep ranting about the bad pitches they receive. They publish tips and guidelines. But even if you follow those, they still don't read the pitches. And rarely have any idea about technology <a href="http://web.bozho.net/?p=336" rel="nofollow">http://web.bozho.net/?p=336</a>
I think the article is looking at it backwards - techcrunch is not a singular target audience for press releases. A press release is more like throwing spaghetti up on the wall to see what sticks. It is a grab for free marketing, blasted to anyone who might care, with the knowledge that many will ignore it.<p>Now, if people are writing up direct pitches to this guy and calling it a press release, then they are simply giving it the wrong label, and then his advice may be applicable. Or maybe he gave his article a bad label. Or he only gets crappy press releases. Whichever.<p>But declaring that the entire mechanism of press releases is outdated just because he doesn't like them... well, he did say that it was all incredibly arrogant.
If I wasn't a salty startup founder, I might be offended. But after my 500th rejection letter, with much more terse language, I can handle it. These are all good tips.