How to Think About PR Video Lecture | Startup School Online by Y Combinator - Entrepreneurship

Okay, hi everyone.
We're going to talk about
public relations today.
I'm Sharon.
I actually work at Y Combinator, and
I work on our continuity team which is
the team that does growth stage investing,
so Series B, Series C investing.
And also trying to create programs and
give advice to founders as they enter
into a different phase of their startup.
Right after they've built a great product
they then have to go build a company.
And make it a really great company so
that's what we try to do,
we'll try to help with
on the continuity team.
Before I was at YC, I was the Chief
Marketing Officer at GreenDot which is
a fin tech company that makes
pre-paid debit cards and
checking accounts that
don't let you overdraft.
They're really targeting
under banked population.
It's a public company.
And I got there by being acquired,
I was at Looped which is a start-up,
it was actually Sam wass start-up.
So I worked with Sam there for two years
and before that I was at PR agencies.
So I was at two different PR agencies,
probably had a total of 20 clients over
that period of times, ranging from
start-ups to big companies like Intel.
So I've done a lot of kind
of on the ground PR work and
also have thought about it
from a strategic level.
And also get to talk to founders from YC
about startups, or about PR and reckoning.
So that's why I'm here talking to you.
And the tough thing is even though
this is going to be about PR you're not
going to escape the standard waxy advice.
Which is while PR might be interesting and
something that could help in some ways for
your business.
Your number one job as a founder
is to focus on your product and
that's your not going to escape that.
So even if PR is interesting
that's the key, the key goal.
And I bring it up because without
product innovation PR is not going to be
an option for you.
The startup curve is the one that Paul
Graham drew way back it probably looks
familiar.
But the fact is you could get some great
article written about your product.
But if you get people in there and they're
disenchanted by it or not impressed,
they're not going to come back.
So your not going to have something that's
ongoing that you can really depend on.
It's not a customer acquisition channel.
So if press motivates you, if being on the
cover of Wired is something that you think
would be cool that's cool.
And have that motivate you, and create
a product that press cannot ignore, right.
That's how you get great PR results,
is creating an amazing product.
So that's the first thing you can do.
Now that's said.
[LAUGH] You know it's your first job but
there are some things,
I am going to actually give
you some tangible tools and
steps that you can take
to start a PR program.
My first tip though for
early stage founders is don't go and
hire a PR agency or a PR person.
I really believe for early stage
founders that Founder-Led PR is simply
the only way to go for a lot of reasons,
but mainly I think it's actually special.
You know reporters like
hearing from founders,
that's the end spokesperson for them.
So there's not someone going in between
there's someone who they genuinely can
learn from and gather information
from knocking right on their door.
I guess usually in this forum,
[LAUGH] an email.
But you're getting exposure to someone who
could actually be a spokesperson for you.
So it's special and it's something that's
kind of unique to the vibe that you can
pull off when you're at an early stage.
And the other side is you
have something to offer.
You may pitch them reporter today that
news may not fit into their coverage for
the day or for the week.
But in a month something really
relevant to that area could happen and
they'll call you.
Because you're a subject matter expert,
you know your domain,
you know your business.
And that helps them craft the story that
helps them give background of the story.
So I would kind of think about it as not
kind of a switch you can flip from the PR
perspective but really you're
trying to establish a relationship.
And trying to just get ball rolling,
getting your company name out there,
your product out there.
And just establishing yourself
is a credible spokesperson.
So this is the next question I always
get when I say that first speech.
So I just really want to take a second
to just knock down these net.
And I even sent out some questions to
a lot of folks in startup school and
I got some of these questions.
So questions back about PR agencies.
So first reason why people
might think that they really,
really need the PR person to come
in right away and help them.
That they might help them define
the business and de-jargonize it.
And yes, communications folks
can be really good at that.
But you're kind of depriving yourself of
a process that's going to be really useful
beyond media relations.
Being able to define your
business in a clear and
concise way is going to pay back
in every aspect of your business.
When you're talking to
a potential investor,
when you're talking to
a potential partner.
When you're trying to hire
your first few engineers
you need to be able to clearly pitch them
on what makes your business special.
And why they should listen to you.
So don't deprive yourself of that process.
They come up with story angles so
they're paying attention to the news.
Well you're a better spokesperson and
founder if you follow the news.
You need to understand where
your business sits in the news.
I'm not saying you should spend five hours
a day of poring over every news site but
you should have a good pulse.
You know couple times a day checking and
look at the stories that
are relevant to your business and
just more broadly understand where
your business fits in the world.
The third reason and
the most common reason I get is
that they know the reporters.
They hold these relationships.
They're the ones that can make it happen.
And I'll tell you no
credible reporter would ever
write a story because they like
went to drinks with someone.
They'll write a story because
it's a good story, right.
So a story always trumps a relationship so
focus on that.
Focus on a product that has a story,
focus on a product that has traction which
is a story and that's what can pull.
That's what can start creating
those relationships for you.
It's not a magic kind of
key that you can turn.
They field media inquiries, right.
So they'll be able to respond
to press in a timely manner.
It's a pretty high-class problem to have.
If you're getting tons of media
inquiries that you can barely,
that you're drowning in them you probably
have some pretty good product traction.
And maybe you're having a blazing
success and then you have permission to
hire a strategic communications
partner who can help you through that.
And lastly they're good
at sending invoices.
Not to minimize that to a PR agency or
a PR professional but
it's essentially overhead in a lot of ways
because there's no guaranteed results.
It could be an agency can come in.
They don't know your business,
they have to learn your business.
So probably about a month out and
then they start pitching.
It might be two weeks out,
three weeks out, two months before
you even get a story in the news.
And it's even then that's not
guarantee to drive specific business
school because it's not an engaged
measurable customer acquisition tactic.
So get to a place where you have
a really good team that can
build that great product engineering team,
your product team, yourself.
And that where you
should kind of focus on.
So hopefully I've convinced you but
I do think that there are some simple
things the founders can do to chip
away at the PR goals themselves.
And eventually once you are a success
you should hire a PR firm,
they're cool, I used to work in one.
Five steps.
And these are really based
on my experience but
I'm also leaving some common YC advice
that batches receive when they come
through YC specifically this one,
step 1, who are you?
So this long list is a checklist of
a whiteboarding session at Y Combinator.
So companies that come through YC will get
this great presentation by Kat Manalac
who's a partner at YC.
And then they'll meet with
their group partners,
and go through each of these questions.
And this is something that I implore
you to take time and think about.
So invite a family member or a friend in,
someone who's not steeped in
your world who can actually kind of
give you some real advice on whether or
not your description is jargon or makes
sense to the common man in Anytown, USA.
But most importantly,
what does your company do?
We will talk about that more,
being able to describe your customers.
So how does your product
live through your customer.
Through the lens of their customer.
People like stories about people so
this is a great one for PR.
What problem are you solving?
How are you measuring, how you are going?
And how are you goiing?
Who your competitors, and
why are you better than your competitors?
What are your plans for next year?
And I think one of the more important
ones for PR as well is why you?
Why did you start this company?
Why are you uniquely qualified to
bring this product to the world?
And that can range from stories of
something you over came that cause
you to explore this field and to conquer
this technology and this innovation.
Or it could be that you came from
a company that has done this kind of and
you're, you broke off and
are doing it better.
So the founder stories are really
great to establish early
on cause sometimes we could
forget that about ourselves,
right that we bring something
special to the table.
So to dive a little bit deeper on,
what does your company do?
The biggest advice is to lead
with the what, not the why.
And what I mean by that,
is even though we've established
that you're all co-founders.
And that you're uniquely
qualified to start your business.
That's kind of a long story to get,
all at once.
So instead of some like big paragraph
where I have to really try to navigate to
understand what your company actually is,
it's a lot easier for
you to say to me, well, Wright Electric is
Boeing for electric airplanes, I get that.
You're making them, they're electric,
tell me more, right I want to lean in,
I want to hear more.
Actual company from the last
batch of YC by the way.
Dropbox, is synchronizes your file
across your and your team's computers.
That's easy to understand,
it might seem silly now, but
this is actually their description under
YC application years and years ago.
So the overall summary here is, make it
conversational, which means no jargon.
No preamble, just get right to it and
above all, make it concise.
So step 2, we're going to define
your goals and your audience.
And this one,
it's kind of a forced principles type
process because PR actually isn't a goal.
So, saying my goal is to get a lot of
press, it actually isn't your goal.
If you really, really step back, you're
actually striving toward a business goal.
So you want to maybe
recruit the best talent,
you want to finance your growth,
drive trial, land strategic partners.
You have things that you're
trying to do with your business.
So you want to ask yourself,
this is the business thing I want to do.
Is there a strategic,
is there an audience that I can maybe
influence to help me get there?
Press aren't the audience,
[LAUGH] they have readers though.
So press might be the window
to your audience, so talking,
getting a story placed or
working with press to get some story place
could be a way to reach
this priority audience.
So if your priority or
your business goal is to finance growth
your audience might be investors, right?
So that's kind of how you need to break
it down, and really try to prioritize it,
because if everything's a priority,
then nothing's a priority,
so really to focus in.
If your goal of press is investors,
it's actually going to influence
the reporters that you try to talk to,
and the publications that you try to get
in and so you want to ask to yourself.
The other, obviously, piece of YC advice,
that I'm sure you're all already doing
is building your product and talking to
customers and repeat, repeat, repeat.
So if you're talking to your customers
anyway, maybe ask them what they read.
That's a good way to kind of get to
what outlets you might want to consider.
So which brings us to our next step,
step 3, reading.
Which might seem common sense but, so
if you all ready read the news,
probably you all ready do.
It's just maybe putting a little more
structure around how you look at the news.
So if you read a really compelling article
that you feel like hit some of the notes
that you, as a founder, represent or
that your product speaks to.
Then look at who wrote it, right?
That person maybe will interested in
a story about you and your company.
So the big tips here, as you kind of
prepare for, and this is also, I get a lot
of questions from technical founders on
like how to bring efficiency to this.
And the real answer is,
there's not tons of efficiency in this.
This is about relationship-building,
there's not something
that can automate it.
But here's some tools,
a Google spreadsheet, so
that's the biggest tool I think
that people might use for PR.
So just kind of organizing your thoughts.
You read a very article, grab the link,
note who wrote it and write a little bit
to yourself, about what was relevant and
how you think your story might
play with that same reporter, given their
interest and given their coverage area.
Think about what angle
might interest them,
which we'll talk a little bit more about.
And then think about connections to them.
So we talked about how PR agencies
aren't vital for relationships.
But it is nice to get a warm
introduction to a reporter.
So, if you see that that reporter
has written about someone you know,
or an investor might know them.
So maybe another founder
has appeared in the story?
Seem might reach out to that founder,
draft an email up for them and
say hey would you mind
introducing me to this reporter,
I think they might be
interested in my product.
Right, so that's the connection
with the system column.
On angle, I think I kind of wanted to
specifically point out business press,
because for an early stage startup, it's
not always a relevant target for people.
I'm going to do an audience question now.
What would you guess is the most common
topic in covered in business outlets?
>> Funding?
>> Maybe, yes for start ups.
Yes, so the most top topic is business.
You have to have something that ties like
market moving, commerce, the economy.
So funding is a good example for
where start up might get into this.
Another example where star up might be
able to get an a story in the business
press would be if you are really
getting a lot attraction and
like upsetting the stream
of someone else's business.
So you're taking advertising
dollars away from Facebook.
Or you have an app that can hail a car.
And it's maybe disrupting a taxi business.
These are kind of things that will get you
into this press even before you get big.
Because you're showing
signs of disruption,
you're showing signs that there's
something to look at here.
So one to kind of cover that one, because
it's a common question, the other element.
So as you start reaching out to reporters,
and
I'll give you some example of
pictures that have actually gone out.
And just a reminder that everything
you say is on the record.
The reporters job is to get the story and
they just tell kind of Gathering
all the information you give them.
I mean, if you share metrics of your
business, they may wrote about them.
So it's the common advice we give YC
companies before demo day too, right?
When they're really excited to share
everything about their business, and
they share all their metrics.
And they might be
surprised the next day when
an article talks about
the metrics of their business.
So just,
it might seem like common sense advice.
But it's really easy to
forget in the moments.
So just keep in mind,
be open, be transparent.
Share honestly, but if you don't know your
metrics in the news, don't share them.
Okay.
So what to say and timed outreach.
So going to start reaching out you have
already looked at your kind of year ahead
and thought about,
what news your might have?
Maybe it's your actual company launch,
maybe it's a product launch.
Maybe you have fund raising.
Maybe you got some investment.
You might hit some milestone.
Maybe you have some
statistics that are cool.
These are all examples
of company fueled news.
The other type of news
is trend based news.
How your company fits in a bigger trend?
Things like a round-up
of new finance apps.
Maybe you're going to be one
of those apps, that's name.
I usually say that journals will usually
only name three, they're not going to
spend their day listing an exhaustive list
that have all the 15, 20, 30 offset exist.
So to the degree that you have engaged
with the reporter in a meaningful way
it maybe they don't write
about your new story one week.
Or maybe three weeks from now
they're going to do a round up and
you'll be in it.
So there are some things where
just the relationship and
just reaching out is good and
can kind of pay back later.
Also politics and entertainment.
When that kind of news happens sometimes
there's an opportunity to jump on and
be included in some way.
And also contextualizing
other company announcements.
So if Apple has big developer news then
maybe your developer have something to say
or contribute, or reaching out and
saying hey, here's what I think about it.
Let me know if you want to talk.
That can be a way to get your
company into the conversation.
So here's an actually example.
So simple habit within YC last batch, and
it's essentially Spotify for meditation.
Yunha, the founder specifically wanted
to get a coverage in indulge it.
So she found this reporter, Nathan.
He wrote several times about
different streaming apps and
we're specifically interested
in New kinds of content.
So he's written about Spotify,
written about YouTube TV and so
she approached him.
She had some seed funding to announce.
Engadget doesn't actually write that much
about fundraising and she knew that.
So she reached out shared
the fundraising news.
But also shared that they were going to be
doing a new release that had a bunch more
content coming out and
a few new features and he was interested.
He asked for more information.
She searched from Visuals and
this is the story.
This is the story [LAUGH].
And so that's a great example of
something that simple habit did.
So a relevant pitch to the right
reporter around a news item.
Here's another example.
So this is not company milestone-based but
actually customer-based.
So like we talked about showing
your product through the eyes
of a customer this YC company again,
Thunkable which lets anybody build
mobile apps without knowing how to code.
They discovered this customer
they had in Yemen who,
again without knowing how to code.
Developed a solar app or basically
an app that brought thousands of people
solar power that had lost power
due to civil war in Yemen and
it's a pretty cool story, right?
So they drafted up a pitch.
They knew someone who knew the reporter.
The founder knew someone who knew
the reporter and drafted up an email for
that person to then send to
a reporter of that's company.
So this is the email asking if they can
intro giving a little bit of context,
giving that really short
business description.
And the reporter was interested
this is the story of past company.
And here's the example of writing the news
wave, we talked about politics and
entertainment.
Approximately being something to jump on.
It's not everyday that
this is an opportunity so
this is not your common example.
But we all might remember
last October there was some
tapes that were leaked of Donald Trump
saying lewd things on a bus.
And it was to put it mildly major news
in the US and probably around the world.
And so this happened October eighth,
I think.
So deepgram, another YC company their
product is basically search for speech.
So they can search audio files like
Google searches images, right?
And so they saw an opportunity
with all this talk about
are there more tapes is there
anything else to discover?
Journalists are going down
that path of inquiry and so
they came in with what I would
consider kind of a light stun.
Which is hey, we're making our products
free for journalists until election day.
Have at it search for whatever.
And so they got were covered for that.
So they were able to quickly think
about it they put up a blog post and
they jumped on it and
this is the story they got in Tech Crunch.
So those are a few examples.
You saw a few examples of pitches and
I would say that's your number one tool.
You're very likely not in a place where
reporters are kind of sitting on your site
refreshing your blog.
Wondering what the next news is going
to be, so you need to get to them.
And so blog post is helpful to link
to just to give extra information.
And don't attach like to not attach steps
so it's a good kind of repository for
the full story to have that if someone
is interested they can click through.
I get questions about press releases.
They're not really for
start-ups, that's the truth.
It's an older medium, gosh it used
to be even more intense than this.
I mean, there was faxes coming
into the newsroom that used
to be the big utility of a press release.
And then more recently it was a good
way to get in Google news, right?
It got you in search results, but
Google has wised up about that a lot.
So it doesn't really do that anymore.
So your blog has just as much power
to get into the search results as
a press release does.
And press releases if you're
going to put them over the wire,
cost a couple thousand dollars.
So it's not worth it for a startup.
Really they're a tool for public companies
to make disclosures about market moving
news so
that's the main folks that'll use it.
I guess the only other exception
would be if you are in an industry
that's an older-fashioned industry
like banking or aviation.
Sometimes I go link to a press release on
your site can establish credibility for
partners.
Not press but like partners or other
people that you might want to get meetings
with for lack of other press coverage.
So there's that.
Visuals and
assets are really great to include.
Never an attachments because attachments
are annoying, we all know that.
But just link to them like
either in your site or
at the drop box link because every
story will use a visual anyway.
A lot of outlets want to create their
own visual for bigger feather stories.
But for like a smaller news item they
might just like screenshot your website or
find a picture of the founder
like speaking at some event.
But maybe you don't like that picture,
maybe it's not flattering.
So I always just say
provide your own visuals so
hopefully they'll use one of those and
you'll be happy.
So I don't know why I shoved
all this in one slide.
But the other thing I want to talk about
in terms of official announcements
are exclusives versus embargos.
Which could be its own slide about
how to really, really, really,
really pissed off a reporter so listen
closely because these are important.
These are two tools
that are used in the PR
world to brief a reporter
in advance of a news date.
So that they can have a full story
ready to go on the day of the news.
You can't use them both together,
I'm going to talk about them individually.
An exclusive is I'm going to talk to you,
you one reporter just me and you,
you're getting the full story and
that's it.
You're the only one I'm talking to about
this until after you post your story.
And then if someone calls
me I can talk to them but
they're not going to have
the story ready to go.
It's yours.
That's an exclusive.
It's as serious as a monogamous relation
like that is you should not mess with
an exclusive.
If you promise to give someone the story,
it's theirs.
Got it?
Okay.
An embargo is if you have
bigger news that you think
multiple reporters might cover,
which is common, especially for
a mid-sized startup that has people
that are kind of following their news,
you can reach out, and say to each
of the reporters, I have some news.
I'd like to pre-brief you on it.
The news is going out on
June 15 at eight AM pacific.
Would you like the news?
Will you agree to embargo?
And they say yes.
There goes the saying, give me the news,
if I write a story I will not publish it
until that specific time that you told me.
So the trick here is, you just need
make sure you're being really clear in
communication with everyone, because if
you send one reporter the wrong time and
they like post their time earlier,
then there are four reporters that are all
ready, but they were supporting your ask.
So it's kind of a little weird, but these
are things that exist that are tools.
I would say specifically for an exclusive,
it's something we use a lot for
early stage start-ups, because if
you're reaching out to a reporter and
you have like that, the customer story.
The one from Funkable?
That was actually offered as an exclusive.
So that was just kind of an extra carrot
to say 'hey, this is a cool story,
and we'll give it to you, just you'.
So the reporter knows okay,
I can either take my time to
actually talk to the customer.
And I'm not racing against
the clock to see because
someone else might write it before I do,
right?
So it allows them to take their time.
Take a breath and
write the story they want.
And also it's nice to
not have to compete for
clicks on the story with other outlets.
So that's why it's used as a tool, but
just make sure to respect it and
use it carefully.
So last of all, listen and be a source.
So it's one thing to reach
out when you have news,
but kind of on your day to day,
you're really just following the news and
possibly taking opportunities
to be a source.
So these are just a couple of things.
You guys know about Google Alerts and
RSS feeds.
One thing you might not know
about is this tool called HARO.
It's Help a Reporter Out and
the website is helpareporter.com.
And it's free, you can subscribe to it.
It's kind of a lot,
you get three mondo emails every day.
And basically what it is is reporters
will, they're seeking a source for
their story, so they'll actually
submit a request for a source.
So hey I'm looking for
an expert on molecular biology,
deadline is tomorrow at 5 PM pacific.
And so you see that.
You're an expert on molecular biology,
so you can actually reply and
kind of let them know about yourself and
maybe they can use you as a source.
So, it's a good way sometimes you can
strike it big and there's something right
on the money, but it's not, I you know,
it's not a guaranteed road to coverage.
Also some reporters will tweet
when they need a source.
They'll say hey I'm looking for
someone who's an expert on this.
So that's another way.
Also most, a lot of reporters
tweet their own coverage.
So again if you're reading a reporter's
coverage and kind of understanding what
motivates them to write or
what types of stories are cool for them.
Twitter is a great place
to hang out as well.
A couple quick examples of being a good
source I always give, I mean, the one I
always talk about is Sam Waldman having
worked with him he just wanted to help
out, because he was just interested in the
story and so this is kind of the true test
of the founder who gets PR from me is
someone who just thinks story is cool.
Someone who actually wants reporters to
have the tools to put out a great story.
So he would reach out even if something
wasn't within the realm of loop like if
there was a story about
augmentative reality or something,
he would ping someone and say hey I'm
really interested in augmentative reality.
I know a lot about it and
then they would call him even though
there wasn't a specific loop tie-in.
That was a way that he was there for
them so
when we did have news they at
least looked at the email.
You know, so it helped just
kind of get that credibility,
because they knew he was interested
in them getting a good story.
Two recent examples from penny,
another YC company in a recent batch.
This New York Times example was Penny
saw this comment that Jamie Diamond,
who's the CEO of Chase,
made about innovative
bank start-ups not holding a handle
to the offerings that Chase has.
For their own customers, and it's kind of
crapping on innovative banking start ups.
And it wasn't widely covered, like it
was only covered in a couple places,
I saw it in Forbes, and I noticed
the New York Times hadn't covered it.
And there was a specific reporter who they
had been continuing to read his coverage,
Ron of the New York Times, Ron Lieber.
And they felt like Ron would be interested
in this story, yet he hadn't covered it.
So they reached out to him,
said hey, have you seen this news,
what Jamie Diamond said?
Here's what we think about it.
We think that innovative
starts do have a place.
And we have this perspective and
I'm an expert in this.
And so he was able to jump on
the phone with a reporter,
give him context from what he thought.
And he was in this story in the second
paragraph and quoted twice.
So this story that he wouldn't
have been in probably, and
if the reporter had picked up on his own,
probably wouldn't have been in it.
But he was in it because he was able
to guide the reporter through it or
at least help him get to a place where
where he wanted to write about it.
And the other thing that Penny worked
on Is, they had talked to a Bloomberg
reporter about chatbots, because
she had written a story about that.
And they kind of wanted to
give her some more experience.
I guess I didn't really
say what Penny did.
They're a personal finance app, so
it's like a personal finance coach
in your pocket, and it's a bot.
So they were talking to her about bots.
And she mentioned them, and
there were two stories she was working on.
One about equity, grants, and
one about diversity hiring.
And it was just kind of conversation that
they realize they had a friend who
knew a lot about equity grants.
They connected her to their friend and
that was just kind of
a nice gesture they did.
And then when they were starting to
look for their first engineering hire,
these two male founders with an app called
Penny and and a female bud wanted to
hire a female engineer to help to balance
out their company from the beginning.
So they reached out to her and
said, hey, just interestingly,
I know you were interested in this,
we are actually doing this now.
So anyway, hope you're having a good day,
that's what we're doing.
So she got back with them and said, hey,
I want to profile you through
the whole hiring process.
So she shadowed them to this in-depth
podcast on their hiring process.
So, this wasn't the story that they dreamt
of in Bloomberg probably, like a story of
the hiring process versus their business,
but is was a great way to develop this
relationship with this reporter, the piece
ended up turning out really great.
They did end up making a hire, so this to
me is just a good example of a founder
that gets a good story and is like, will
invest in just kind of making that happen.
So this is kind of it, I think some,
the other tools that you have
are responding to articles, so if there's
an article that you might even disagree
with, or have a different point of view,
that's another opportunity to reach out.
So it's not always just news-driven or
trend-driven.
It could just be, hey, you wrote this.
I don't know if you ever
thought about it this way,
but if you ever want to explore this side,
let me know, I'm here.
And then also, the media's changing.
Getting an article written about
you isn't the only way for
someone to start seeing you
as an authority, right?
So, there are small things you can
do like commenting on an article,
not self-promotional,
not plugging your business in any big way,
just as an interested
person in this topic.
Commenting on our article on Reddit,
Quora,
and even creating your own
content on your blog or a medium.
These are good ways to start just kind
of dipping your toe in establishing your
credibility in the field
that you operate in.
So those are some small things you can do,
and questions?
And actually, as a surprise, we have
Steven Levy here who is at Back Channel.
Come on up Steven.
And formerly at Wired and
Newsweek way back.
And he is surprised, so
this is a journalist you can
ask questions to as well.
So you can either ask me or the person who
is on the other line of these questions.
>> Yeah, and actually this was a super
clueful presentation, I have to say,-
>> Well thank you, Stephen.
>> Right.
And you don't hear that from
all people in the PR district.
>> I think that's true, yeah.
>> So very good.
>> We do have a question right back there.
>> Yes, I was just trying to understand
like the advantages of like the exclusive
versus non-exclusive.
So I imagine that being non-exclusive
could potentially lead to more press,
they can at least indicate like say,
comfortable,
I think comment about it like cool, so
there is like getting a better story, but
what are some of the other
advantages of doing exclusive?
>> Stephen can you repeat the question?
>> Yeah.
>> Repeat it, so the question is,
what are the advantages of
doing exclusive versus embargo,
because what your understanding was that
if you do an embargo you get more stories.
You want to go off that?
>> Sure, yeah I'm dealing with
this a lot for what I do.
I much prefer exclusives,
the publication I founded and
write for called Backchannel is
we don't do a lot of stories,
we're not a trade
publication like Techfront.
So we're not going to cover everything.
We tried to cover things that are special
and we could tell things in depth.
So for us,
it's important to have an exclusive.
We don't want to write the generic
story that everyone else writes there.
And the other problem
with embargos is that,
first of what you have has to
be important to get a lot of
reporters involved in there for
a non-exclusive story.
And what often happens is
that someone gets wind of it.
And then someone will tweet, there is
a company that does x and there's four
reporters sitting there with a story and
one of them will have an editor that says,
That's it the embargo's broken,
let's just go with it.
So I would say well
over half the embargos,
I've ever been involved with get
broken and there's bad feelings.
>> I would have said 25%.
Half is, wow.
>> I say over half.
>> Well, I mean,
you know better than I do, whoa.
>> And my pet peeve is always if a big
publication like Business Week or
the New York Times breaks
an embargo sometimes accidentally,
we thought it was west coast time or
something like that.
They never suffer consequences there.
>> Yeah.
Exactly.
>> But I think I argue for,
if you have an important story to tell and
particularly if it's the complex story
that can't be summed up neatly in
a sentence, but
what you have is really cool and
needs an explanation,
then you really want an exclusive story.
A reporter who's going to
find it worthwhile
to spend a lot of time with you and
your company and tell a definitive story.
You put it on the Web,
everyone gets to read it and for example,
I did a story about this
company called Viv which was,
people used to do the Siri product there.
I did it for Wired,
it was actually probably my
last story in the magazine until this
week, actually, was a couple years ago.
And they actually used that on their
website to explain themselves for
a couple years.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah, and I think that's the key point
about this is if someone can go deeper,
then as a business, that's a tool for you.
It's like a part of
a tapestry of your company.
It's kind of a top of the search results.
It's something that someone
can actually take and read and
fall in love with your company.
Especially for recruiting,
partnerships like
that story is in your email signature,
and you can really cherish it.
I think there's a question
right behind you.
>> Stephen, could you go through some of
the major different types of publications?
There is TechCrunch, there is New York
Times and sort of like mainstream media,
but then there's the new wave of media
companies on media and then there's wait,
but why because there's
all these different types?
Can you sort of go through the pros and
cons to the different sort of
major categories that you see?
>> Yeah, sure, I think ultimately
when you're going to do your pitch
,you're going to do what Sharon says and
really get yourself familiar with them.
But you know, the larger distinctions
is that a publication like TechCrunch,
you know, considers itself almost
definitive to say anything important
in the industry we're going to do.
So I don't know if YC still does this,
but when I last did a dive in
a batch they had almost an informal
relationship that any company's time came,
you know, TechCrunch would basically run
their verbal press release, you know.
>> Yeah.
>> They have a call scheduled, and
someone would read it out there.
I don't know what,
there are so many companies-
>> Yeah, there are so many more companies.
It's a top target for
a lot like you and me.
>> Yeah, yeah, because they're
going to do a lot of stuff there and
they're interested in the business.
And other traditional publications,
again, they're not going to do as much.
They're going to figure out,
is this significant in a business sense?
Or a technology sense in which case,
,actually you might have to
consider a different reporter for
one of those publications there, you know.
If your company is an AI company,
you're going to talk to the person who
covers AI as oppose to the retail thing,
if you're a commerce company.
And a lot of the newer publications.
My Publications started on Medium,
we started actually as part of Medium.
Again, lots of different kinds of stuff.
Some of them are really focused
on what startup life is like.
And then in which case,
you might have something unique to offer.
We do a thing in my publication,
because a lot of people in this community
reads called war stories, that if some,
when it's a really interesting story
to tell, like about what they do,
typically actually, people who've already
established themselves and talked about
a crucial part in the formation of
their company, but you know, even so,
some of the younger companies I've seen
there, how the story's interesting enough.
We did it, we did one with,
what's it, instaArt?
>> Instacart?
>> InstaArt.
The art one that does Chris Chan,
I was somehow captivated with.
He was this young guy from Detroit
who wound up being a sole founder,
did a few pivots and
wound up to have these people in Hong Kong
create paintings based on
your photographs, right?
Do you remember that company?
>> Is the painting?
>> Is the painting, yeah,.
And I followed him, he was helpful,
again, against the sewers thing.
>> Yeah.
>> He was helpful to me,
talking about his life as a startup when
I did a story about that badge and then,
later I was connected with him and
wound up writing about his company.
>> Yeah, that's great.
I think, and just to add onto
the tech crunch element too,
when companies are in YC, often times
their goal after YC is to get investment,
which is TechCrunch tends
to be their top target.
It's not every company that has
that as their top target, but
if you think about that,
who's your audience?
If your audience is investors,
maybe the outlet is TechCrunch.
So, I'm just wondering about the benefits
of kind of reaching out to reporters
versus generating your own
PR with media articles, or
Twitter, or Facebook, or
other forms of social media.
When you feel like you really need to
kind of reach out to reporters to kind of
generate the kind of
publicity that [INAUDIBLE]
>> The question is,
how do you weigh reaching out to reporters
against things that you can do yourself
like writing media articles and
being active on social media?
I'm sure you have an opinion.
My opinion is pretty brief,
it's that they're not mutually exclusive.
I think that your story through
your voice is amazing and
if you're able to start developing
content that's on point for
your customers, and people who are
following your company, that's amazing.
And that's helpful for SEO so
from a pure like business standpoint,
it's helpful but it's also really
great to create a dialogue where you can
actually answer your customer's problems.
The other thing that's helpful is to have
a third-party validate your business
by thinking it's cool right and
writing a piece on it.
>> That's generally right, but
if everything is out in the medium story-
>> Yeah.
>> It's a little less delicious for
a reporter to do that.
I did a story about a start-up
called Bonsai recently,
and interestingly that came
from a relationship I had
with a PR person who
really knows my work and
knows this is a guy who likes to
do that really move the ball and
this is something different there that I
think is going to meet Steven's needs.
And they had those and the stuff are
medium, and I look hard at that to say,
boy, did they give their story away.
Even though obviously if you just put
up stuff on media, and not necessarily,
it therefore would be pretty rare
to get a huge readership from that.
I'd say ultimately then, it doesn't
really matter whether many people
have read it but
if you got what you wanted and took off,
it might make a reporter think twice to
say gee that story's been told already.
>> Yeah, I think that might have blown
past the common sense point of the big
part of the news is that it's new.
Like that someone hasn't
talked about it yet.
And that's a compelling point for
reporters.
Any other questions?
>> When you talk about the balance
between sort of like crafting and
scaffolding a story that you directly
give to reporters versus letting them do
what they want with it.
Because on one hand,
it's less work for them.
But on the other hand, they sort
of exercise less creativity if you
just give them a narrative they can
copy and paste into their article.
>> So the question is, and
I'm going to ask Steven to answer it,
is what's the balance between
doing a lot of pre-work and
giving kind of like an outline to
a reporter, as you said scaffolding,
versus just letting
a reporter run with it.
>> You're going to need to focus
in order to explain what it is,
but once the things get rolling,
the reporter is going to want to
take on the thing there.
And people, reporters,
just don't like being directed,
or saying, this is our story.
Don't pay attention to that.
So once you open the door, we're in.
I hope what you want to say is
interesting enough to keep us from
what we find interesting.
>> And I think pre-work is helpful,
at least in my luck getting responses from
folks, because you have to make sure
that they get that it's a cool story.
So just saying, this is my company, you're
fat, is maybe not going to be enough.
You need to talk to them about the cool
thing you're doing that they might be
interested in, and it also brings up
another point that there are no rewrites.
[LAUGH] So a reporter gets to have
their time with your story and
you don't kind of get to review a draft or
edit it,
which I know seems common sense but
it is a question I get a lot.
Any other questions?
Okay, thank you, and thank you to
our surprise guest, Steven Levy.
Thank you.
>> [APPLAUSE]