Why Your Startup Doesn’t Need a PR Agency

http://bostinnovation.com/2011/02/14/7-reasons-why-your-early-stage-startup-doesnt-need-a-pr-agency/

by sliggity • 15 years ago

23 9 15 years ago

tptacek• 15 years ago

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.

bpeters• 15 years ago

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.

sliggity2• 15 years ago

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.

farlington• 15 years ago

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• 15 years ago

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.

localhost3000• 15 years ago

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.

evansolomon2• 15 years ago

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.

sliggity2• 15 years ago

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-...

Thanks for the input.

evansolomon2• 15 years ago

"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.

Why Your Startup Doesn’t Need a PR Agency

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