Ask PG: Do you still see value in traditional PR?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=65993

by JohnN • 19 years ago

8 17 19 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

After reading your article on PR, I was wondering if you still see any value in trying to court print publications. You spent $16,000 a month on your PR. Would you advise people to hire PR firms today?

http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

DaniFong• 19 years ago

Surely it depends on the audience. When we get the resources we need, we'll certainly use PR -- the people most in need of our service are possibly a hundred times more likely to read the Sunday paper than to browse Slashdot.

thomasptacek6• 19 years ago

Slashdot is a PR venue.

thomasptacek6• 19 years ago

It's amusing that anyone would disagree with this.

pg• 19 years ago

It's still valuable, especially for larger companies, but no longer critical for newly founded startups. You probably shouldn't pay for PR till you have enough money that it doesn't hurt.

rams• 19 years ago

But, the YC startups themselves seem to be the beneficiaries of excellent PR efforts, appearing in Time, Newsweek etc. Somebody who is equally smart, but not YC-funded will not get this kind of visibility. I just quit from a startup funded by VCs and led by a Harvard M.B.A. While working there, I realized that we were no smarter than our competitors, yet managed to hit the headlines every now and then, for reasons that I didn't quite understand. Since a lot of investors, and at times even enterprise customers display herd mentality, this does make a difference. For instance if on the strength of it's PR efforts a startup manages to make a sale to an enterprise customer, it's valuation does go up, No ?

JohnN2• 19 years ago

It seems to me that two startups can have be roughly the same in terms of how good it is, but one gets much better PR. Maybe PR only matters all things being equal.

I am thinking of PR strategies for my startup, any ideas? BTW its an open source newspaper

thomasptacek6• 19 years ago

Have you ever worked with a PR firm that was actually worth the money? I've worked directly with 4 in the past and got fuck-all from it, but we're handling our own press now and kicking ass.

phony_identity• 19 years ago

Viaweb's PR firm is discussed in the fourth paragraph here: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

webwright• 19 years ago

I was interviewed on a nationally syndicated radio show about my product and barely saw a blip in traffic...

I'd say it totally depends on your audience/product. There are plenty of people outside of our Web 2.0 echo chamber who pay a lot more attention to old media than new media.

Profile your buyers/users, understand where they spend their time, and make sure that you've got good visibility there.

thomasptacek6• 19 years ago

There's a nationally syndicated radio show about your product? That's awesome.

carter• 19 years ago

The best PR is satisfied users. If you achieved product/market fit, then you don't need all these PR investments. I think.

Ask PG: Do you still see value in traditional PR?

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