joelandren

It's time now for all the VCs and entrepreneurs who supported Holmes to now come out and say that this behavior is abhorrent and should not be tolerated.

But they won't.

Our PR team developed mock answers that they would recommend to clients.

Our team has been using the Google Hangouts integration for months and it's worked flawlessly.

Yes, thanks for comment. I fixed it, four years vesting. (This is why I should get pieced proofread before I post.)

Thx. You too!

Haha, so I did. It may or may not be a screening mechanism.

Absolute no brainer. Product was well-crafted and I don't know why no one combined email and calendar before, but this made my life a lot easier and I'm iPhone/Gmail. For exchange users this must be a quantum leap ahead.

You're right. In my research I've talked to dozens of reporters and they all told me they are less likely to right about a competitive product soon after the original piece. Reporters gets dozens of "me too" pitches after every article they publish.

Co-founder of PressFriendly here.

As much I think having a PR pro help you with your pitch is important, I think our machine learning differentiates us from this site and other list-building hacks.

We use machine learning to create custom media lists by comparing the pitch to reporter archives and what they've written over the last 6 months. Everyone else uses simple keyword matching.

Not much you can do. Just make note of it and don't offer to pre-brief them in the future.

Allez les Cougs!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFEh12Fm078

Thanks and great question.

We're trying to help startups think about PR as not being transactional in nature, but more of an ongoing process. We don't want you to necessarily bunch up your pitches, but to build relationships with reporters.

To that end, the paid service comes with an editorial calendar to help find press opportunities you may be perfect for, but are not aware of. For instance, if Forbes or Inc. has a special section on startups in July, we'll let you know now because they are planning the articles in a few weeks. We hope to show ongoing value to that you stay with us month to month.

Thanks!

Traditional media lists (the ones agencies pay thousands of dollars a month for) only have basic categories like mobile, cloud and games. By scouring reporter archives we can identify reporters who are writing about sharing economy, wearables, quantified self and things like that. The big mistake most startups make is approaching a reporter who JUST wrote about something very similar to your startup. This is the wrong approach because they are unlikely to write about something so similar again soon. By tracking reporter archives, we identify trends and put you in front of the right people at the right time.

All three plans get and advisor. Yes, I can see how that would be confusing.

Free plans get online support, but not a 1-1 call with an advisor.

Let's also remember that there is valid criticism of startups and how they operate their business.

If a startup founder is an asshole, let's not excuse the behavior because they are building something worthwhile.

If a startup makes a mistake due to lack of concern about its users (i.e. Snapchat and their security hole), they should be criticized.

All told, I'm all about "can do" culture, but let's not use it as an excuse for boorish behavior or bad business practices.

I'd love to discuss this more offline. Email me joel at pressfriendly dot com.

Couldn't agree more. To get coverage one needs to...

1) Add value 2) Be honest and transparent 3) Build relationships over time

Great comment. I think that technology news is generally too transactional in nature and that both sides (entrepreneurs and reporters) suffer as a result.

I'm going to focus more in depth later on how to create these more "qualitative" stories like trend pieces and founder profiles.

The way things are right now, though. A lot of people rely upon tech publications for new product information, which startups have money (and might be hiring) and what's coming down the pike. These are the most efficient means of getting that information out these publications.

+1 Andreas.

There's lots of great things that you can do to be of help to a journalist even when you're not pitching them. For example, follow reporters you want to cover you on Twitter. They frequently have "hair on fire" requests that maybe you can help them with. I saw a reporter ask the other day, "Have any of my followers managed a Hadoop cluster?"

That's great in theory. Unfortunately, many great products aren't by nature viral and need to find other ways to gain awareness.

Getting press is just one component of getting awareness, along with content marketing, SEO and other tools. None of this takes away from building a great product.

Oh, I don't think you have to worry about the masses ever ruining App.net

I'm reluctant to use LinkedIn for two reasons.

1) Comes across as impersonal to the person I'm contacting. 2) LinkedIn is often checked infrequently at best.

I'm sure any solution would have same obstacles to overcome, but this is why I don't use it.

This is spot on, but this is still a PITA for everyone involved. There should still be a better way.

This is what news organizations do. They find newsworthy information and provide it to the public. TechCrunch or the Wall Street Journal would do the same thing.

The press doesn't exist to cheerlead (in most cases). There's no arguing that Uber's numbers are newsworthy, so I don't see anything wrong with Valleywag's coverage in this instance.

I've hired agencies/consultants six times and results were always somewhat lacking.

Anecdotally, I've heard the same from many founders. Wondering if this is the consensus.

To be fair, there's a lot more to user acquisition than a slogan.

Android and iPhone own (and will continue to own) consumers, BB's best chance was to own the enterprise and they blew it.

What resonated with me was that, despite most outsiders' perspective, marketing has always been about the data.

RedBeacon did not have a massive exit.