Where did you 'hear' that? Have you mixed this up with Viaweb engaging a top "PR" firm [0] to get better exposure? [1] It's still a good question though.

[0] "... When we started our startup in 1995, the first three were our biggest expenses. We had to pay $5000 for the Netscape Commerce Server, the only software that then supported secure http connections. We paid $3000 for a server with a 90 MHz processor and 32 meg of memory. And we paid a PR firm about $30,000 to promote our launch. ..." ~ http://www.paulgraham.com/vcsqueeze.html

[1] "... Our startup spent its entire marketing budget on PR: at a time when we were assembling our own computers to save money, we were paying a PR firm $16,000 a month ... Our PR firm was one of the best in the business. In 18 months, they got press hits in over 60 different publications" ~ http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html