The Emails That Got My Unsexy Start-Up Covered By TechCrunch | Hacker News Reader

The Emails That Got My Unsexy Start-Up Covered By TechCrunch

jamesdeer.com

118 pointsjamesdeer55 comments

Based on the organizations you say are signing up for your product, you're spending an awful lot of time trying to get coverage on a site that doesn't focus on your core markets whatsoever.

All the time you spent literally begging TC to respond to your emails could have been spent getting published in trade blogs/magazines/sites that talk directly to your customer.

Get out of the startup bubble and focus on your customer. Companies that stay under the radar and are killing it are way cooler than a rewritten press release on TC.

I didn't really spend a huge amount of time doing it to be honest. A little research, a few emails and Skype call, half a day tops.

We've actually been talked about in a number of trade blogs/magazines/sites and conferences. We saw some really good results from those as well, and yes, obviously a higher percentage of converting customers came through those sources.

I'm not in any bubble. I'm working really hard. We've got some really healthy revenue and within a month or so based on our current growth, we'll break even. Not bad for only launching a couple of months ago.

I appreciate your comments none-the-less :)

>We've got some really healthy revenue and within a month or so based on our current growth, we'll break even. Not bad for only launching a couple of months ago.

A blog post describing this would be more interesting to me than how you e-mailed a TechCrunch author and he wrote an article about you.

I don't mean for this to come across as snarky or belittle your post—it's just that you basically e-mailed a short pitch to a TechCrunch article and got an article out of it. That's not really revolutionary; lots of 'unsexy' (see: Enterprise) startups get covered on TC.

EDIT: Or, comparing the effects of your TC coverage against more targeted 'focused coverage'—since I think a lot of startups fall into the "we need to be techcrunch'd" trap and don't realize how effective other less buzz-worthy but more targeted media can be.

Sure, I'd be happy to write something about that, and I love the idea of comparing the TC "results" with the other, more targeted places that wrote about us.

You are right, all I did was pitch them in a certain way. I wouldn't call us an Enterprise focused start-up yet and I wasn't trying to come across as revolutionary— just sharing an experience of how I managed to achieve something :)

I'd appreciate that as well. It can be a challenge to establish relationships with these trade pubs and develop beneficial content. Interested to hear your take on it.

Agreed. A blog post regarding the story referenced by avree would be great.

Nevertheless, this story is refreshingly interesting and appreciated.

It's nice to hear this type of story after reading an article via TC about how some PR firm was claiming they can "Get your startup covered" by a site "like" TC for something like $750. Such behavior, I imagine, would ultimately dilute everything I like about TC and other similar sites. Thanks again for sharing your "real" experience.

My company has a few competitors and every now and then a new one will show up blazing through all the tech blogs.

If I'm being 100% honest I feel a little jealous because I'd like our team to get a little love from our peers in the tech community. But I reevaluate when they shut their doors 6 months later because they spent all of their PR money on coverage outside our industry. This has happened to us three times in about 4 years.

I've spent some time getting write ups and case studies on tech sites. I think it's ok to give yourself a little attention in that way as long as you keep in mind that it isn't really reaching customers. It can be good for developer morale though.

Great comment. We're in the enterprise space and we also see many competitors do the tech blog rounds and then fall off the face of the earth after a few months.

To add to your morale point, I look at tech blog coverage as great for recruiting engineers, as that's where engineers tend to hang out to find the next "hot" company (vs. websites specific to your vertical, where your customers hang out).

Yeah, we knew we wouldn't really be reaching many potential customers.

I did get a few interesting emails from potential investors, and people who work at other tech companies who saw integration potential.

I'd never spend a penny on outsourcing PR. Ever.

It was a great little boost for the team. Everyone felt really proud. Why? I don't know. It just felt good to have a wee bit of recognition after all the hard work everyone put in to launching the product.

That's excellent - Congrats on your project too. I hope the publicity leads to a deal or something. I'm sure any of us would feel pleased to get a writeup. It sounds like you guys have your priorities right.

The "emails from investors" are likely associates just trawling for new leads they can pass to the partners. Unless you're actively looking to raise, they can safely be ignored.

Would you care to share where all you got covered and which ones actually drove revenue?

I agree, especially with the last sentence. But there's an important point buried in one of the e-mails in the article:

2 weeks ago we walked away from $160,000 in seed funding because we decided [..] we should get profitable before we take funding to get a better valuation

Getting press from places like TC will be very helpful when it comes to finding funding, especially if it's from the typical Bay Area crowd.

But I do still agree with your last sentence and a company that does well in its own niche and doesn't need funding is certainly more cooler than one that does - it's just not what everyone wants to do.

You target various audiences separately with your PR. Techcrunch, while terrible for acquiring users in most categories, is great - probably a must - for raising funding and hiring.

Give me a break. If a VC is going to invest in a company based on whether or not it was written about in TC, they are pretty terrible investors.

The only thing it could _potentially_ help is valuation, but any good investor would negotiate that perk away anyway.

Social proof can influence funding. And TC is one avenue to get social proof.

I agree that they would be bad investors if that was their only criteria. But most investors (and in fact most consumers) are heavily influenced by social proof. Have you ever bought a certain article over another one on Amazon because it had great reviews?

What a feature by TC is saying, this startup is interesting enough that TC wrote about them. It is a sort of a filter, much like YC is one.

Being written about on TechCrunch can also help create a sense of urgency with the investors you are already talking to, because now there is potentially more people interested.

Social proof matters if you don't have paying customers and are trying to scale your user base to the moon. When it comes to raising as a B2B, the social proof that matters is paying customers.

This is misapplied cliche HN wisdom and it's unfortunate that this type of comment makes it to the top yet again. You have no idea what their time would be best spent on. As has already been pointed out, there are other very valid reasons someone might want to get in TC.

Like? Saying it's "necessary" for a raise is even more ridiculous than what I said.

Getting covered by TC is easy. They posted 34 stories on the front page yesterday alone. There simply isn't that much tech news. If you give a decent story to a reporter that he/she can publish it with little work, you're there.

Why you'd want to be covered by TC is a different story.

> Why you'd want to be covered by TC is a different story.

The SEO benefit of being linked from a high PR site like TC alone can be worth quite a bit for a startup trying to get a new site ranking well.

> Why you'd want to be covered by TC is a different story.

For fun.

That is a myth. If you know how PR works, you understand that the contribution from a random TC article (not the home page) is not very significant. Also, PR is one in a myriad signals Google uses to gauge the goodness of a page. It's less important than it ever was.

Caveat for startups: most people who mention SEO really have no idea what they are talking about.

Curious why you would claim links for search engine ranking algorithms are a myth. Links from high profile sites (like TechCrunch) are demonstrably good, though I would guess it is definitely a smaller percent now than it was in the early days (ALA PageRank http://ilpubs.stanford.edu:8090/422/1/1999-66.pdf).

If you know PageRank, what matters is not the site that links to you, but the page within the site. Techcrunch.com has a PR of 8. On the other hand, http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/04/gathercontent-launch/ has a PR of 4. That page also has tons of outbound links, so the contribution to the PR of gathercontent.com coming from it page is minimal.

Smaller publishers re-syndicate stories, which means you gather a whole host of backlinks...not just the TC one. Plus the google algorithm is much more complicated than just PageRank. They've pretty much said PR is a small part of the algorithm nowadays.

There are a lot of other signals taken into account, and getting covered by a mainstream blog is a good signal. You benefit from their domain authority even if the page authority remains pretty low.

Did you read my original comment? My point was precisely that PR is not that important. If you want to rank higher on Google, simply create good content. You cannot depend on the signals they use because they change all the time. Do you have any idea if "getting covered by a mainstream blog" is a signal Google quantifies, let alone uses?

I've been looking for a similar product. Wondering if anyone is aware of a product that has following features:

1. Upload web app interaction design specs (wireframes) from psd

2. Link related graphic specs (pixel perfect) from psd / png

3. Allows commenting by collaborators on each page

4. Has API for Integrating updates from 3rd party sites. For instance, noting in comments that a ticket for this part of the spec was made in Pivotal Tracker, and then updating status when the ticket is completed.

The author mentions Cageapp.com - this is the general idea, but I don't see that they have any image linking or basic APIs for integration with 3rd party tools.

Currently I rather be #1 on HN than featured on TC. Ah. Penny dropped.

geeze, what's with all the people giving him a hard time about being written up on techcrunch? I think what he did was great, and thanks for sharing the actual email messages.

Quick question: I like the simplicity of your blog, what are you using to create that?

It's a SquareSpace site.

Great article. Sharing the actual emails (full version) really makes the difference. I struggled with this problem as well in two different startups (getting B2B product into main stream tech blogs). Two things helped me - 1). trying to wrap it as horizontal product with fun videos and interesting customer stories 2). Admitting we're not sexy, the "we're not sexy but doing something really important" works. I like this part from his email : "It's not a particularly sexy problem, however it's a complete pain in the arse for those who manage the process of content collaboration & organisation"

For what it's worth, I've yet to actually hear one VC actually say that getting covered by TechCrunch was a make-or-break for investment.

I'm more curious to see what kind of ROI you got from all of this effort. This particular TC article didn't drive a ton of social engagement, and as someone else said, they pump out a TON of content everyday. In terms of helping acquire users and build awareness, did the article help at all?

My site giftivo.com was featured on TC on launch day this past week. Like the OP I found a writer that liked to cover similar products and I emailed her. I just asked her to check out the site and provide feedback since she is familiar with similar products and she ended up writing an article. She noted in the article that she gets contacted by tons of sites in the space so I guess it was simply a matter of her liking my site.

One overlying question here is in your contact with Anthony in particular over every other journalist out there, and how that came about. Did you know him already, have his email from a personal reference or similar, find it online, take a guess and hit send?

I suppose anyone can blindly email anyone else with hope there is interest for followup, but having that genuine starting connection makes a huge difference.

I'd say a little more than 'take a guess', but that pretty much hits the nail on the head.

He turned out to be a really nice chap :)

  >a little more than 'take a guess',

go on..?

Well, as the article says. I looked for journos who had covered start-ups/companies in similar niches rather than picking someone at random.

I took it that the parent was asking how you made contact with the guy (eg how did you get his email), but on a second reading it's not so clear. I assume his email was probably freely available on the TC site then.

Figured so and meant no disrespect for your tenacity to find him. If you can't disclose it's understood but I still really want to know the details.

I have not read the article, nor am I conversant in modern technology company acronyms, but congratulations on your Bed 2 Breakfast start-up!

Haha.

Can we please stop using the word 'sexy' to describe certain startups? I doubt people have a sexual attraction to most startups.

Lots of modern marketing and design seems to use elements of human sex appeal to sell other products - e.g. sleek curves on cars, thin shapes, etc. Physical attraction is one of the strongest human instincts, so manipulating it to drive someone to your product can be profitable, and a product which succeeds in doing so could be described as "sexy." This is the likely context in which people are describing a company or job as "sexy" or "unsexy."

Additionally, whether a particular job is considered desirable in a mate (typical example: doctor) can also influence whether the company doing that job is "sexy."

That's actually a really good startup idea. Would be nice if pricing wasn't stuck down in the footer....

Thanks Josh.

Thanks for sharing! More useful than many generic articles that show up on HN frontpage.

Thanks for sharing the actual emails you sent.

Any journalists here want to comment on how you feel about entrepreneurs quoting your emails on their blog?

> CMS' put webmasters and developers in control...

I'm pretty sure the opposite is true.

"we're the hardest hustler's you'll ever meet, oh, and we scored $2M seed" <-- Vungle?

Still on the front page, looks like there's plenty of interest from HN folks!

What was the Subject line of your email?

"Long shot"

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