Schwartz. Perfect example. The government-issued PR firm for Boston companies. Competed with 2 companies simultaneously repped by them. Saw, maybe, 5? trade press hits between the two of them.

We didn't do much better, because we were also repped by a PR company, and playing the same pasteurized process press food strategy as the rest of them.

Which is my point. Wasting money on a jaded middleman to circulate press releases every time you make a dot release isn't something you should aspire to do when you can afford it, and PR isn't something you should avoid doing now.

My current company, a tiny startup, is in Forbes, Wired, EWeek, Network Computing, Inforworld, Baseline, not to mention Slashdot, Digg, and Reddit. Didn't spend a dime to do it. Definitely got lucky, but there's also definitely a trick to doing it.

I agree with the "survey" trick Graham talks about. I've seen that work over and over again.