Ask HN: Have you hired a PR agency?

When it comes to PR, I like to point out PG's article The Submarine. It names the PR agency he used (for viaweb), I think it was in about 1996 and they spent $16,000/month at that time (which I would consider a large amount now, much less then).

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.

I have. They're mostly useless at the stuff people hope they're good at. The best advice I ever heard is not to hire a PR firm until you have too many inbound requests from the press to manage yourself.

In other words: until you've made it big time and spending $10k/mo+ on PR is a non-issue.