Comment by dkrich | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dkrich | Hacker News Reader

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As someone who went through almost the same exact process, these are my tips for getting coverage:

-Keep your email brief (three sentences, tops).

-Tell a story. Many of the stories on publications like TechCrunch are as much about the founders as they are about the startups. Look for an interesting angle related to yours and pitch it accordingly.

-Bloggers have to create several stories a week. Do as much of their job for them as you can by framing the outline of the story they will write in your pitch for coverage (related to previous point). If you started it as a side-project while in college, great, mention that. If your startup is in the same space as [hot trendy startup], great, mention that. Just make sure the whole thing is less than four sentences.

All that said- don't waste your time trying to get covered if you don't have a regular user base. Yes it is true, if you are covered it will result in an enormous spike in traffic. That spike will quickly diminish and you will be back to trying to find more users. I'm very happy for the author that BetaList turned into a profitable business, but getting covered and hatching a profitable, sustainable business because of it is the exception, not the norm.

Not to say PR isn't useful (and surprisingly easy to game), but that should come after you've grown a reliable customer base.

Great advice here. So many founders pitch their startups by describing the features of their product instead of telling a story. Whenever you're selling something you want to make it as easy as possible for the other person to say yes. You want to remove any concerns. Same when pitching a journalist. Don't let them figure out why your startup is interesting, but explain it. How is your startup different? How is it remarkable? Whether it's the product, team, vision, etc doesn't really matter, as long as you've got something interesting to tell that the audience of the journalist will love to read.

(Founder of BetaList)

I totally agree with keeping the message short. Also I have read from several other sources that telling a story is key. But how are you supposed to tell a story in 4 sentences?

You don't have to tell the whole story in the first email. In fact, it's often better to only tell half the story so they get curious to hear the rest.

The title of my article is a decent example: "How I tricked TechCrunch into writing my startup"

Happy to give some feedback based on your individual situation if you like. Email: marc[at]betalist.com

Don't feel the need to be courteous or overly polite. In my pitch I didn't even use complete sentences.

Citing my previous example:

Hi,

My name is X and I'm a founding member of [insert name of startup]. We've developed a new way to [do awesome thing phrased as simply as possible, preferably in the context of other popular startups] and are launching today. We like your publication and wanted to give you first crack at a write-up.

Please message me if you're interested and would like more details.

Regards,

This reminds me of Fredric Brown, who was able to tell a horror story in two sentenced: "The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door..."

So I don't think it should be that hard. I guess the idea is to _not_ tell everything, but let them directly see the potential of developing on some loose ends of that story.

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