Show HN: Pressfarm – Find journalists to write about your startup
press.farm
press.farm
As a journalist, I don't want my information on some random website like this. I'd rather see you work for those contacts so you know I'm the right person you want to reach out to about your startup.
A better approach would be to create a database for journalists to enter their information in case they want to be contacted for this reason, and tagging their contact info appropriately so PR folks know they have a good match. There's actually a biggish startup that does this already. It's called MuckRack: http://muckrack.com/
Time is not just precious for entrepreneurs—it's also precious for most journalists, and they will ignore emails that are off-target. This adds to the noise of their inbox because they will have to ignore another 50 emails from someone who didn't do their homework. I write a ton of stories every day. I _am_ looking for cool stuff, but I'd rather know the person who's bugging me actually spent five minutes bothering to look at my story coverage to understand why I cover what I do.
Liked the idea initially, but when I read this reply, I got an instant red flag. Abort. Abort.
Downvote all you want. This is grotesque and insulting.
And I don't downvote people I merely disagree with.
But if you pay hundreds of thousands a year for my info -- as gross as I may find that -- chances are, the person paying is more serious about their job than someone who pays $9 a month. It's sort of like having a fee for developer's for the App Store. $100 is a super-low barrier to entry -- and it's low enough that it means plenty of terrible stuff makes its way to the store. But it's not so low (zero dollars) that there is NO barrier to entry. And that's an important distinction.
A few folks in this thread are saying that what they want is tagging and curation so that they can write "targeted emails" to the journalists who are more inclined to write about their industry.
I think this is a great idea in principle, but having run a service like this I can tell you that literally 1% of customers actually go through with that kind of targeting. It's just too much work. The rest just want to send one tight, focused pitch to as many people as possible and hope for the best.
I'm not saying that either method is the best, but from a business standpoint you have to optimize for where the customer preference is. You could have a whole bunch of customization tools for the 1% that would just get in the way and reduce your funnel completion rate for the 99%.
The simplest method is always the best - at least as a starting point - and I think that's one thing pressfarm does get right.
edit Who adds the info to Crunchbase? The person themself or anyone? Or the proprietors of the site? Or...aliens?
I'm pretty sure Crunchbase employs people to keep it up to date. We're listed and I don't think anyone here added us. I'm guessing they extract data on funding from SEC filings.
You want to pitch me? Do the work yourself. Chances are I won't even see your pitch because my inbox is clogged from shitty pitch emails from assholes like pressfarm. Pass.
If I make contact with a journalist through your service and indicate I have done so, do I get any form of preferential treatment?
Actually thinking about it, is there mileage in that? These guys must get a mammoth amount of mail a day asking for them to review this and that. By setting yourselves up as a filter, but with preferential access to them then everyone wins. Someone submits their app to you for review and potential publication (price point higher than $9 suggested..). You review the app internally and decide whether it is worth putting forward and to which writer(s). You then submit it to them and they see it's from you so give it their full attention and decide whether to run with it.
No guarantees etc.. Would take some leg work, and / or a decent contact list.
Anyways, all the best with it, thanks for sharing.
There are filters. They are called GOOD PR people (people who frequently bring us solid stuff and not junk), personal recommendations and sometimes luck. I get enough useless mail each day. Anyone who adds to my already insane inbox will get nothing but contempt.
Excuse my anger but I already have to dedicate a minimum of 90 minutes a day to email on top of my average 9 hour workday. This doesn't help. And it doesn't do anything for the entrepreneur who is trying to get coverage. I'd rather be pitched on Twitter. If you don't know me, that's the sane way to reach out if you're not established.
I think I'm confused as to how the interests of a pr person (to promote the companies that pay them) and a journalist (to write interesting, newsworthy stories) align.
Case in point, I got pitched this morning from a big publicly traded company that isn't generally that "hot" for an anniversary of something or another. The pitch from the PR person wasn't that great -- if I'm honest -- but talking about it with my managing editor, I found an angle in it that is actually interesting for me. Now, the approach and angle I take may not align with what the PR person/company intended (in fact, they might not love the final article I write), but there was certainly something interesting there if spun correctly. If I were in the PR person's shoes, I would have pitched people like me the angle I'm going to go with, rather than the more generic party line.
And then there is also the unspoken, but part of the game, quid pro quo. Which basically means, "I have this shitty client, I'll tell you it's shitty but if you'll give it a chance, I'll give you better/early access to my better clients in the future." There are some journalists and publications that will claim they don't follow this sort of arrangement, because it's one of he unseemly aspects of how stuff works, but everyone does it to some degree. Anyone (or publication) that claims otherwise is either lying or is inconsequential in size and influence. That doesn't mean every journalist will write up something they don't like or care about because it will get them access to something better, but if a PR firm has a good history of access and offering good stuff and they say, "look, will you talk to X" - you might have a conversation when you otherwise wouldn't strictly on the strength of that relationship.
And yes, the best PR places simply refuse to take on shitty clients. And as journalists, we learn what PR people to ignore and which ones consistently bring us good stuff. There's always a line.
It all comes down to relationships. Which is why blanket pitches and idiotic "services" like pressfarm are so misguided. You might get the attention of the D-List or C-List journalist that way (and we all start out at the bottom so that's not even a dig -- there are founders and PR people I still talk to to this day because of relationship building that started when I was a nobody), but if you want to get A-list coverage, good luck.
And luck does actually play a big role too. I often write stuff up I randomly come across that was never pitched to me. In fact, I'd say at least half the time when I write about smaller apps or companies, it's something I discovered myself and then reached out to them for more information.
There's a lot of potential here to be a helpful site for startups or independent creators, with a little fine-tuning I'd pay $9 just to access the list.
The reason for making this was that we really wished something like this existed when we were trying to get press. Some of the emails are easy to find but many of them were pretty tedious to find!
We just wanted to make a useful tool and if it's something people find useful there are endless directions to take this in. :)
I'm a bit skeptical of the value, but $9 isn't much of a risk so I can go for it.
I think a better place would be for you to find a way to filter emails for writers. The list you're building is going to get less valuable any time someone signs up for it.
$9 for getting their email is weak. As an entrepreneur I want to write an email that is curated to each writer and I spend majority of the time looking for the relevant article.
Investigative journalism as we once knew it is dead.