Hacker News Reader

Comment by webwright | Hacker News Reader

"After watching 37s over the years, anyone who hires a PR firm today hasn't been paying attention."

A PR firm is just a different path to the same destination, though most of them DO suck.

Believe it or not, there ARE PR firms out there that chase a similar strategy to 37s. The 37s guys are awesome at PR. If you are not awesome at PR, then you can hire a firm. But yeah, if you hire a crappy firm that sends out press releases, you probably HAVEN'T been paying attention (and neither has the PR firm).

View on HN

Surprisingly, a few years ago (2006), I received some mail from a PR firm who actually represented 37S. Whether or not they still use a firm, I'm not sure, but it's interesting to note that this success wasn't entirely built from their blog.

Was it Blast Media? This old SvN blog post from Dec 07 talks about how they used them on a free trial: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/741-ask-37signals-10-ways-to-...

another reference: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/307-what-do-you-want-to-know

How do I remember all this junk and not stuff that really matters?!

Because deep inside you are interested in diciplines like PR. This stuff really matters; to you.

@access_denied - wow, that actually makes me feel better. One other thing I wanted to point out was that it's not as if this came naturally to these guys; they have worked really hard for a very long time to get where they are.

True, there are probably a few.

But I'm starting to believe that -- just like Craig Newmark and Fried suggest doing your own customer service (as long as humanly possible, Newmark still does it daily b/c he's crazy, I think Fried has hired a couple people to do the daily, easy-to-handle questions & problems) so that you "feel the pain" -- you should do your own PR, not just b/c it's cheaper, but also so you can sense what connects and what doesn't and give your small company/startup a human face as soon as possible.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com