The ultimate guide to PR | Emilie Gerber (founder of Six Eastern)

Emilie Gerber is the founder and CEO of Six Eastern, a top PR agency that’s worked with over 100 tech companies, from stealth startups to publicly traded companies. Before starting her own firm, she worked at Uber, where she led PR for the business development team and B2B programs. Prior to that, she worked at Box on product communications, with a focus on product launches and partnership announcements. In our conversation, we discuss: • Why, and when, getting press is worth your time • Common misconceptions about the impact press can have • The second-order effects of press • Which areas each publication (TechCrunch, Axios, The Verge, etc.) cares most about • How to craft your pitch • How to find and reach reporters • How pitching press is different from pitching customers • The effectiveness of direct communication through social media versus traditional press — Brought to you by: • Sprig—Build a product people love: https://sprig.com/getstarted?utm_source=lenny&utm_medium=podcast • Eppo—Run reliable, impactful experiments: https://www.geteppo.com/ • Vanta—Automate compliance. Simplify security: https://vanta.com/lenny Find the transcript and references at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-ultimate-guide-to-pr-emilie-gerber Where to find Emilie Gerber: • Substack: http://onbackgroundintel.substack.com • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emilie-gerber-59612230/ • Website: https://sixeastern.com/ • Email: [email protected] Where to find Lenny: • Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com • X: https://twitter.com/lennysan • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/ In this episode, we cover: (00:00) Emilie’s background (04:56) The value of press and second-order effects (12:57) When press is not worth your time (17:01) Different publications and their suitability (25:36) Avoiding negative stories (27:23) Finding aligned podcasts and awards (30:55) Advice for reaching out to reporters (37:23) Controversial pitches (41:16) Avoiding category creation (43:26) Examples of pitches that have worked well (52:35) Pitching to Lenny (55:42) Effective pitching strategies (57:44) Improving pitch announcements (01:03:01) Press releases (01:07:06) Crafting a compelling story (01:09:41) Traditional press vs. newsletters, podcasts, and social media (01:12:43) Building a social media presence (01:17:54) How to get a Morning Brew feature (01:19:32) Advice on choosing a PR agency (01:22:25) Timing and budget for PR (01:25:31) Lightning round Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected]. Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  No one ever gets this tactical in PR. There's just so much theoretical conversation and examining the big blunders. But at the end of the day, if you're a startup that wants to get coverage for your company, you need to know actually the steps to take to do it.

• 0:13Lenny Rachitsky?

  You mentioned a bunch of amazing companies you've worked with, Ramp, Perplexity. Most products don't have as interesting of a story to tell. How do you help find something that is a nugget?

• 0:21Speaker 00

  You can get so in the weeds with your own messaging that you want to set up this massive problem statement, you want to make it a huge trend story. But if you're very straightforward and you're like pattern matching, it's generally actually going to work.

• 0:32Lenny Rachitsky?

  So I asked you to bring some examples of pitches that are great and also examples of pitches that could be better.

• 0:38Speaker 00

  I want to read one to you and then I want to see if you can tell me what this company does.

• 0:44Lenny Rachitsky?

  Deal.

• 0:48Lenny Rachitsky?

  Today, my guest is Emilie Gerber. Emily is the founder and CEO of Six Eastern, a PR agency that has worked with over 100 tech companies, from stealth startups to publicly traded companies, helping them get press, build awareness, and level up their PR and comms strategy. Before starting her own firm, she worked at Uber, where she led PR for the business development team and B2B programs. Prior to that, she worked at Box on product communications with a focus on product launches and partnership announcements. In our conversation, Emily shares so many golden nuggets of advice on how to get press that I lost count. We talk about which publications to target depending on your market and story, how to craft your pitch and your outreach to reporters, how to actually reach reporters, and also

• 1:31Lenny Rachitsky?

  how to craft your product story for people to pay attention to what you're doing, why warm introductions to reporters aren't actually that important, how to find podcasts and newsletters to pitch that might be even more effective than traditional media, how much it would cost you to work with a PR agency instead of doing it yourself, and how much lead time you need if you do that. Also, we go through a few real-life examples of press and outreach, both good examples and bad examples, and what we can learn from those. Also, we look at a pitch that Emily sent to me about a podcast guest that is a client of hers that worked, and this guest is coming out in the future, so we look at what was effective about that pitch, and so much more. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow on your favorite podcasting app or YouTube.

• 2:15Lenny Rachitsky?

  It's the best way to avoid missing future episodes, and it helps the podcast tremendously. With that, I bring you Emily Gerber after a short word from our sponsors. Let me tell you about a product called Sprig. Next-gen product teams like Figma and Notion rely on Sprig to build products that people love. Sprig is an AI-powered platform that enables you to collect relevant product experience insights from the right users so you can make product decisions quickly and confidently. Here's how it works. It all starts with Sprig's precise targeting, which allows you to trigger in-app studies based on users' characteristics and actions taken in product. Then, Sprig's AI is layered on top of all studies to instantly surface your product's biggest learnings.

• 3:00Lenny Rachitsky?

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• 3:43Lenny Rachitsky?

  of Airbnb and Snowflake for modern growth teams. Companies like Twitch, Miro, ClickUp, and DraftKings rely on Eppo to power their experiments. Experimentation is increasingly essential for driving growth and for understanding the performance of new features. And Eppo helps you increase experimentation velocity while unlocking rigorous, deep analysis in a way that no other commercial tool does. When I was at Airbnb, one of the things that I loved most was our experimentation platform, where I could set up experiments easily, troubleshoot issues, and analyze performance all on my own. Eppo does all that and more with advanced statistical methods that can help you shave weeks off experiment time, and accessible UI for diving deeper into performance, and

• 4:24Lenny Rachitsky?

  out-of-the-box reporting that helps you avoid annoying, prolonged analytic cycles. Eppo also makes it easy for you to share experiment insights with your team, sparking new ideas for the A/B testing flywheel. Eppo powers experimentation across every use case, including product, growth, machine learning, monetization, and email marketing. Check out Eppo at geteppo.com/lenny and 10x your experiment velocity. That's geteppo.com/lenny.

• 4:56Lenny Rachitsky?

  Emily, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast.

• 4:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, thank you for having me.

• 5:01Lenny Rachitsky?

  So we're going to be talking about press. A lot of people say that trying to get press isn't really worth your time. It doesn't drive signups. It doesn't drive growth. You could spend your time on other things and have a lot more impact there. And I know that you have a really interesting perspective on second order effects of press and other benefits. So I'm curious to hear, what's your perspective on this, the idea that press isn't really worth people's time? And how can press be helpful?

• 5:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, when we were emailing about it, talking about some of the articles that you were in, you know, some of the coverage that you got, I was kind of thinking about how, you know, in your case, you have multiple audiences. You have your customers, which in a way are your like listeners and the people that are engaging with your content. So in a way, you're a B2C business, but in another way, you're a B2B business. Obviously, you have sponsors and you know, you're trying to attract really great guests to come on the show. And so the, there's a second order piece of the press is kind of validating that you're something that, you know, a software company wants to sponsor. So, you know, internally, they're making those decisions. Not everyone might know Lenny's podcast, but they could send around a CNBC article and see that this is something very legit, something that people

• 6:11Speaker 00

  care about. It kind of just signals that like third-party validation that I think is really important. And that ties back to when you look like at a SaaS company or something and they're making decisions, having that validation, I think, and that credibility goes a really long way, especially for a company that might be early stage, you know, they've raised a little bit of money. I think sometimes the buyers are skeptical of engaging with new tools because they're worried they might not raise more funding or it might go away tomorrow. And so the more that you can validate the business through things that's not just you doing personally, that other people are doing, I think, the better. So I think, yeah, that's the value from the B2B perspective. And it's not necessarily, yeah, going to directly drive signups, but when that AE is sending their sales emails and they can link to a story, I think that really helps. Also candidates too, when you're

• 6:56Speaker 00

  reaching, if it's a recruiter reaching out on LinkedIn and they only have, you know, 100 characters to make their pitch, linking to that story can be really powerful. So, so those are some of the, the second order effects for B2B. And then on the consumer side, It's a much more complex issue. There's like affiliate marketing, which is like this whole world of, you know, paid, where you're getting product reviews and that sort of thing. And that's not really an area that I'm an expert on, but we do work with some consumer companies where press is a major driver of growth. So for instance, perplexity, they have invested essentially zero in any paid marketing. They don't have a marketing person even, but they do do PR. And so essentially, after their most recent announcement, they

• 7:37Speaker 00

  saw, you know, a massive spike in growth, a massive spike in signups, pro-users, all of that. And I think in that case, the reason PR works so well is it, first of all, is something that's very easy to grasp. Google alternative. I know how to use Google. I've used Google a million times. Go to perplexity.com. The barrier to trying the product is very low. You can, you know, quickly type in a query, get the answer, and then see the power of the tool. It takes one time to see the power of the tool. So in that case, I think, you know, just organic press is enough to generate that. There's not like a long sort of process to get the customers interested. So, um, yeah, like I mentioned, very case to case, but you know, in those instances, it works well.

• 8:18Lenny Rachitsky?

  Man, there's so many threads I want to follow here. That was such an interesting answer. And by the way, I love perplexity. I once tweeted a result I had when I was using perplexity, and it was one of their default questions you could ask about strawberries. Apparently strawberries are not one fruit. Strawberries are a bundle of fruits and every little, little piece of a strawberry, those little red things are individual fruits all bundled together, which blew my mind. I was like, I need to share this. And so I wonder how much of their growth just comes from crazy things like that.

• 8:44Speaker 00

  And yeah, it's like the kind of tool where your mom could try it and instantly like know how to use it. And so like, yeah, that and it's great. It's good for weird questions like what you chose shared. It's like where it comes in really handy.

• 8:54Lenny Rachitsky?

  They did a great job just like defaulting. Here's weird questions you could ask and then wow, what an answer. Okay. So on the B2B side, I think this is really interesting. When people are thinking about doing the calculus of is it worth investing in trying to get press for a B2B business? Related to what I, we were talking about offline. So when I, I got these stories and like Fast Company, I got a story in CNBC, I got a story in Entrepreneur Magazine. And I was telling you, I've seen zero growth impact from all these stories. And you'd think like, oh, wow. And like, well, I had a story in the magazine, like Entrepreneur Magazine Print Edition. And nothing comes from it, as far as I can tell.

• 9:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:30Lenny Rachitsky?

  And your point, which really stuck with me is the real benefit isn't that first order growth impact. It's, and I've been doing this, is when I'm emailing potential guests, telling them, hey, check out my work or my profile in these magazines. And just having those little logos is, is, is really powerful. And that's why you see those logos on people's websites. So is your, is your advice here basically for B2B businesses? The most, like if the pie chart of impact of press, most of that percentage is just having a logo of an awesome publication on your website and your outbound emails and things like that?

• 10:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, the logo is a piece of it. And then also like the, the storytelling part, you know, maybe they're not going to read eight paragraphs that you wrote about your business, but if it's in the format of an article, I think they're more likely to take the time to do it. Um, one other, I guess, aspect of it is content. So for instance, the articles that people want to write about you are not about necessarily how great your podcast is, which it is, but more about how you created this business. And so it's more through the lens of like, you're an entrepreneur, you are, you know, have built this like media empire. And so that's not necessarily the kind of story that's going to drive, like, you know, your, your core audience to sign up. And so content is part of it too. And so, you know, we work with companies where we get them great stories

• 10:50Speaker 00

  about their company culture and cool initiatives that they're doing, because reporters are interested in that topic. That's not going to help their sales, but it might help with something like recruiting. And so, um, yeah, I think thinking that's the other, other piece of it is thinking through the content.

• 11:03Lenny Rachitsky?

  That's such a good point, because the story they're going to write about you isn't, this is the best product you've ever seen. This is, oh, look at this interesting journey this startup has gone on. And that's not going to convince your customers. It's going to convince other people just to like, read this publication. But the fact that they wrote about you is really beneficial. And then you're saying B2C, most of the benefit is actually driving growth. And you've seen lots of examples of press driving significant, significant growth.

• 11:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think it can be. And I think this is one where, yeah, it's a little more case to case because we have some clients where they need to invest heavily in affiliate because it's like, you know, product reviews are what they need and or like, you know, they want to be on lists of like the best vacuum cleaner or whatever sort of category and it's less about getting them big features. And so there's different ways of doing it for B to C. But yeah, I do think it's like, yeah, there's like two camps affiliate or not affiliate.

• 11:56Lenny Rachitsky?

  Can you actually explain this affiliate bucket? Because I'm not actually that familiar with it.

• 11:59Speaker 00

  I can. However, we actually don't do affiliate marketing. So there's probably going to be a lot of people that have a much more insightful perspective on it. But affiliate is essentially when you work with a publication to give them a percentage of any sales that come from the piece of the article. And so, you know, if you look at Business Insider's list of best personal finance tools, it'll say at the top that they're getting commission. So, you know, they track the links, they figure out a certain percentage, and then they basically get a percentage of all the sales that come in. And it's very common. I would say most consumer companies are doing this. But yes, there's like entire agencies that are dedicated to that field.

• 12:37Lenny Rachitsky?

  Wow. I didn't actually know that was such a big thing. Like, I've heard of affiliate marketing where you get paid for promoting something. I didn't know, like, Business Insider did this as a revenue.

• 12:47Speaker 00

  Oh, every, yeah. And I don't want to call out just, I mean, it's, it's a, I would say every, every publication that's doing product reviews, for the most part, I believe, it's a, it's a very common practice.

• 12:57Lenny Rachitsky?

  Wow. All right. Already learning a lot. Okay, so I definitely want to start talking about how to actually get press for your product. But one quick question about fundraising announcements. So I get, so I'm an investor in a lot of companies. Very often, they email me and ask for advice how to get press. And most of the time, it's a fundraising milestone. When is it worth investing trying to get press and fundraising? Like, always worth trying, rarely worth your effort? Is it, does it have to be some really impressive fundraising moment? What do you suggest?

• 13:32Speaker 00

  I also think not all PR people are going to agree with this, but I do think funding rounds, you can always get a reporter to cover if you go about it the right way. I mean, we scope out projects that are just for funding announcements. We've never had to not finish that project or we've never, you know, I wouldn't do that if it wasn't possible. So I think there's like a couple of reasons that, you know, it sometimes doesn't work out. But like, I guess just to take a step back on funding stories, a lot of founders automatically think that, you know, I raised money, so TechCrunch will cover this. The reality is, as someone tweeted, actually someone from another agency, I should, Propeller PR, they tweeted that they counted how many funding stories TechCrunch did in a week, and it was nine. So they had written nine funding stories in one week.

• 14:17Speaker 00

  And then they counted how many funding rounds actually happened that week by looking at Axios, Parata, and Fortune term sheet, and it was like 50. So it seems, when you go to TechCrunch, it looks like, oh, it's all funding stories, so mine should be one of these. That's like not the case at all. But I do think like if you go about it the right way, you can be one of those nine. And I'm talking about TechCrunch specifically here only because the reality is, they are the publication that's going to be most likely to write your funding story. That's just kind of the way it works. And it's not a bad thing. Like they're actually, they don't have a paywall. They tend to do a very good job. They understand it. You know, it's a well-oiled machine. And so, you know, we know, like, you know, if you've done a story with them, it's going to pretty much go how you want to plan it.

• 14:59Speaker 00

  So when you, when you go to pitch a funding story, I think the first thing that founders or whoever is reaching out on behalf of the company does wrong is, they kind of, they kind of convolute the message. Like when we pitch a funding story, we make it very clear, hey, we're reaching out with a startup launch or funding. We're offering this to you as an exclusive, meaning we're not going to pitch anyone else if you take the story. Here's the amount that's raised, here's the space that's, here's the space they're in, and here are the investors. I think You can get so in the weeds with your own messaging that you want to set up this massive problem statement. You want to make it a huge trend story. You don't really say what you're trying to accomplish from it. But if you're like very straightforward and you're like pattern matching, hey, this TechCrunch reporter is the one that covers fintech. I have a fintech

• 15:41Speaker 00

  funding round. Here's the reason my fintech funding round matters. It's generally actually going to work. And now it does 100% take follow up. It's not, you're not shooting off one email. You are, you know, respectfully following up. When I follow up, I like to come in with some new information, whether it's something they had tweeted in the past couple of days, new article that they wrote, very respectful. I try to wait like three or four days. If it's not going anywhere, then try someone else. Do that three or four times with the most relevant reporters. Generally, I think it works. I think, yeah, I think if you can just be like really concise and direct and say what you're looking for out of the relationship, it tends to be a pretty easy process. And yeah, TechCrunch is one publication, but this actually goes for a bunch.

• 16:24Lenny Rachitsky?

  Amazing. I love they're already getting into tactical advice for how to actually get press. So that was essentially for fundraising. And the notes I took is keep it really simple. Here's how much we raise. Here's our investors. Here's like one line about why this matters. I want to talk later about how pitching press is different for customers. Because with customers, I think this is probably the mistake a lot of people make, and we don't have to get into this just yet, but you want to paint the picture of the market and trends and like, here's where the market's going and why this is huge and, and why this is a solution to your problem versus like, bam, this is interesting for this reason. And that's it.

• 16:56Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 16:57Lenny Rachitsky?

  Okay. I want to talk about publications to target and what each one is best suited for. So you're talking about how TechCrunch is essentially really good for fundraising. When I think about other publications, there's like Axios and Verge. I don't know if they do press stories like this. You know, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, things like that. So I guess what are the different publications people should have on their list of target? And then what are each of them most aligned to story wise?

• 17:28Speaker 00

  I really love this question because I feel like no one ever gets this tactical in PR. There's a lot of, there's just so much theoretical, you know, conversation and examining the big blunders. And, you know, like it's all so high level, but like at the end of the day, if you're a startup that wants to get coverage for your company, you need to know like actually the steps to take to do it. So yeah, I really, I appreciate that question. I'm going to answer it, but also answer it with the caveat that media changes so much and so fast. Like for instance, just a couple of weeks ago, TechCrunch decided they no longer accept op-eds, which is like, you know, it was actually huge news for us because we love doing op-eds in TechCrunch. And so things change all the time, but I will talk about it in its current state.

• 18:08Speaker 00

  Um, so yes, TechCrunch, a go-to for a lot of funding announcements, a go-to for some product news too. Even sometimes, um, I would say the areas where they don't have dedicated beat reporters, where we tend to end up not working with them are like health tech related companies. And even martech too, we've kind of struggled to find the right folks to cover those kinds of stories. So, um, you know, not everything, but generally if you do your digging, you're able to find a relevant beat reporter or a couple of relevant beat reporters. And it's not just about getting coverage there. They have TechCrunch Disrupt. You can apply for speaking at that conference and that sometimes actually directly turns into coverage. They have the Found Podcast, which interviews founders. And so if something, you know, if you have like a really compelling founder story,

• 18:50Speaker 00

  um, or topical founder story, that can be an excellent avenue to go as well. They have the Equity Pod, which is like investment advice. So there's, it's not just thinking about getting that, you know, one funding story with them. There are other ways to work with TechCrunch. And I actually have heard really great feedback from clients on TechCrunch, uh, you know, driving website traffic the day of the announcement, especially it's, I haven't really been able to pinpoint when that does or doesn't happen. Like, you know, I'm trying to figure out if there's trends among that, but I have, you know, the clients have sent me screenshots from the day of the announcement and they've seen, you know, a nice pickup from TechCrunch. So, um, there, I think a lot of that comes down to the fact that they don't have a paywall, but their, their stuff tends to do really well. Um, so it's a great spot, especially for that first piece on your company.

• 19:34Speaker 00

  Axios is really strong on the, the fintech side, on the healthcare side. They have, um, Some really great like beat reporters. The one thing I will say about them is they are very deals focused. So 100% would you need to either have funding. If you're, if you're announcing a partnership that has like a monetary component that they would cover that. A small, you know, an acquisition they would consider covering, but they're not going to be, you should never pitch them on a product announcement. And I think, you know, that may, they might just get annoyed. There's, there's a couple of exceptions. A couple of the reporters might have little columns where they feature product related things. But that's just not their bread and butter. And actually Axios recently launched, or I guess has been launching over the past year or so. Um, local edition. So they're, they're really branching into local news.

• 20:17Speaker 00

  And so that can actually be a really nice way to get an Axios hit. If you have a region specific story. So I highly recommend checking that out. Um, another publication that we work with a bunch is Business Insider. If you struggle to pitch your funding story, um, but really want it out in the world. They are big on the pitch deck stories. Those are a little controversial. Some founders, you know, they're like, this is not what I want my story to be about. I do not want to share my pitch deck. But if you are in the camp of, you know, you're open to that and you can, you can redact it. It does not need to have all the financials. It does not need to have the growth metrics. That can be a really great way to get the piece of coverage on your business. And the way that I explain it to clients is you're kind of just getting all your core messages out there in a really, in a very direct way.

• 21:02Speaker 00

  Like you're sharing exactly what you shared with investors. Like that, that's not necessarily a bad thing. And sometimes clients will put in some like customer slides too. And so you can, you can really kind of, um, make it a little bit more like what you're looking for. Um, so, so yes, if you're looking for a funding story, TechCrunch past, others past, that's a good option. Um, they also are huge on like the entrepreneurial journey kind of pieces, like similar to, you know, the CNBC article that you got. They, but they, they really want metrics. They really push for metrics or how much you're making, how much you're spending. Um, they, they love those kinds of stories. Um, so it's not necessarily about how much you raised, but for people that have really built a business. And then the last kind of the last thing for Business Insider, they do a bunch of these like

• 21:47Speaker 00

  lists of top startups, of top professionals in a field. We love doing those. They're generally a really light list and they put out a call for submissions, takes five minutes and it's a way to get into Business Insider. There's so many of them. I it's kind of become a joke within my newsletter because every week there's like five more and it's the most like obscure different categories, like top sports marketing professionals helping TikTok stars. Like I don't know. It's always like a very niche sort of asked, but those could be really great. Then a couple more. Venture B is huge for AI news. We pitch them all the time for AI, like any, any client that we work with that is, you know, building AI capabilities, has a new offering related to AI, perfect publication for that. Fast Company is perfect for anything related

• 22:30Speaker 00

  to future of work, how people work, really great for design, media, like I would say perfect for any company that fits in those categories. They're also really open to op-eds, especially like with leadership advice in them. And last but not least, on the list of ones that we work with most often, I would say is Forbes, especially on the award side. They have the Fintech 50, AI 50, Forbes Under 30, all of that. And like, you're not going to get a feature with one of their main reporters until you're a bit further along, but they do have that really strong contributor network, which is much, you know, kind of, kind of a lower bar in what they'll, they'll accept in a way. Like they're more open to covering earlier stage companies. So that's worth checking out, too. So those are my top ones. I'll stop there.

• 23:15Lenny Rachitsky?

  That's amazing. And those are the most commonly requested and the ones you mostly go after.

• 23:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, they're the most realistic for most startups. There are ones like The Verge and they're a little more, they're a little more like gadget focused and just areas that we don't necessarily touch, but could be good for, for some companies as well.

• 23:33Lenny Rachitsky?

  Got it. And then I was gonna say this for later, but there's obviously New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Thoughts on going after those?

• 23:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, we do get those questions all the time. I would say it comes up on calls with founders. I want one out of every five. And really, when you look at, I kind of make a joke sometimes like, oh, if you want those, just have like a crisis and they'll write about it like, fire your CEO or do like really intense layoffs and yeah, have some regulatory issue.

• 24:03Lenny Rachitsky?

  Uber got a lot of stories there.

• 24:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, I can show, I can show some examples there. When you look at earlier stage companies that are getting coverage in those publications, that's what's happening. Now, let's say you're a tiny bit further along and you're Series B, Series C, you know, maybe even Series E, and you're looking for coverage in those publications. There's a couple of criteria that they're always going to want if it's to write a feature on your company. One is your valuation. So that needs to be something that you're sharing on the record. Two is your like hard business metrics, like usually revenue, sometimes something else. And so oftentimes they'll tell founders that and immediately they're like, oh, well, we're not sharing that. So I'm like, okay, well, that's kind of the end of the conversation. Sometimes it can be shared on background, but as a general rule, you're expected to share that sort of thing.

• 24:49Speaker 00

  So that's kind of a nonstarter a lot of times. I totally think it makes sense to build relationships with the relevant beat reporters and ideally like shoot for, when I say build relationships, I just mean shoot for an intro meeting on behalf of the clients or you know, they can reach out directly with those kinds of reporters. But they're just not going to write a feature on your company. If anything, you're going to be one or two sentences in a larger story of something that they're writing about. And yeah, that's just the nature of their coverage. And then when you look at something like CNBC, like their whole, they're targeting people that want to learn about public markets. And so if you're not a public company, like they have their CNBC Disruptor 50 list, which is focused on companies that will soon be at that stage, but it's not going to be a place for, for early stage companies.

• 25:31Lenny Rachitsky?

  When I had these pieces in past company and CNBC, it was such a weird experience where I chat with them for half an hour and then it just comes out and I have no idea what they're going to write about. Could be a complete teardown of everything I'm doing and you have no idea. How do you help try to avoid that sort of story? I know you have no control. Obviously, reporters can write what they want to write about. Do you have any advice for how to avoid them writing something really negative about you?

• 25:58Speaker 00

  Generally, if it's something where you're being briefed in advance, unless it is around something negative that's going on, that's not, it's just not their intention. It's just not gonna, gonna happen. But what is a bigger issue is it not being the angle or the messaging that the company wants. And so part of that, there's absolutely nothing that we can do. They, reporters are not our employees. They're not, we're not paying them to write these pieces. They have to like maintain their editorial integrity. And so, you know, I consider it my job to educate the founders and spokespeople that we work with that we cannot change anything a story says. What we can do is correct any factual inaccuracies. And so, and we do that all the time. If some things, if something is factually wrong, we can get it replaced. But if they don't like that they were called,

• 26:43Speaker 00

  you know, put in a category of software that they don't identify with, that's, you know, not, that's not something that we can fix. Another thing that you can do, though, to prevent that from happening is just really ensuring that the spokesperson, before talking to the reporter, is, you know, gonna nail the messages that they want. The more that you can reiterate over and over again how you want the article to be, I think the more likely that it'll land in the reporter's head and make sure that the reporter really understands what you're building and what your goals are. And you can, all you can do is really use the briefing and the materials that you provide to kind of sway and influence. But there's not much beyond that.

• 27:19Lenny Rachitsky?

  You mentioned, so we've talked about all these publications. These are ones to consider going after. You also mentioned podcasts and awards as something people go after. Is there a tip you could share of how to find aligned podcasts or awards? Like how to, how you find a list of, here, we should go after these?

• 27:34Speaker 00

  When we use, we use Google. We just use search engines, basically, for, for finding everything. And the way that we go about it is first figuring out, like, who their customers are and what vertical they're in, and then just doing searches for podcasts that are within that vertical. But not, it's not as easy as just reaching out to the ones that pop up first. Like, the next step is like a qualitative analysis. First of all, do they have vendor CEOs or vendor executives on their show? Let's say your product is sold to product managers. Maybe they only, maybe they only have product managers on the show. So instead you don't put the CEO forward and you put the right spokesperson.

• 28:10Lenny Rachitsky?

  What podcast might you be referring to?

• 28:12Speaker 00

  But this is, and this could be for CFOs. So let's say you have, um, let's say you sell it into CFOs. Don't pitch your CEO for that podcast. Pitch your, you know, get a CFO and then pitch your CFO for that podcast. I'm very for companies hiring spokes, hiring for the roles that they sell into. It helps us a lot. So if your audience is a CFO, it really helps if you have a CFO. If your audience is a CMO, it really helps if you have a CMO. And that actually, you know, when you're earlier stage, isn't always the case. And so it's a lot harder to pitch. So I think that's the second part of the like qualitative analysis. The third is like podcasts really come and go. Make sure like it's, it's, it sounds obvious, but make sure it's one that's like actively producing.

• 28:55Speaker 00

  Like, you know, when you Google ones, you're gonna, half of them are not going to be active podcasts. And then the third is like actually, you know, listening to at least part of one episode, making sure the quality is high, making sure it's the kind of thing you even want to associate yourself with. Um, and then just looking at who the past guests are like, is that like the kind of peers that you want to associate yourself with? And then one other thing that you can do is just like, you know, in conversations with customers, find out what they're listening to, find out what they're watching, find out like their media diet. And it doesn't have to be a big crazy survey that you send to your entire customer base. It can be casual. Like we do have, we, you know, if you're farther along, it's great if you can make that a more formal sort of process, but it doesn't necessarily need to be. And then in terms of reaching out, um, I like highly recommend figuring out who the host,

• 29:38Speaker 00

  like just doing the research, figuring out who the host is. And then just sending them like a casual note, like I'm a big fan of just reaching out on LinkedIn and saying, hey, love the show. Are you open to guest ideas? I don't even mention what, like the client or anything, just like kind of opening the door. I just feel like that's so much more approachable and friendly than starting with a big pitch. Um, and I think, you know, so many people start with this very long email introducing themselves or going really deep and you can, you don't have to do that. And especially because, you know, maybe only one out of every 10 replies. It'll also save you a lot of time if you just start with something really lightweight.

• 30:13Lenny Rachitsky?

  I think that actually works really well. That's what I find is if it's like a simple little. Message, I'm like, yeah, let me know what you got in mind. Even though most like 99% of the time it doesn't work out. Sometimes it works out great. And so I find sure, let's just see what you got. And then usually I'm just like, nope, sorry, not a fit.

• 30:27Speaker 00

  And you get the reply that way. If you send the initial pitch and the reporter or podcast host isn't interested, chances are they won't reply. But if you just start with something friendly and they reply, they'll feel like a little more, I guess, like a little more of a connection there. And so at least you'll get an answer. Whereas otherwise you might not get an answer at all.

• 30:47Lenny Rachitsky?

  Yeah. On the survey piece, I think that's a great idea. And I've seen a few of my sponsors do this where they ask their customers, what podcast do you listen to? What newsletters do you read? Which such a simple idea, but I think people don't do that. And just from that, you could figure out, okay, here's the podcast we gotta get on. Here's the newsletters we want to run at.

• 31:06Lenny Rachitsky?

  I want to talk about how to actually pitch well. But before that, we've been talking a bit about who to reach out to and how to do that. So there's a few questions here. It's just like, how important is to have a warm connection to a reporter? If you don't have that, what's the best way to reach out to them? Is it LinkedIn? Is it Twitter DMs? Something else? What advice do you have about just before we get into like the structure of the pitch?

• 31:31Lenny Rachitsky?

  Figure out who to pitch and then how to get to them. Advice.

• 31:34Speaker 00

  Who are your relationships? Question comes up on a lot of our calls with founders as well. I'd like to pose the question to you. Did we have a relationship before this?

• 31:43Lenny Rachitsky?

  Nope.

• 31:44Speaker 00

  Exactly. I, and I'm of the belief that it does not matter as much as many people think it does. And I explained this on calls where, where they ask, oh, where like, tell me about your rolodex or who are your relationships with? First of all, media is changing so fast. So sure, maybe there is a reporter that we worked with recently. They might have a completely different beat in six months. They might be at a very different publication. So it's not sustainable to, you know, build an entire career on having relationships with certain publications. And, and media is changing too. Like now podcasts and Substack and newsletters, like it's, it's just changing too fast. And so. I think cold outreach done well is just as effective.

• 32:28Speaker 00

  The only thing that a relationship will get you is, you know, an open and an answer. And so, you know, like any good reporter is not going to be making their editorial decisions based on like who their friends are. Like, that's just not the nature. It shouldn't be the nature of the industry, and it's not. Maybe it'll get you like an intro coffee, but that's about it. It's not going to get you coverage. They're not going to cover your news because there's a relationship there. I think the much harder and more important part is being good at writing really thoughtful notes to the right people. And in a way now, you know, now we do have a relationship. And so, you know, it can come from a cold email, but now, you know, it's easier for me to pitch you because you know my name and we've spoken and we've worked together. And so, for me, I'm a big fan of being like helpful to reporters and tend to like, you

• 33:13Speaker 00

  know, just keep it like professional and pitch them on stories. I don't necessarily feel like the, you know, going to drinks or having coffee all the time is like crucial to like building those relationships. A lot of the reporters that I work with regularly, I've never met in person and that's okay. But, you know, it can be, it can be great for getting answers, I would say. That's where the relationships can, can help, can be helpful. And then, once you have worked with a reporter on a story, it's true that maybe they'll be more likely to come back when they're working on something related, you know, use you as a source, use you, quote you in articles that are relevant. So like, once there's something there, that's great and you should totally nurture it. But it's not all about calling in favors.

• 33:52Lenny Rachitsky?

  Awesome, okay. And then, in terms of how to reach reporters, what do you find most effective?

• 33:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm, I'm a pro like all platform approach. So, sometimes reporters will tweet that they're working on a story about something and rather than sending them an email with my pitch, I'll say, hey, 10 words on why this person is the first thing you should talk to and then send a link to an article on them and that's my entire pitch. And honestly, it's sometimes more effective than when I write, you know, spend 30 minutes writing a really thoughtful email. So I'm a fan of that. I'm a fan of DMs, short, you know, concise, direct DMs. Sometimes LinkedIn, although for whatever reason, I feel like that works better with the podcast, on the podcast side with hosts. And then of course email, like we totally email.

• 34:40Speaker 00

  When I email a reporter, I love to make the subject line just like as clear as possible, like as what the goal is and what, why I'm emailing them. And so let's say it's for a recurring column that they have. I'll put the name of that column and like the person that I think should be included in the subject line. And even that for a reporter is like, oh, they actually know, like, they actually know I write this column and they're suggesting a guest for this column. It's so direct, it's so clear. I think just, yeah, saying what your intentions are right away, like, are you trying to get a Q and A? Are you trying to get a story? Like, are you trying to get a funding story? Like I mentioned before, is very crucial. And keeping it short. I would say my most successful pitches are three sentences and anytime it needs, sometimes it needs to be longer than that, than that.

• 35:25Speaker 00

  And generally, I feel like my pitch is weaker for that reason. You know, attention spans are short and so the more concise you can make it, the better. And then just, you know, if one, sometimes I'll start with one platform, like I'll start with an email and that doesn't work, so I'll go somewhere else. But I try to make it very human and respectful. So using language like, hey, I know your inbox is poly slam, you know, so sorry to annoy trying you one more time here. Another thing that actually can work really well is pointing out gaps in their, their coverage too, and talking about things that they should be talking about, like, hey, my client's noticing this trend. I know you've covered it from this point of view, but no one's talking about it from this point of view. That can be really helpful because it shows that you are actually paying attention to

• 36:07Speaker 00

  what they are writing, but in a way that you're like, kind of demonstrating that you have some critical thinking going on, not just, I liked your article on X, which is a common practice that PR people kind of use is, you know, I, you know, I like this and then jump to your pitch. So yeah, giving it a little more thoughtful, pointing out gaps in coverage. And then the last piece is, especially if you don't have hard news that you're pitching, having something like pretty controversial to say. So. Like, we work with a lot of AI companies. If nine of them, you know, have one stance on, you know, something happening in the field and one has the other stance, chances are that one is going to be the one that a reporter wants to talk to because they are getting so many pitches on this topic, but they want to write a balanced article.

• 36:51Speaker 00

  They need that opposing view. And so we really push our clients to have something, you know, unique and different and bold to say. And it obviously has to be a strategic decision for the business. Like, you don't want to go commenting on regulatory things if that's not, it sounds like you don't want to, you know, necessarily be a part of that conversation. But there are, I think, instances where it can make a lot of sense to say something that's a little bit bold and controversial.

• 37:15Lenny Rachitsky?

  That last piece is really interesting. Is there an example that comes to mind where you had a controversial, contrarian pitch?

• 37:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, um, so we work with a company called Clockwise, which essentially, um, you know, manages your calendar and allows time for focus time within your workday. They move things around for you. And a couple of months ago, Shopify got tons of positive press for essentially like cancelling all their recurring meetings. And everyone was, you know, very intrigued by this strategy. Press was generally quite positive towards it. And so we knew that if we just wrote another piece saying, oh, this is great, no one would want to publish that. That just isn't, you know, it had been said in a million different ways. So we looked at the topic a little more critically and we're like, okay, is this actually enough to change meeting culture within a business? And we kind of identified all these other things that we think need to happen in order to really like change the culture

• 38:08Speaker 00

  in a way that's going to be sustainable and long term versus just like blanket, like deleting of calendar meetings. And so we ended up turning this into an op-ed. So something that together we wrote and then pitched to a publication. And yeah, the title was Shopify's Meeting Cost Calculator Does Not Address the Issue of Wasted Time. And so, you know, it's not, it wasn't necessarily saying it was a horrible idea, but it was like putting, you know, a little more critical, a little bit more of a critical eye towards it. And Fast Company was interested in the idea and they, they posted the piece by the CEO, Matt Martin. Um, and it was like a great thing for us to comment on. And so, yeah, I think it doesn't, it doesn't necessarily need to be something where you're coming in against it, but just like, you know, proposing something that's a little more thoughtful on the topic.

• 38:53Lenny Rachitsky?

  Like just hearing that, it sounds like such an obvious thing to do. Basically, a reporter is looking for an interesting story to write about. If you tell them something interesting that they could put out, that's a win-win for everybody. So makes a ton of sense. Let me try to summarize the advice you've shared so far. When you're, say, DMing a reporter, your advice so far is basically be very direct. Just tell them, hey, I'm looking for. What's like an example of being direct? Is it like, I'm looking for a story on this fundraising announcement?

• 39:19Speaker 00

  I wouldn't say I'm looking for, I don't know, just I would say, um, I would, if it was a DM, I would say,

• 39:26Speaker 00

  reaching out from X company would love to offer you the first, the, the launch story alongside their funding, if you're open to it. And, and usually I'd either say the amount and the investors or the company name. If you give them both, you're kind of just giving them the story and they could run with it right away. That's actually an important distinction. Um, and so you could either say, reaching out with, uh, this, you know, martech company that's raised eight million from X investors, really interesting approach. They're taking on X incumbent, um, do you want the exclusive? That's kind of how I would phrase it.

• 39:59Lenny Rachitsky?

  Okay, awesome. Then try to keep it to three sentences. And you're saying sometimes when you go longer, you actually end up backfiring each time. Sometimes include a link to a story they've written or some other story about the company that might give them some context. Is that right?

• 40:14Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, and, and a caveat on that is if a competing publication just wrote a symbol, like a bigger similar feature on that, they're not going to want to see that.

• 40:23Lenny Rachitsky?

  Right.

• 40:24Speaker 00

  And so I would use that like strategically, like is it, if it's like an old, if it's a piece from a while ago on a different topic that does share a lot of info, I'll include it. But I'm not necessarily going to include something that might seem like, why would I cover this when this was just written about?

• 40:37Lenny Rachitsky?

  Good point. You also talked about how try to like acknowledge their inbox is probably slammed. And this is, you know, taking some time, maybe in follow-ups especially, like, hey, realize your inbox slammed, just thought it'd come back to this. Then you talk about this idea of identifying gaps in their writing, like, hey, it seems like you cover Gen AI. There's this trend that we've been noticing that maybe it would be interesting to cover. And then something controversial or something a little contrarian that would get them, oh yeah, this could be a really interesting story.

• 41:08Lenny Rachitsky?

  Awesome. Is there anything else broadly in terms of pitch advice to get the attention of a reporter that comes to mind? And I know this is like a lifetime of experience and it's hard to summarize all of it, but anything else?

• 41:24Speaker 00

  Well, one topic, maybe this would be covered elsewhere, but one topic I think is talking about incumbents that this company is taking on. So a lot of companies want to position themselves as category creators. And I actually hate that. It doesn't, it doesn't work. It doesn't land with press and most of the time it's not totally true. And so instead, it's actually really great when you can talk about how you are doing what X household name does, but better for X reasons. And that works so well. I'll put that in subject lines. I'll put, you know, company taking on, you know, whatever Salesforce with X approach. It's so successful because instantly it gives

• 42:05Speaker 00

  the reporter a frame of reference. And so it gives their, oh, I know, I know what Salesforce does. So I can understand how this solution would be better. And a lot of companies really want to position themselves as the first to do anything in the state in a certain space. They love like the idea of category creating, you know, creating, you know, like these like little marketing phrases that they use for the new category. And I, and that's fine if, you know, if perhaps that works on the sales side, but on the PR side, I would never put that in a pitch.

• 42:35Lenny Rachitsky?

  There's going to be a meta comment, but I, there's two, like the two topics that are most controversial in this podcast that I have both sides of opinions on is the power of category creation and jobs to be done.

• 42:48Speaker 00

  Oh, really?

• 42:49Lenny Rachitsky?

  There's a lot of passion on both sides.

• 42:51Speaker 00

  I mean, sure, you can point to like examples of like the two companies that have done category creation well, but like, are you like that it's two out of what like thousands?

• 43:01Lenny Rachitsky?

  I love it. I'm gonna

• 43:04Lenny Rachitsky?

  poke you this horn its nest. I love it. Okay. But you're saying in your experience, it doesn't work when pitching reporters.

• 43:10Speaker 00

  For PR. Yeah, simply for PR. And in other areas of the business, I can't comment on, but for PR, it's just not, not a useful tactic.

• 43:18Lenny Rachitsky?

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• 44:02Lenny Rachitsky?

  Get $1,000 off Vanta when you go to vanta.com/lenny. That's V A N T A dot com slash Lenny. So I asked you to bring some examples of pitches that are great and also examples of pitches that could be better. And I know, yeah, okay, cool. So thank you for doing the homework. Let's pull them up and then I'd love to just show people what you find has been really effective and works great about these examples. And then what somebody could have been better, whatever you want to share about that example.

• 44:35Speaker 00

  Sure, sounds good. I guess since we're on the topic of category creating versus not category creating, I'll start with an example that's very relevant to that. So we worked with Ramp in their very early days and one of their first product announcements that we did together was the launch of their bill pay offering. And so at the time, I think they were like a $3 billion company, something along those lines. So big, but not as big as they are today. Product news rarely gets, you know, big feature coverage, especially for something along the lines of a bill pay offering for B2B companies. And so

• 45:11Speaker 00

  Essentially, the way that we framed the story was how Ramp was now able to take on Bill.com, which at the time, I'm not sure if it still is, was one of the best performing fintech IPOs, public company that really had still only captured 2% of this market overall. And so by positioning it as allowing them to take on this massive incumbent that was getting a lot of press, we actually were able to get a CNBC story on the launch of this product. You know, generally, they won't even consider product stories, but they really liked the angle of this underdog, like doing something that could take on a piece of market share from them. And the next day, there was actually another story about how Bill.com's stock had gone down. And they did make mention of Ramp's news in that story.

• 45:56Speaker 00

  So it ended up really just like, it was a very powerful way of telling the narrative there. And, you know, another way, if we hadn't pitched it like that, would have just been like, Ramp brings simple, seamless, streamlined ability to do vendor payments and new finance offering, first of its kind, like all these things, like that might be like how you would talk in your customer emails. But if I had pitched it that way, like probably wouldn't have been a story. So if we had pitched it as them, you know, creating a new category of this all-in-one software, which, I mean, yeah, it could be argued, that's another way to tell the story. I don't think CNBC would have been interested.

• 46:34Lenny Rachitsky?

  Awesome.

• 46:36Speaker 00

  So, okay, another example, we work with a company called Column Tax, which is embedded tax filing software. So essentially, they work with other fintechs to allow people to file their taxes within the tools that they already use. And last year, they partnered with a company called Propel that offers SNAP benefits. So essentially, for low-income families to receive government benefits, to offer tax filing directly within the app that they created. And That was kind of one thing that they were doing amidst, you know, many other customers that they had, lots of different threads we could pull on with them, but we decided to like really just focus our press strategy on that one initiative because it allowed

• 47:19Speaker 00

  us to tell kind of like macro story about, you know, TurboTax had to pay all these fines for like practices that many considered unsavory around calling themselves free, but not really being free. The IRS is building a free filing system, but it's in its very early days. So the fact that they were having this offering that was like supporting a lot of low-income families, and I believe 40% of the people that filed their taxes with Column hadn't filed taxes in the previous year, so hadn't gotten a return. It's like identifying the piece of the story that's most interesting and then like doubling down on that. So we were able to get like a great Fast Company piece instead of pitching this like macro, like here are Column Tax's latest growth metrics and they're announcing a partnership

• 48:02Speaker 00

  with Propeller. And so it's like figuring out how to tie it to these like things that people actually care about and like not just like the company's messaging, I think is our job.

• 48:12Lenny Rachitsky?

  Amazing. Is there any other examples? Otherwise, I'll share your pitch of someone coming on my podcast and what worked about that.

• 48:20Speaker 00

  I do want to share one more because it's my favorite. I want to share my favorite funding story that I worked on. And so I'm actually going to pull it up because this one is very graphic in terms of how we went about showing the product. So we worked with a company called Gamma, which is essentially like bringing PowerPoint into something that's much more modern and interactive and usable. So when we did their launch, they were a seed stage company. We were, tried to get really creative with how we could display or talk about the company. And so instead of doing your standard kind of company blog post, we actually made a Gamma presentation and we kind of included all these like fun

• 49:00Speaker 00

  elements that made it like really interesting to reporters. So firstly, it's a visual platform. So we created, or actually, I don't want to take credit for this, the Gamma team created this great visual. And we kept it like very to the point. Every year, half a billion people create presentations in Google Sites and PowerPoint. Like we're not, you know, we're not using marketing language here. We're talking in a very direct way. We're including fun visuals. We talk about like, you know, Gamma's mission, pretty short, like this is not, this is not like a long essay on why the company exists. And then we include some customer love. So they're early stage. So we didn't really have necessarily like growth metrics that we wanted to share. So we tried to make it a little bit more personal and focus on actual users and what they're saying while also showing the product capability here.

• 49:45Speaker 00

  And then, you know, instead of doing a long thing on each investor, we just bulleted who the investors are, which is like very to the point, easy for a reporter to repurpose. And then the fun part that I really loved is we did a video from the lead investor talking about why she invested instead of including an investor quote. So it's like a little bit different than what you kind of expect. And their videos are fun because they have like all these interactive elements. And yeah, team photo, make it a little more personal. And that was about it. But anyways, it was very, it was a very successful story. And I believe the title of the TechCrunch article that we got as a result was Gamma Brain's PowerPoint Into the 21st Century.

• 50:24Speaker 00

  Exactly. That's like exactly what we're talking, you know, if maybe they are creating a new category and we're talking about it, then we're talking about how it's better than the existing solutions. And so, yeah, I think it's, I guess the piece of advice there is feel free to get like kind of fun and creative with it and don't just follow the typical like issuing press release format.

• 50:42Lenny Rachitsky?

  And is that something we could link to for people to check out? Is that just on their site?

• 50:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, I actually had to, for some reason, do some digging to get it, but I can, yeah, I have it now, so I can give it to you.

• 50:51Lenny Rachitsky?

  Okay, great. And the way that you use that is when you sent emails or DMs to reporters, you included this link?

• 50:57Speaker 00

  After they had agreed that they're potentially interested. Because again, like if I had shared it right off the bat, it would be their prerogative to just publish it essentially or share it publicly. And I guess one important note is everything you say to a reporter in an email is on the record. And so that's why I make the point on not sharing the entire story right off the bat.

• 51:19Lenny Rachitsky?

  Got it. So many companies won't have, they're not like a deck product, so they can't do something like this. But the takeaways for other folks here is be just like very human in the language. Keep it like the investors are just bullet points. Make it fun. Add some visuals. Don't just like have blurbs and paragraphs and things like that.

• 51:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, I think it's reporters are used to getting the same thing all the time. And so, you know, this one obviously worked well for the format. But I think, you know, we try to always think of like, what can we do that's like slightly different for this one? Or like, how can we make this a little more fun? Um, I guess the one exception, if the product is very technical and you have a very technical audience and you're probably going to work with a very technical reporter, it's totally fine to, you know, talk to your audience in those cases. Um, and you don't need to necessarily dumb it down so everyone can understand. But that doesn't mean, I mean, you can do that while still using clear and concise language.

• 52:17Lenny Rachitsky?

  Okay, so let me share the element of the pitch that you sent me that convinced me to bring this guest on. So this is like, going to be the Chief Product Officer at NewBank. I had no, like, I barely know anything about NewBank. And so in your email to me, you basically had just two bullet points. And the way you put it is two other, two fun facts about NewBank. Growth has been 80 to 90% organic because of the way they try to make customers fanatical about the product. And to me, it's like, wow, that's very rare is 80, 90% of your growth being organic. So that to me is like, that's an interesting story. And then the other tidbit is NewBank is bigger than Coinbase, Robinhood, Affirm, SoFi, and Lemonade combined. Seriously, so much bigger than people in the US realize, which I 100% didn't realize.

• 53:01Lenny Rachitsky?

  So to me, both were just like, okay, this is an interesting story to tell. I think people will be very curious to hear how a company like this operates. So now I'm going to start getting all these emails from people, all these couple of bullet points, but.

• 53:14Speaker 00

  They're gonna, they're gonna combine a bunch of companies and see which they're bigger than.

• 53:18Lenny Rachitsky?

  Yeah, just, or use AI to help them figure this out.

• 53:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:22Lenny Rachitsky?

  But I think what you identified here is just like what I get excited about. Is there any advice there of just like how to, what you do there that other people can learn from?

• 53:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think with pitching you, like, speaking to the audience is. You know, it's not just about having, you don't want like the most well-known CEOs all the time. You're not looking just for the biggest companies and like the most well-known people. You're looking for like the things that they can talk about and how the things that they can talk about are relevant to your audience. And so I tried to index on like with the first bullet, it was indexing on that. The second bullet was more so like, hey, you might not know about this company. And it's a little bit of a unique one. I wouldn't necessarily always include that. But yeah, to me, the first bullet was really what mattered because it wasn't just about the fact that they were a huge company. It's that they grew in a unique way. And I knew that was like the kind of thing that you'd be interested in.

• 54:13Lenny Rachitsky?

  And how did you figure that out? Is it from emails we were exchanging ahead of that? Is it listening to some podcasts? How did you get to those conclusions?

• 54:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, listening certainly helps, but I do think like just figuring out like if you, if you even just scrolled like the names of all the episodes that you've done, it would be pretty easy to spot a trend there. And so, you know, you're not talking about product launches. You are not talking about entrepreneurial journeys. You're talking about tactical lessons. And so pitching people based on those sort of things, like I don't even think you necessarily need to listen to a whole bunch of episodes. Most of the time, maybe occasionally you want to gut check something before you reach out. But yeah, you can tell a lot just by doing like a little bit of of research. And then we did have a little back and forth because I will take responsibility. I did try pitching you on a CEO at one point, which I know you don't, you don't have on as guests.

• 55:03Lenny Rachitsky?

  Once in a while, very rarely.

• 55:04Speaker 00

  Yeah. And I had known, yeah, actually, there's obviously some exceptions, but I had known the subject matter you were looking for, but I did not spot the trend that you've never had CEOs on. So I think my pitch was actually okay, but the spokesperson was not the kind of person that you would want on. So, so, you know, maybe you won't get it right 100% of the time, but you can tell a lot just by doing some searches.

• 55:24Lenny Rachitsky?

  And oftentimes I just reply, here's my policy. And then, okay, get to know. Kind of along these lines, something I wanted to ask earlier. You mentioned a few publications to go after, and then how to pitch people. Obviously, the way that you're describing takes a bunch of time. How many people are you often emailing, DMing per attempt to get a story? Because it sounds like it's not a ton and so you have time to do these sorts of custom pitches? Or is it a lot higher than it sounds?

• 55:51Speaker 00

  I would say for hard news, like funding, startup launch, those sort of things, less. And I try to really stagger it because we're offering exclusives and I highly recommend offering exclusives. So the worst thing that can happen is two reporters reply and are both interested. And you have to go back to one and say, never mind. And, and sometimes that's okay if they left you, you know, it's been a week or something. They hadn't gotten back and they'll, they'll understand. So, you know, it's, it's fine to move on without getting an answer. So I would say, yeah, with a funding story, it could be anywhere from one to six reporters on average, sometimes more. With stuff like, you know, like general, just like outreach, um, you know, relationship building, trying to get on podcasts.

• 56:33Speaker 00

  It kind of is a numbers game and you really have to balance quality and quantity. And that's why I love starting with the first note and not saying much and just saying, hey, you open to guest ideas? Because it allows you to kind of do more. I'd rather do that than send a bad pitch and like not have it be targeted to the right, like sort of like audience. Um, uh, and so, uh, that's kind of a way to play the numbers game while still being respectful. Um, but yeah, I mean, you know, with some clients, maybe they get one opportunity for every 20 or 30 things that we send. And so, yeah, we, we try not to do like blasting, we don't do blasting media. So it's not about sending the same person or the same, uh, pitch to a single list of people. Um, it's figuring out, you know, which ones do I want to really double down on because they're the perfect target?

• 57:18Speaker 00

  And, you know, you'll keep trying, you'll be really custom, which deserve maybe a slightly higher level note? Which deserve like a DM and just kind of like figuring out your strategy from that.

• 57:26Lenny Rachitsky?

  Awesome. Okay. Do you have examples of pitches, announcements that were not as effective as they could have been? And advice for how they could have been better?

• 57:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, I have some excerpts that I pulled from press releases where I think there's room for improvement. So Lenny, I want to, I want to read one to you and then I want, I want to see if you can tell me what this company does.

• 57:51Speaker 00

  Okay. Today, X announced their workflow automation product, which combines AI assistance, human in the loop collaboration, and a robust multiplayer experience to help teams save time.

• 58:02Lenny Rachitsky?

  Absolutely no idea what's going on.

• 58:05Speaker 00

  It's like you kind of gained something from workflow automation. And then after that, it's like, wait, what?

• 58:09Lenny Rachitsky?

  Just a bunch of things.

• 58:10Speaker 00

  Okay, now let me read to you the TechCrunch title that they, or an excerpt from the TechCrunch article. That, and this is, this is how TechCrunch positioned it. "A new automation startup is setting out to eat Zapier's lunch. It helps people tackle mundane repetitive tasks and goes beyond the triggers and actions popularized by similar platforms like Zapier." So like, to me, yeah, it's like a better version of Zapier, where they like, aren't just doing triggers and actions. And there's like, a little more substance and depth to it. Like, you know, if you know what Zapier is, you can kind of start to figure out what they do based on that.

• 58:41Lenny Rachitsky?

  Yeah, comes back to your point about referencing an incumbent to help you understand what the heck you're talking about.

• 58:47Speaker 00

  And you wouldn't necessarily need to do that in like, your press release, but I think, you know, they could have been like, a lot, like, a lot clearer. Um, and not use, because, I mean, terms like "robust multiplayer experience", like, that makes it sound like a game. Are we talking about just like collaborative, like multiple users? "Human in the loop collaboration", isn't all collaboration between humans? Like, and we're all in the loop? Like, AI assistance, that just means they use AI? So, yeah, it's like, sometimes I, I push my clients to like, "Okay, let's talk through what each of these phrases actually means." Because if, if you can't like articulate it, and if you can't articulate it, then let's change it to the way that you just articulated it, and it might be more successful. So, yeah, that's like a good way to do it. And, and just like, read it out loud.

• 59:31Speaker 00

  Like, read it out loud and see if someone understands it.

• 59:34Lenny Rachitsky?

  Someone hearing this is like, "How could possibly anybody think that was great? How, how did these come about? These really bad descriptions?" Like, I know it's hard to come up with something really short and pithy, but where do these come from?

• 59:46Speaker 00

  I just think there's, it's just like a culture within marketing and comms of this is how we're supposed to write. And I just think that's a majority of how people do it and they think it sounds smart or they think it sounds like more professional or like, I just think it's just how people are trained. Um, and so even like, I don't know, like when we bring on someone new, like part of my job is stripping away at a lot of that and getting people like, you know, everyone's capable of talking like a human being. We do it every day. Um, but it's like stripping away that like thing that goes off in your head that you're supposed to be writing in a very marketingy way. Cause I would say at least 50% of releases are like that. It's not a small, it's not a small problem.

• 1:00:30Lenny Rachitsky?

  Uh, I love the advice you shared of just trying to say it out loud, hearing yourself, what does it sound like? Do you have any other tips for trying to make it something people get and connect to? I know that again, this is like what they takes a lot of time to really do well and it's very context specific, but is there any other tricks that you find help you communicate what you're actually offering?

• 1:00:48Speaker 00

  It's talking through like the basic questions like what does this product do? Who is it for? Who are your customers? Like if you can answer each of those in one sentence, like what, what product launch are we talking about here? Like if you can just answer each of those like verbally, chances are you're not going to be far away from what you're looking for. Cause when I talk to marketers and founders and teams, generally like in the conversations, I have no trouble understanding what they're talking about. They can articulate it just fine. It's only in the writing that it gets that way. So actually don't, I, I think it's like kind of easier to solve than, um, than many might realize. And then also I think there is some skill involved in like, um,

• 1:01:29Speaker 00

  like removing words, not over explaining, like you can make things more concise, but at the bare minimum, just like strip out all the jargon. That's like the first step.

• 1:01:36Lenny Rachitsky?

  I love it. So like one way to think about it is just think about who's this, what does it do? Who is it for? Who are the customers? Is there something else along those lines that you shared there as a bullet point?

• 1:01:45Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, if you're talking about like what goes into like, you know, what's, what makes this business interesting? Like why, why should people care?

• 1:01:54Speaker 00

  And not over indexing on that. I think that's just one part of the overall story is why people should care about this business. Yeah. And then, you know, like, what's new? Is it growth metrics? Is it the customer piece? Is it product? Like, what's, what's, what makes this timely and relevant right now?

• 1:02:08Lenny Rachitsky?

  Okay, awesome. There's actually this awesome Twitter thread from a couple of days ago where the CEO of Product Hunt did this thread where he asked people, "Share your tagline and I will give you a much better version of the tagline." And he's really good at this. So I'm going to link it to the show notes where he can give you an example of what it looks like from bad to good.

• 1:02:26Speaker 00

  I love that. That's exactly the kind of thing I would love to do, too. It's so, it's so fun and so easy.

• 1:02:33Lenny Rachitsky?

  It's easy if you're good at it, right? Most people are not great at it. You mentioned press release in this example. You shared thoughts on value of press release, traditional press release versus not.

• 1:02:44Speaker 00

  Press releases came about because reporters would be checking news wires for ideas of what stories they want to write. No reporters do that anymore, or a very small percentage. I don't know any reporters that do that anymore. So now it's this thing where you go to one of the PR distribution services, you pay them anywhere between $300 to $2,000. That's literally what it costs. And they put it on the wire. And for the more expensive services, it does get syndicated to this like press release section of some business websites. No one, in my opinion, goes there for their news. I personally never read an article, like a Yahoo Finance article that was a press release syndication.

• 1:03:27Speaker 00

  So in that sense, they are not helpful for getting eyeballs. They also require, like, going back to that, like, more marketing form of writing, they require that you write like that. Like, the standard press release format, it's so formulaic. And I think it actually encourages that more marketing speak. The benefit is that you're getting all the news details in one place, so it's relevant for a reporter. However, you can do the exact same thing in a blog post. And the blog post can be this first-person piece of content that's written by either the founder or the product lead or... You know, whatever executive that has a lot more flexibility in the style, you can kind of write it however you want. It can still include all the same news elements and it's much more shareable on social.

• 1:04:12Speaker 00

  Like you're not going to share a link to a press release on, on your Twitter or on your LinkedIn, but a blog for sure. You can add your own graphics. It's, it's great. And you're also encouraging people to go to something that lives on your website versus like this like black hole of a newsletter. I should be fair. So I think that the reason that people say that they still do them is that it helps with SEO. However, I've read a few articles that have said that Google no longer does prioritize its press releases in SEO. So I don't know how much that holds up and that it signals to the market that the company is more serious. So that's a perception thing. I personally think that blogs actually signal a more modern kind of cool company than, than

• 1:04:55Speaker 00

  a press release, but at a certain stage in your growth, like public companies, they do press releases for earnings, makes 100% sense. There are certain rules around when companies do need to issue press releases. So there's still a use case for them. I just think your average early to mid-stage startup doesn't need them.

• 1:05:10Lenny Rachitsky?

  This mention of blogs is where I wanted to go next, actually. So it's a good segue, but before we do that, is there any other examples that you wanted to share of less than ideal ways of pitching a product?

• 1:05:21Speaker 00

  One sentence I found in a press release that a lot of companies want to include that I always try to remove is, well, here, I'll, I'll give you the sentence. Since exiting stealth in May, we've witnessed a 700% increase in organizations using our product. You're saying that since you were in stealth to now, you saw a 700% increase. So you could have had one customer, now you have seven. And it's like every company wants to do these percentage like growth stats when they just launched and I've never seen reporters include that in their stories. And so there are ways to give signals of how fast you're growing without being that kind of like disingenuous. Like one way that you could put something similar is our revenue hit six figures at

• 1:06:03Speaker 00

  the end of last year and has been growing about 30% each quarter with 40% of adoption coming from the enterprise sector. So you're giving like color to the growth and, and there's like, you, you can kind of play with that. It doesn't need to be exactly something like that, but if you can make it a little more specific, I'm not against doing percentages, but I think there's a way to balance that with something that seems a little more realistic.

• 1:06:24Lenny Rachitsky?

  Or like we went from zero to 100 to six figures in ARR in X months.

• 1:06:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, totally. And it doesn't need to be huge, especially if you're doing your first story. They're not, they're not expecting that you're necessarily going to have massive revenue. And so I think founders might sometimes be concerned that it's not going to seem like big enough or significant enough. Whereas, you know, from working with a lot of companies, it's kind of, it's kind of the case across the board.

• 1:06:49Lenny Rachitsky?

  You mentioned a bunch of amazing companies. You've worked with Ramp, Perplexity, a few others. And, you know, people may feel like, of course, you're getting press. Those are amazing. The Ramp grew to a hundred million AR in like two years. Perplexity is this killer AI product. Everyone's talking about AI. Most products are not that. They don't have as interesting of a story to tell. Is there either an example you could share of a company that didn't have like an amazing story to tell that you've created an interesting story out of? Or just any advice for like, how do you help find something that is a nugget that gets people excited?

• 1:07:23Speaker 00

  So some of the examples I gave, so Clockwise and Column Tax aren't big as, aren't as big as some of the other brands I mentioned. So that's certainly actually the bulk of our business. I would say 80% of the companies we work with are out of stage where they haven't reached that kind of mass awareness yet. Another really great company that we work with is Entropy. And so essentially, they, they work with like transaction data. They're an API. It's a very technical tool. It's not something that necessarily every reporter is going to instantly understand. But for them, we've actually really leaned into the founder's story. She's this incredible woman who moved to the US and actually struggled with getting her first apartment

• 1:08:04Speaker 00

  here because of the way that our kind of credit system is set up, a credit scoring system is set up. And one of the use cases for what she's building actually directly relates to how our credit system could change in the future. And so we've been really leaning into that angle. And she's just like, her personal story is really powerful. And so, you know, maybe sometimes the product isn't going to be something that you can easily pitch, but you can kind of find those other like personal angles in, or pull on certain threads.

• 1:08:33Lenny Rachitsky?

  And there, it connects back to find the publication that cares about these sorts of personal stories, because TechRanch, this probably won't.

• 1:08:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, and but we've been also been we got her, she spoke at Money 2020, so it's like useful for speaking abstracts too. Actually, it was on a panel with Colin Tax, we got him on together at Money 2020.

• 1:08:51Lenny Rachitsky?

  What a win.

• 1:08:55Speaker 00

  No, and we love doing that. It's so fun when you do have multiple companies that you can connect. Actually, that's kind of a good macro point as well. It doesn't always need to just be about you. If you have an idea for, you know, a conference session, put it reaching out to, you know, colleagues that you've worked with at other companies, peers, people that are building other things that maybe don't compete but are in a similar space, and packaging that up as like, hey, this could be a really strong panel. It's actually way more successful than just pitching yourself.

• 1:09:23Lenny Rachitsky?

  Awesome. Okay, so you've mentioned a couple of times the rise of newsletters and podcasts. So there's kind of two buckets of questions here. One is going after these kind of non-traditional media platforms. And then the other is building your own following and building a following on Twitter, for example. And I know you work closely with the CEO of Vox, who's really good at this. And basically, doesn't need press. Elon is amazing at this, you know? Maybe that's why he bought Twitter. He has this huge platform to talk about all the stuff. So kind of the maybe in the first bucket, talking about when you're trying to decide, should I go after traditional media, Vox, and VentureBeat, and Axios, and all these guys, versus I'm gonna go for newsletters? Like, as an example, Ramp got

• 1:10:08Lenny Rachitsky?

  a lot of benefit from Not Boring, that newsletter with Packy, who wrote about them like constantly and loved it. And their sponsored posts and organic posts. So I guess the question there is just, how do you think about going after podcasts, newsletters, Twitter, new LinkedIn, you know, influencer-y platform-y people versus traditional press?

• 1:10:30Speaker 00

  I think of newsletters and podcasts actually in the camp of if we're pitching traditional press, we're 100% pitching those. Social is its own ballgame, but I would not leave out newsletters and podcasts from any core PR strategy. Like, to me, there it's now, you know, just a part of any any PR program that we're going to run. Because that's just where it's just part of media now. And to me, it's just like a very important part of media. In terms of social, I think doing social well is very hard. So you know, you gave Aaron from Box as an example. That was all 100% him. I think I helped with one tweet once about a Microsoft partnership that we did. And it was like, I was so excited.

• 1:11:10Lenny Rachitsky?

  How'd it do?

• 1:11:10Speaker 00

  Actually, really good. A publication ended up writing a story on the tweet about Microsoft and Box partnership because of it. So yeah, so that was fun. But generally, it's not always something that you can just turn on by hiring an agency. And I've seen like many companies try doing that and not necessarily see as much success as they'd hoped for. So it's like this like, you know, if a founder is naturally good at that stuff, lean into it as much as humanly possible. Go for it. If they're not, and you're trying to outsource it, it can be done to some success. But I don't necessarily think it's as easy as, you know, just posting three times a week on, you know, relevant topics.

• 1:11:53Speaker 00

  There has to be like more going on there. I think that if the if the spokesperson or the executive that you're trying to build the presence of is willing to, going back to what I said earlier, kind of push the limit on opinions that they have, be bold, be controversial, then it could be worth potentially investing in. And I have seen it play out where reporters have seen those posts and used and quoted things in their articles as a result. So it can tie to your traditional media strategy a little bit. They're not necessarily fully siloed. But I would say if you're considering investing in social to just do corporate channels and not think about executives, you're really leaving like a lot on the table.

• 1:12:32Speaker 00

  Like corporate channels, it's very hard to build a, it's very hard to build a following, to get someone to follow a brand and care about a brand. You have to be like bringing something new to the table because they don't want to, they don't want to read your latest blog post. Like they don't want to read like, like a relevant article that your like social person just decided to put out there. When you have an executive, you're following a personality, you're following a person. Ideally, there's more flexibility with tone, all of that sort of stuff. And so I think, yeah, I think it's important to think about it from the people perspective and not just the the brand perspective.

• 1:13:07Lenny Rachitsky?

  So just to make it clear, the CEO or some execs should be the people tweeting and LinkedIn, not like the company as a brand.

• 1:13:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I don't know. I mean, yeah, I think that it can be like a little industry specific as well for where it makes sense to be investing in the corporate channels. And you certainly can do that sort of thing. But I also think if you're going to do that, like have an exec that you're also like trying a social strategy with, like, don't just do the plain corporate channels.

• 1:13:35Lenny Rachitsky?

  Yeah, when I think of a brand doing this really well, it's Duolingo. They're just like so hilarious and so ridiculous in there. And I don't know if the key is just funny is the way to go. And that's how you get any attention. But they're so funny and creative in their videos, especially TikTok.

• 1:13:49Speaker 00

  It's interesting, though, if we're getting to the point where even brands having a personality on social is becoming its own meme, like, people are kind of making fun of how all the fast food brands all are like these Gen Z like TikTok.

• 1:13:59Lenny Rachitsky?

  Right. And they're all replying to each other on Twitter threads.

• 1:14:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, it's just like this. Yeah. And so it's like, things change quickly. So like, yes, that was a good strategy. But like, yeah, you just kind of have to stay on top of it.

• 1:14:11Lenny Rachitsky?

  So you talked about how if this comes naturally to you as a founder, obviously do it. I'm guessing for most people, it doesn't. Do you find that it can work if you're just like, I know this is important. I need to tweet often and share things. Have you seen that work? Or is it just like, it's just probably not going to be something that works great for you?

• 1:14:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think it can work to some extent. Like, maybe you're not going to necessarily be, you know, going viral or getting hundreds or tens of thousands of followers. But I mean, like, for me personally, I push myself to post on LinkedIn at least once a month because every time I post, we get at least one client inbounded, like maybe a candidate inbounded. And so it like, if you if you if you test it and you start to see value, like, yeah, push yourself to do it, even if it doesn't come naturally. And that's, I guess, the nice thing about social is it's easy to test out. You can try doing it. You can post for a while, even for a month or two, see how it's going, and then adjust your strategy accordingly. But yes, I think I think for a lot of execs that we work with, it does feel like it's something that's really hard. Like, there's a lot of

• 1:15:11Speaker 00

  Overthinking, making sure it's right, like it can, you can get really in your head about it. And I totally understand that because I feel the same way. And so, yeah, if it's taking up so much of like your time and bandwidth, just thinking about your social strategy, then I guess you can weigh if it makes sense to do that. But, but yeah, I think, I think pushing yourself to try it is a great idea.

• 1:15:31Lenny Rachitsky?

  Okay. And then Aaron specifically is very good at this. Is there anything that you learned from his approach to tweeting specifically? I don't know if he uses other platforms that works really well for him.

• 1:15:41Speaker 00

  I mean, I actually think like I just learned so much. So I was kind of, it was my first in-house job. So I had worked in an agency. I hadn't worked internally at a company before. And I think I just like learned so much about like comms best practices from him in general, like just even beyond social. Like he was so good at like figuring out how to comment on things happening in the news, having just the right kind of like stance that was both like interesting to the reporter, but like not necessarily like threatening to the business and like, and just like capitalizing on all those moments. And I just like watched how that worked and I was like, this is how good PR is. And it's like, the company that they're, the space that they're in is not necessarily one that, you know, reporters are all like writing about, but he was able to insert himself in those conversations really well.

• 1:16:27Speaker 00

  And I think also like at the time that I was there, at least like just like really valued press and like was willing to put the time in and do the briefings. And so just like getting to hear his, like how he, how he speaks like over and over again was like really helpful. And then on like Twitter, I think it's just, I mean, it clearly just like comes like naturally to him. And so it wasn't necessarily something that needed to, you know, like I mentioned how some execs will spend all this time like thinking through, thinking through to the point where it could get in the way of other things. Like I think that's not the case there. And if anything, like it just, you know, helped the business. And actually with his Twitter presence, I would say it's a good example too of stuff getting included in articles. Like I mentioned in that Microsoft article, you know, so it helps the PR strategy as well.

• 1:17:10Lenny Rachitsky?

  Amazing. And we'll link to his Twitter account. This is Aaron, CEO of Vox, by the way. I, I think I mentioned at the beginning and then we just started talking about Aaron. Also, I realize, uh, Ari tweets about this sometimes. He actually makes money from Twitter and how the Twitter pays you for views and things. And they share ads. He makes like thousands of dollars also from X now, by the way, not Twitter.

• 1:17:28Speaker 00

  That's so funny.

• 1:17:29Lenny Rachitsky?

  Yeah, it's pretty ridiculous. I think I've gone through every question that I had for you. I'm curious if there's anything else that you think might be helpful to share or cover or leave listeners with.

• 1:17:43Speaker 00

  I can leave with one very tactical media opportunity that I love.

• 1:17:50Lenny Rachitsky?

  Amazing.

• 1:17:52Speaker 00

  And, okay, so here it is. It's a way to get a Morning Brew feature pretty somewhat easily. So they have this series called Morning Brew Coworking Series and they have it for emerging tech brew. They have it for HR brew, all their verticals. I think there's like a CFO one, marketing one. And essentially there, if you go to the series, the coworking series, either at the top or the bottom, there's something where it's like, if you want to be featured, click on this link and fill out this form. And it's about 10 questions. If you keep your answers interesting and fun and not too self promotional, we've had, I would say 50% success rate with like getting execs featured that way. And so all you, and you all, all you have to do is submit through a Google form. And it's just like one of the, one of my favorite media opportunities right now.

• 1:18:35Speaker 00

  Doesn't need to be CEO, actually probably shouldn't be a CEO in a lot of instances. But they just, it's basically intended to help readers understand like what the day to day looks in certain, in certain jobs. And like, you know, just like get a little insight into the people that are in these jobs. And so I, yeah, I guess I just wanted to share that as like something that you could do today for over 10 minutes and potentially get a story, although maybe not after you post this. So we'll see if they get like an ins, let's.

• 1:19:02Lenny Rachitsky?

  And we're going to take down Mail Brew. Funny enough, they have an interview with Zuck today that they published on Morning Brew. So you could be you alongside Zuck.

• 1:19:10Speaker 00

  There you go. Yeah.

• 1:19:12Lenny Rachitsky?

  Maybe before we get to our very exciting lightning round, it might be fun to chat about how to pick a PR agency. Obviously you run one, when people are trying to decide who to work with and also when to decide to pick and work with a PR agency versus doing it themselves. What advice can you share when they're trying to make that big decision?

• 1:19:32Speaker 00

  I think there's an assumption that bigger, more well-known agencies are going to do a better job. I think a lot of those bigger, well-known agencies are used to working with a lot of household brands. And so their strategies tend to be very reactive, you know, focus in the messaging, um, you know, maybe have to turn down a bunch of opportunities, control what people say. That is like the polar opposite, in my opinion, of doing startup PR. Startup PR, you gotta experiment, you gotta try new things, you gotta be scappy, you gotta be fast. Like, we actually personally like love, like, you know, diving into pitching right away rather than spending several months on messaging, just kind of testing in market right away. And so don't assume just because they have the huge logos, to your point, you're like, oh, well, you work with Ramp and Perplexity, does that mean you know how to work with all

• 1:20:17Speaker 00

  these tiny companies? Um, that's not necessarily a good thing. So don't just go by like the big logos. I would say that's my first piece of advice. My second piece of advice is find out what, what they start doing. Like, find out what month one looks like with them. If month one is them just doing intake calls and learning about the company and you're a startup, you know, that's still like, you know, really paying close attention to how much money you're spending. Um, you're not going to necessarily want to partner with an agency that needs like a three-month ramp-up cycle. Um, and so really like tactically understand what those first few months look like. I think that's something that I've noticed is a lot of agencies, it'll take a while before they get their hands dirty and like start doing things. Um, my third piece of advice would be writing, recent

• 1:21:01Speaker 00

  writing samples, like to the point of like all those press release excerpts I, I shared, like, is that how they write? If it is, maybe they're not the right agency. Um, so ask them, that's so easy. It's so easy to do. Just like ask them for a couple of recent blogs or releases, whatever they tend to, to go for, um, and read those. And, and of course, like wins too. Like, you want to see like what kind of stories they're getting, but that's a little more obvious. A, a lot of people have already talked about this, so I'll just mention briefly, it's important to like meet with the actual team you're working on, not just the founder of the agency. So asking like, who's our day-to-day gonna be? Can we chat with them really quick? One thing I would say don't do is like an extensive RFP process. Like, we actually, as an agency, don't participate in RFPs.

• 1:21:43Speaker 00

  A lot of, the, the, the two times I've done it, I kind of had regret it just because of the amount of work going in versus the, the value that's there. And it's like, it's just, um, You're asking a team to do a lot of free work for you. And generally, I think the best players are not going to do that. So you're not going to get the, you're going to weed out some of the best players if you're asking them to do a lot of free upfront work. So yeah, those are a few considerations.

• 1:22:06Lenny Rachitsky?

  Perfect. And then just two more questions, because I imagine this is what people are thinking about when they're trying to decide, should we find somebody? Is how long ahead of time they should find someone before something big is happening? And then just what's a budget they should have in mind for something like this, like? What's like a minimum or a range, whatever you think would be helpful for people to understand. Here's how much you're probably going to be investing here.

• 1:22:26Speaker 00

  It can really, start times can vary from agency to agency. I think.

• 1:22:31Speaker 00

  We can get started like the week that a, that a client needs those two. So maybe I'm not best equipped to answer this, but I would say before, before an announcement happens, you probably want to kick off six weeks, six weeks in advance. So when we start with the company, it's like, we're working on the blog, we're doing a media training, we're doing the media outreach, we're getting quotes from investors, we're coordinating with all the parties, making sure images are being created. So it's not just pitching and securing the article. So I would say buffer with time to pitch, you know, make sure that the reporter is actually able to cover it. Six weeks is ideal. I would also note that it's really, I highly recommend not having a firm date that you think you need to announce something and going instead with whether a reporter is able to cover your story. We get so many clients that come to us and they have this set date in their head.

• 1:23:17Speaker 00

  And, but there's, there's not usually a real reason for it. It's like they're, they're planning around it. It's like they have other comms they want to go out that day. But if you can optimize for the reporter over the timing, you're going to see such a better outcome because getting the first choice reporter is going to drive way more for your business than announcing it four days sooner. So, you know, leaving a little bit of flexibility for that agency is key. And I've even seen companies like issue a press release for big news with no coverage because they had stuck to a certain day and were very rigid about it and they didn't get any stories for that reason. And so I think a, a good agency would counsel to, to offer that flexibility. So, so yeah, six weeks, um, I think is the ideal, um, amount of time. And then.

• 1:23:59Speaker 00

  Budget, I would say the lowest end would probably be about 10K a month for an agency. You can find consultants, I think the best ones would be at least 8K a month. But for, you know, a small boutique agency, it starts at 10. Our rates actually start, I'll just be like transparent, I'm very open about our pricing. Our rates start at 15K a month for our retainers. And actually, that's like for like a Series A companies generally what they're at. And then, I mean, I would say unless you are a global business that needs like, like basically different teams for different like product lines, like which happens when you're like, you know, a Microsoft of the world, that's another story. But if you're just, you know, like a Series C startup that's getting a lot of attention,

• 1:24:43Speaker 00

  I wouldn't go beyond 30K probably. There are plenty of agencies that go into the 50s and 60s a month, but that's just like a whole nother world and I'm not like an expert on that part.

• 1:24:55Lenny Rachitsky?

  Amazing. Thank you for sharing all that. What if you're going for just like a one-off, just help me get one story? What's like a range there for a budget you should expect?

• 1:25:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, I would say between 10 and 20. And then you might be able to find a consultant that'll do it for like 8.

• 1:25:11Lenny Rachitsky?

  Amazing. So helpful.

• 1:25:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:25:13Lenny Rachitsky?

  Emily, is there anything else you want to share before we get to our very exciting lightning round?

• 1:25:18Speaker 00

  Uh, no, I'm ready.

• 1:25:19Lenny Rachitsky?

  Well, welcome to our very exciting lightning round. I've got six questions. Are you ready?

• 1:25:25Speaker 00

  I am.

• 1:25:26Lenny Rachitsky?

  First question, what are two or three books you recommend most to other people?

• 1:25:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I have one that's very top of mind right now. So it's How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan. I'm actually, I leave tonight for a week-long psilocybin retreat.

• 1:25:42Lenny Rachitsky?

  Oh shit. Amazing. We should have done this app. No, we have to another one.

• 1:25:48Speaker 00

  I know, I would have had a, I would be getting much more philosophical maybe. Yeah, so, so very excited. I'm going to Jamaica. And I just, ever since kind of like researching that field, like there's the whole concept of like changing your neural pathways is just like very fascinating to me. And like just like opening up and like shifting perspectives is something that I think will actually help me a lot. Just like even like running a company, like being a better leader. You know, I think we're at a stage in our growth right now where We're hiring a lot and there's like a lot of pressure and I just want to make sure I'm like bringing my best self forward every day. Um, and so yeah, I'm just, I'm really excited about it.

• 1:26:27Lenny Rachitsky?

  What an amazing answer. Uh, I, this is going to be part of your set and setting this interview. So, but hopefully you can get it out of your mind.

• 1:26:34Speaker 00

  No, totally. I was actually, you know, I was like, I was like nervous. I'm like, it's actually really great that this is happening and then I can completely unplug after it. And so, yeah, I, I think it's actually good timing.

• 1:26:44Lenny Rachitsky?

  I'm excited to hear how it goes.

• 1:26:45Speaker 00

  I'm not a big book recommender. I, I have like ADHD and reading full books is like very hard for me. And so, um, yeah, so I'm just going to leave you with, with that one. Um, I do like, I, I can do like the occasional beach read or like really focused, but it's not my main format of content.

• 1:27:00Lenny Rachitsky?

  Amazing. All right. Great answer. One's, one's plenty. Do you have a favorite recent movie or TV show you've really enjoyed?

• 1:27:07Speaker 00

  Okay. So my favorite genre is like post-apocalyptic, um, sort of end of the world, uh, survival. Um, so I need to mention my all time favorite show because I just, it would be bad not to. So Walking Dead is like my comfort TV show. Like I can watch it when I'm going to sleep at night. Um, but my most recent, uh, favorite, um, was Yellow Jackets. Um, are you familiar?

• 1:27:30Lenny Rachitsky?

  I've seen the, the poster on my, on my TV, but I've not watched it.

• 1:27:35Speaker 00

  Nice. Yeah. I, I discovered it a little late. I, I think the, the second, the, the second season finished and they're working on the third. Um, but yeah, it has like plane crash. It has like, just like shocking moment after shocking moment, like cannibalism, very weird stuff. Um, and it's like one of those shows that like sticks in your mind, which I like, kind of like where you're like thinking about it afterwards. It's like kind of creepy. Um, so yeah.

• 1:27:59Lenny Rachitsky?

  Wow. I thought you were going for Last of Us, but I now have to watch the show.

• 1:28:03Speaker 00

  No, I'm a, I'm, I watched Last of Us and I didn't feel like it had enough survival elements to it. It was, it was like, it was like storytelling in that environment, but it wasn't actually like a survival, post-apocalyptic show in, in the way that I was looking for.

• 1:28:17Lenny Rachitsky?

  Hardcore.

• 1:28:19Lenny Rachitsky?

  Do you have a favorite interview question you like to ask? And you could take this in any direction you want.

• 1:28:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I have like a new one. We actually just revamped our interview process. I wanted to make it harder. So my, my new favorite question is if a client comes to you and they're convinced they have something that's press worthy, like an announcement that they think should be, I don't know, in the Wall Street Journal or something. And you know for a fact that it isn't, like what steps do you take? What do you do next? And I like that question because they can handle it, one, from like the client relation standpoint. Like, how do you communicate with the client when they say something like that? But it's also like a critical thinking and like creativity question of like, how do you take a no and turn it into a yes? How do you, how do you take what they're giving you and make it into something interesting? And so, yeah, I like to kind of dig into that and they can use like a real example if they want.

• 1:29:08Speaker 00

  But I also think like, a lot of our job is pushing back in a way. And so that's like, also shows like if they're able and willing to push back.

• 1:29:16Lenny Rachitsky?

  That's, I am so curious to hear people's answer to that.

• 1:29:20Lenny Rachitsky?

  Do you have a favorite product that you recently discovered that you love?

• 1:29:24Speaker 00

  I was very skeptical of Apple Vision Pro and I was like kind of making fun of it at the beginning. And the first time I tried it, I like completely changed my tune. I am so into it. I'm like ordering one. And I'm very excited for like actually using it for work. I think, I think it could be a really good use case for just like my day to day at work. After I had tried it, the next day I like messaged a bunch of clients that I thought had, like could have relevant applications for it. I'm like, do we have an Apple Vision Pro strategy? Are we willing to talk about it publicly yet? So yeah, because sometimes, I mean, it's like tying back to the PR conversation. I love if you're willing to like push the envelope on stuff that you are building or are going to do and getting ahead of those conversations. So that's like a lot of conversations I'm having right now is trying to convince clients to talk about that.

• 1:30:09Lenny Rachitsky?

  Do you have an Apple Vision Pro strategy? Amazing.

• 1:30:13Speaker 00

  And then my, my other one, which is very self-serving because they are a client, but I do use them every day is perplexity. I find it so helpful, even just for like, you know, I'm working on an award submission. I forgot how much a client, how much funding a client has raised, asking them that instead of, you know, opening five different Google links and trying to find the answer. It's just like, it's just huge for quick information or like writing a bio for an executive, like getting just like the T L D R of like what they've done in their past. Like it's so good for PR use cases. And I actually think marketing and PR is going to be one of the like core sort of like work applications for them.

• 1:30:51Lenny Rachitsky?

  I've also already shared how much I love perplexity. I have the Chrome extension installed. I probably use it at least once a day for podcast interview prep, along with a bunch of other stuff. So good, good find for customer. I think they're going to do great. Wish I was an investor.

• 1:31:07Speaker 00

  I'm the happy investor. I rarely angel invest and I was.

• 1:31:12Lenny Rachitsky?

  Drinks on Emily someday.

• 1:31:15Speaker 00

  There we go.

• 1:31:15Lenny Rachitsky?

  That's awesome. Good, good job.

• 1:31:18Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 1:31:18Lenny Rachitsky?

  Okay. Two more questions. Do you have a favorite life motto that you often come back to, share with friends or family, either in work or in life?

• 1:31:25Speaker 00

  Strong opinions loosely held. I'm a very opinionated, trust my gut kind of person. But that doesn't mean I'm not willing to change my mind on things and be wrong. I first heard it from an influencer, Tinks, and then I Googled it. And apparently, what was it? Like Jeff Bezos also said it at one point. So I have no idea the origin of the quote. But I think that's a good one. Like you can still like be like really opinionated in life, but that doesn't mean you always are going to be right.

• 1:31:52Lenny Rachitsky?

  Emily, this was everything I hoped it would be. I feel like this is going to help so many people get awesome press. Thank you again so much for being here. Two final questions. Where can folks find you and reach out if they want to learn more or work with you? And how can listeners be useful to you?

• 1:32:06Speaker 00

  Our website is sixeastern.com and our email is [email protected]. So you can find us there. And I actually, I have a newsletter called On Background. It's on Substack. And really like what it's intended to be is a place for. Like people to find these tactical opportunities. So it has media moves, it has reporters that are working on stories, it has awards that are open, like all of this stuff that basically an intern on an agency would spend their days researching, we put into a newsletter. And so it's main audience is PR people, but I actually think it could be a great resource for people within companies that don't have PR teams to stay on top of stuff. So I guess, yeah, to be helpful, you know, feel free to subscribe. And then, other than that, we're

• 1:32:48Speaker 00

  hiring. So if you happen to be a PR person that got this far in the episode, um, yeah, always looking for, for great, great people to bring on.

• 1:32:57Lenny Rachitsky?

  Amazing. Is there anything specific you're looking for in people you're hiring for people that may want to reach out other than they've been in PR?

• 1:33:01Speaker 00

  Ideally, some B to B experience. I think doing B to B PR is very different from doing consumer PR. Um, if you work with startups, that's a huge plus, know how to be kind of scrappy and fast. And also people that just love to be like really hands on and doing the actual work. It's, we're not a place, we're very flat. So we're not a place where there's much managing of, of teams. Um, so yeah, it's really much more like a consultancy than, than anything else.

• 1:33:24Lenny Rachitsky?

  Amazing. Emily, thank you so much for being here.

• 1:33:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was so fun. Thank you so much.

• 1:33:29Lenny Rachitsky?

  Bye, everyone.

• 1:33:31Lenny Rachitsky?

  Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review, as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lennyspodcast.com. See you in the next episode.