If you’ve ever read about the five love languages, then you’ve heard of people like me – those who show their love with gifts. Lots of gifts. Nothing brings me more joy than pebbling those close to me with presents. Take a minute to fill out the love language quiz for yourself, and be sure to read more about pebbling at The Elyse Edit: “Penguin pebbling + the most misunderstood love language.”

It’s time you all got some love (and gifts!), so welcome to what I’m calling “The Twelve Weeks of Christmas” (TWOC) – because naturally, Christmas is my favorite holiday season. This year I’m celebrating harder than ever. Every Friday between now and Christmas, I’ll give away one real PR resource. No opt-in gimmicks, no “link in bio.” Just the thing itself. Each gift is something I use regularly for my tech startup clients, so everything is battle-tested and proven to work.

During the first week of Christmas, my PR pro gave to me (A cold pitch template)

I once worked with a founder who’d been cold pitching reporters for almost seven months before he ever got a (positive) response. Yes, it’s harder than ever to get attention in a crowded market, let alone stand out in a journalist’s crowded inbox. But seven months of radio silence is a lot of swinging and missing, and that can get old (and expensive) very quickly.

Here’s what 18 years of pitching has taught me: Reporters don’t ignore pitches because the news isn’t good enough. They ignore them because the pitch reads like it went to 200 other people, too: a generic subject line, an opening line about the sender instead of the reporter or their readers, and the actual news buried under adjectives.

How to fix every pitch

The fix is specificity (and ideally, brevity).

—> Reference something the reporter actually wrote.

—> State the news in one plain sentence.

—> Explain why it matters this week, not just generally. Name one detail that’s genuinely different, not a claim that it’s “revolutionary.”

—> Make a small, specific Call to Action (CTA). And, for the love of data, prove everything with facts and credible sources.

A cold pitch subject line and email template

This is the exact fill-in-the-blank template I use with clients before every cold pitch goes out. Swap in your details, and you’ve got a pitch built the same way as the ones that get responses instead of silence.

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Subject line problem + fix (with data)

Most subject lines get skipped because they read like press-release headlines instead of reasons to open the email. In an analysis of 400,000 pitches, reporters opened about 46% of them but responded to only 3.43%, while pitches with short, specific subject lines saw response rates jump to 4.73% (Sword and the Script). Separately, a Muck Rack survey found that 83% of journalists want personalized pitches (PR Daily), not generic ones, so the fix is to keep it short, make it specific to that reporter or beat, and save the full story for the body.

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The Email Pitch Itself

The email pitch follows the same five-beat structure every time: connect, state the news, explain the timing, offer something exclusive, then make a small ask. Here’s why each piece earns its place. Here’s the outline:

• Optional/connection line: This line is what separates you from the 200 other people in their inbox that day. A specific reference proves you actually read their work instead of blasting a list, and if you’ve pitched them before, it reminds them you’re not starting from zero.

• Line 1 (the news): Reporters are scanning, not reading, so the news has to survive in one sentence with zero decoration. Adjectives make a reporter suspicious; facts, sources, and links make them curious.

• Line 2 (why now): Without a real reason to cover this now, your pitch gets filed under “someday,” which is where most pitches die. A calendar hook, a threshold being crossed, or a deadline gives them a reason to act this week instead of eventually.

• Line 3 (the differentiated detail): This is the line that gets you covered instead of skipped: something only you can offer, not just describe. “Innovative” is an opinion nobody has to believe; a number, a name, or an exclusive is a fact they can build a story around.

• Line 4 (the small ask): A vague ask like “let me know if you’re interested” puts all the work back on the reporter, so most won’t bother. A specific, low-effort CTA is easy to say yes to because it skips the part where they have to think through logistics.

• Sign-off: Offering more background signals you’re trying to make their job easier, not rush them into a yes. It’s also the natural spot to hand them a media kit or backgrounder link, so the extra material is a click away instead of a follow-up email.

• Contact info note: Reporters work on a deadline, often from their phones, and email isn’t always the fastest way to reach you. A second option like mobile or text removes the one excuse they have for not following up when they’re ready right now.

That’s the anatomy of a pitch that actually gets read. Now let’s see it in action, back before anyone on your beat had ever heard the word “Dropbox.”

What a cold pitch looks like IRL

Let’s go back to the early days of cloud collaboration and shared storage apps, and pretend we’re cold-pitching journalists covering apps for small business. Remember, at this point, no one has ever heard of Dropbox. For this example, we are pre-launch, and we want to give journalists more information about the launch itself while also securing interviews for additional color and a demo of the app. This is what a cold pitch might look like:

Subject: Intro to stealth co.? Your article on SMBs drowning in email attachments

Hi Sarah – You’ve written about how small teams are cobbling together tools to stay organized, so I wanted to reach out ahead of an upcoming launch.

Two MIT students, Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi, founded a company on June 1, 2007 to fix a problem most small businesses just live with: the files that only exist on one laptop, in one email thread, or on one USB drive.

That’s a bigger risk than it sounds. A 2005 survey of 900 taxi drivers across nine cities found more than 11,300 laptops and over 31,000 Pocket PCs left behind in cabs in just six months. Any one of those could’ve been a small business’s only copy of a client file.

Houston and Ferdowsi are opening a private beta to a small group of small-business teams ahead of next year’s public launch, and briefing a handful of reporters on this beat first. Would 15 minutes this week work for a call and a live demo? I can also get you into the beta same-day to test it with your own files before it’s public.

Best, Lindsey

Mobile: 360-961-3554

Consider this newsletter my version of pebbling, just with fewer smooth stones and a lot more PR templates.

Week 2 preview: How do you tell a story people want to read?

Gift one of twelve, delivered. Next Friday brings the next one, focused on newsworthiness, so keep an eye on your inbox until then. And if you want a second set of eyes on your next pitch before it goes out, you already know where to find me. Reply anytime; I read every one.

From 2008 to 2012 — through Apptio‘s $50M Series D round — I led communications and PR (while at Barokas PR) for a startup with a problem most founders would kill for: real product, real customers, real traction. But founder Sunny Gupta also had a problem most never see coming: the market had no name for what Apptio’s technology provided its ICP: Fortune 500 CIOs.

We weren’t selling against a competitor. We were selling against a blank space. Enterprise IT departments had never been asked to justify their spend the way a sales team justifies pipeline or a marketing team justifies CAC. IT was a cost center. IT got a budget, IT spent the budget, and nobody asked it to defend the return the way they’d interrogate any other line of business.

The cobbler’s children have no shoes

Sunny and the team built the software to change that. My job was to convince the people who ran IT at Fortune 500 companies – CIOs who’d spent their entire careers being asked to cut budget, never to account for it like a business — that a whole new discipline was worth their time, their credibility, and eventually their budget line. As we often put it, the cobbler’s children had no shoes.

From the near beginning, we called it Technology Business Management, but nobody else called it — or asked for it — by name. Not right away. That was the whole problem. We’d most often hear “IT cost transparency” or IT financial management (ITFM), and even “cloud costing” or the IT economics.

The facts were never the problem

Here’s what I learned: the facts were never in dispute. Every CIO in the room already knew IT spend was opaque, that they couldn’t answer basic questions like “what does this application actually cost us” or “are we overspending relative to peers.” That wasn’t news to them. What they didn’t have was a frame—a way to talk about IT that let them walk into a board meeting and sound like a business leader instead of a request line.

Giving them the data wasn’t the persuasive act, but giving them the language was.

How the category sold itself

We didn’t lead with product specs. We convened the people who’d become the category’s first believers — hosting CIOs in the same room to compare notes on a problem they’d each assumed was theirs alone — and let them discover, out loud, to each other, that this was a shared, nameable, solvable thing. By the time that group formalized into what’s now known as the TBM Council, the persuasion had already happened. Nobody needed to be sold anymore; they’d co-authored the pitch.

That’s the part of PR nobody puts on a “traits of successful founders” list. It’s not enough to have the truth on your side. You have to build the frame that lets someone else say the truth out loud, in their own voice, to their own boss — and believe it was their idea to say it.

While I only worked with Sunny and Apptio to Series D, if you fast-forward to 2023, you’ll see that IBM acquired Apptio for $4.6 billion.

Full circle: IBM, and what Sunny’s building next

If you’re interested in following Sunny’s entrepreneurial journey, he recently reunited with his former Apptio cofounder, Kurt Shintaffer, at Thira (an enterprise AI startup) — which recently announced $21M in seed funding led by Madrona and Matt McIllwain, a multi-round Apptio investor who also served on its board of directors. Matt and Madrona are calling it the “biggest opportunity yet”. Can’t wait to see what happens.

FWIW, the company says, “Thira is AI to handle the behind-the-scenes tasks that keep big companies running, like setting up a new hire’s laptop, resetting a locked account, or approving a software purchase. The pitch is to enable a “back-office that runs itself.”

Five things that experience taught me about persuasion (and rhetoric)

1. Name the problem before you name the product. CIOs didn’t wake up wanting “Apptio.” They woke up unable to answer a question their CFO kept asking. We built the vocabulary for that question before we ever pitched the software that answered it.

2. Let your believers become your validators, not just your references. A customer quote in a press release is nice. A customer standing up in a room of their peers, unprompted, saying “we have this exact problem” is category-defining. If your buyers won’t say it to each other, they’re not ready to say it publicly yet.

3. Borrow the vocabulary your buyer already trusts. We didn’t invent new language from nothing. We applied the logic CIOs already respected (supply chain thinking, cost accounting, business-unit accountability) to a category they’d never had permission to think about that way. Persuasion is easier when you’re reframing something familiar, not asking someone to learn a new language from zero.

4. Build the case for the category before you push the product. If people don’t yet believe the problem is real and urgent, your product pitch is premature and you’re answering a question no one’s asked yet. Get agreement on the problem first.

5. Time your rhetoric to your proof. We didn’t push the category message before we had real customers wrestling with the real problem in the room. Persuasion without evidence is just a good story; persuasion timed to proof is a movement people want to join.

Long story short, none of this shows up on Harvard or other lists of founder traits. While curiosity and risk tolerance will get you to a good product, they won’t get a room full of skeptical Fortune 500 executives to adopt a category that didn’t exist six months earlier. That takes persuasion and rhetoric. Not great at either? Don’t worry, both are crafts (not personality traits) and 100% learnable.

Let’s work together

If you’re a founder trying to build category language, land press, or get a room of skeptics to say your problem out loud before you’ve pitched them anything — that’s exactly the kind of work I do. Shoot me an email: lindsey at lindsbcomms dot com.

If you’re here, you might’ve come for tips and tricks of the PR trade, and for that, I’m sorry. Not because I haven’t loved sharing best practices from my 18 years in PR, but because that’s no longer Off The Record’s focus.

Why? Because I’m done masking behind “teaching” by “telling” and better at teaching by showing. But this shift is largely inspired by my real-life startup clients, some of whom I’ve worked with multiple times over the last two decades. They’re technology startup founders, CEOs, CMOs, and VPs of marketing. They’re heads of communications departments. They’re in charge of brand, reputation, MarComm, and this is where I come in: they’re in charge of PR.

As I said, I’m better at “showing” (and writing) than I am at telling. This shifts how I want to use this platform, while still serving as a source of information for technology startup founders and C-suite executives who are looking to learn a thing or two about PR. And no, we’re not here for me to sell you on PR.

A lot has changed for me in 2026. Five short days into the year, my mom lost her battle to lung disease and dementia. I started a new gig, dipping my toes back into the agency world.

I went back to school and am now ankle-deep in my Master’s program at Washington State University (Go Cougs!), my alma mater, where I met my husband 22 years ago.

So off with the masks. These are my stories from the trenches of technology startup PR. Real (mostly unfiltered) PR moments from the last two decades.

I’ve thought about which story I should start with, so I hope you enjoy this doozie that I like to call:

“Worse than a kissing cam scandal.”

This was a long while ago, definitely before my son was born, and he’ll be 11 in August. I was working as a PR Director at a mid-size agency. It was a normal day in the office until my boss’s boss flagged me into a virtual meeting with a very cryptic message: “I need you to deal with something.”

As a fan of crime novels, I immediately thought we were about to hide a dead body. In many ways, it was worse.

This is a crisis PR situation.

One of our startup clients had recently hired a new CEO, a charismatic, highly connected entrepreneur who was already well known throughout his area and within the startup and investment circles. His reputation was a major reason the company brought him on in the first place. He had the kind of profile investors loved: polished media presence, strong founder story, deep networking relationships, and a track record of scaling businesses quickly. The company positioned his arrival as a turning point for growth, and we had spent weeks helping build visibility around the leadership transition through media outreach, investor communications, and thought leadership opportunities.

Then everything imploded almost overnight.

Just weeks after stepping into the role, a single report in his local newspaper (which you can no longer find online) surfaced that the CEO had been charged with killing an endangered species during what was publicly being referred to as a “hunting trip” involving several other executives and business leaders from the region.

Even now, I’m intentionally keeping “hunting trip” in quotation marks because the details surrounding the event were sensitive, and frankly bizarre enough that the reality sounded worse than speculation. The story quickly became the kind of thing reporters obsess over: wealthy executives, secrecy, power dynamics, potential criminal behavior, and a company with fresh venture funding suddenly tied to a scandal no one could have anticipated.

What made the situation particularly horrid was that the startup itself had absolutely nothing to do with the incident. The alleged actions happened before the CEO joined the company, yet because he had become the public face of the brand almost immediately after being hired, the company was now being dragged directly into the controversy.

Internally, the atmosphere shifted from excitement to chaos in less than 24 hours.

Investors worried the company would become permanently associated with the scandal. The company and its employees feared public backlash or professional ties to the situation. Leadership was divided on whether to defend the CEO publicly, distance the company immediately, or stay silent altogether. Some executives wanted to disappear completely until the story passed. Meanwhile, we knew we were moments away from journalists pushing for comments before facts had even fully surfaced.

The challenge wasn’t just preventing media stories. It was navigating an ethical, legal, and reputational minefield in real time while emotions inside the company were running high. And unlike many startup PR crises that revolve around product issues, layoffs, or funding rumors, this one was a deeply personal, emotionally charged scenario that made every decision significantly more delicate.

So what did we do? Subscribe and stay tuned for Part 2.

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Unfiltered Plug: If you’re a technology startup needing PR, get in touch. Check out lab.Comms, 18-years of startup PR services at www.lindsbcomms.com.

PR pros work really hard to book press interviews, but here’s the reality: many of them never result in coverage. Getting the meeting is just step one. Turning that conversation into a quoted article? That’s the hard part.

The problem most often? You’re not saying anything new, interesting, or memorable.

After working with hundreds of tech startups over the years, one thing is clear: the fight for media coverage is tougher than ever. Reporters are inundated. Stories are tighter. And many startups simply don’t yet have the business metrics, customer validation, or case studies that typically tip a story from “interesting” to “publishable.”

The good news? You can dramatically increase your odds. This post is about making the most of your media interview opportunity, and ultimately setting yourself up for coverage success.

10 things to prep before an interview

1. Lead with news and forget your elevator pitch.

Reporters need a reason to write now. Is there funding, growth, a major customer win, new data, a bold POV? “We exist” is not news. Most founders will say “We’re an AI-powered contract review platform helping legal teams work more efficiently.” That’s an elevator pitch. It explains what you do. It does not give a reporter a reason to write today.

What gets attention instead: “In the past six months, we’ve cut contract review time by 42% across 18 mid-sized law firms — and one Am Law 100 firm just replaced two legacy vendors with us.” Now you’ve introduced:

• A time peg (past six months)

• Specific metrics (42% improvement)

• Customer traction (18 firms)

• A notable validation signal (Am Law 100 firm replacing incumbents)

That’s showing movement, momentum, and a stronger storyline.

2. Bring real metrics.

Revenue growth. User growth. Retention. Adoption rates. Efficiency gains. If you don’t share numbers, the story becomes vague, and vague stories don’t get written.

Your spokesperson might say, “We’re growing really quickly,” or “Customer adoption has been strong,” and “We’ve seen great traction.” Those statements mean nothing without numbers. A reporter cannot build a story around “strong.”

• Instead of, “We’re growing quickly,” say “We’ve grown ARR from $1.2M to $4.8M in 12 months and added 73 new enterprise customers this quarter alone.”

• Swap, “Customers love the product,” for “Our net revenue retention is 132%, and 64% of customers expanded their contracts within the first year.”

• Instead of, “We improve efficiency,” say “Our platform reduced outside counsel spend by 28% for a Fortune 500 client in the first six months.”

Now the reporter has a growth narrative, scale indicator, validation signal, and a quantifiable outcome. That’s the difference between “interesting company” and “data-backed story.”

3. Have at least one named customer (if possible).

Customer proof changes everything. A real-world use case beats a product description every time. I hear “We work with several leading enterprise clients,” on the regular. Standard language like,“We’re in pilots with major firms,“ or “We can’t disclose names, but they’re very recognizable.” To a reporter, that signals risk. If no one is willing to be named, is the traction real?

Before the interview, ask yourself: Do we have at least one customer willing to be named? Can we share one specific outcome they achieved? Would that customer take a reference call from the reporter if asked? If the answer to all three is yes, your odds of coverage increase dramatically. If the answer is no, consider securing one referenceable customer before pitching, or structuring the story around a data-backed case study instead of general claims.

4. Share a strong, defensible point of view.

The most quotable founders aren’t neutral. They have opinions about the market, competitors, trends, regulation, pricing models, or where the industry is headed. Safe, middle-of-the-road answers rarely make it into print because they don’t move the story forward.

“The market is evolving” is boring.

“AI is creating opportunities and challenges,” is something anyone could say.

“We think there’s room for multiple players” is a clear sign of dodging the question.

These phrases are unquoteable. What works are phrases like:

• “Our view is that 80% of AI legal tools will disappear in the next 18 months because they’re just thin wrappers on public models.”

• “Billable hour firms that don’t rethink pricing in the next two years will lose work to AI-native competitors.”

Now you’ve given the reporter tension, stakes, and a forward-looking claim. That’s something they can build a story around whether they agree with you or not.

Before the interview, pressure-test your POV: Is this specific, not generic? Is it defensible with data or experience? Would someone reasonably disagree with it? If the answer is yes, you’re on the right track. Strong coverage often comes from a strong perspective and not safe and risk-averse commentary.

5. Avoid jargon and feature dumps.

A media interview is not a product demo. It’s not the time to walk through your dashboard, list integrations, or explain your proprietary architecture. Reporters don’t write stories about feature sets. They write about problems, impact, and differentiation.

Your spokesperson might say: “We leverage a multi-layered AI orchestration engine with customizable workflows, seamless integrations, and real-time analytics.” That sounds impressive internally. To a reporter, it’s noise.

Instead of leading with features, translate them into outcomes and stakes. Swap, “Our platform includes automated document classification, AI-assisted redlining, and dynamic clause libraries” for: “Mid-sized law firms are losing thousands of billable hours each year to manual contract review. We’ve automated the most repetitive 60% of that process, cutting turnaround time nearly in half.” Instead of, “We built a proprietary large language model optimized for legal workflows,” say, “Most AI tools hallucinate when handling complex contract language. We trained our system on 12 million verified legal documents to reduce factual errors in high-risk clauses.”

Now the reporter understands the real-world problem, why it matters, what’s broken in the status quo, and what makes you meaningfully different, which shifts the conversation away from “product description” to “story.”

6. Anticipate the hard questions.

Competition. Market saturation. AI hype. Monetization. If you stumble here, confidence drops and so do your odds of inclusion.

A media interview isn’t just an opportunity to share your wins. It’s also a credibility test. Reporters are trained to probe risk, challenge assumptions, and pressure-test your story. If you get defensive, vague, or evasive, that hesitation often makes it into the reporter’s notes — and sometimes keeps you out of the story entirely.

Have crisp, confident answers to:

• Who are your top 3 competitors and why do you win?

• What’s your biggest risk right now?

• How do you make money and is it working?

• What would a skeptic say about your space?

If you can answer those without flinching, you don’t just sound prepared. Instead, you sound credible. And credible sources get quoted.

7. Make the reporter’s job easier.

Offer follow-up materials: data, charts, screenshots, customer intros, or concise background notes. The easier you make it to write, the more likely you’ll be included. Reporters are juggling multiple sources, tight deadlines, and competing angles. If they have to chase you for basic facts, clarify numbers, or wait days for approvals, you’ve just made yourself the harder source to include.

What often happens after the interview, the founder says, “Let us know if you need anything.”

The reporter does need things but now they have to ask, follow up, and wait. In a competitive story, that friction can cost you the quote.

At the end of the interview, a spokesperson or their PR rep should say something like: “I’ll send over a short follow-up email with the metrics we referenced, a customer case study, and a clean screenshot in case it’s helpful.” Then actually send:

• A 3–5 bullet recap of key stats (ARR, growth, retention, etc.)

• One short, tight customer example with measurable impact

• A high-res logo or product screenshot

• A named customer who is willing to speak if needed

• Your correct title, spelling, and preferred attribution

Assume the reporter is writing 3–5 other stories that week. The source who delivers clean, organized, usable information within hours (not days) is far more likely to be included. Beware: Making it easy isn’t about overloading them with materials, it’s about anticipating what they’ll need and delivering it before they have to ask.

8. Be concise and structured:

The hard truth? Rambling kills quotes and strong soundbites win coverage, so think in headlines and not paragraphs. A reporter is listening for clean, usable lines. If your answer takes three minutes, circles the point, and includes five side tangents, they’ll struggle to extract a quote and may move on to someone who said it better in one sentence.

What rambling sounds like: “So what we’re really trying to do is rethink the way legal teams interact with AI, because historically the tools haven’t been purpose-built for their workflows, and when you look at the broader market…” By the time you land the point, the moment is gone.

Instead of a long explanation, compress it: “Our thesis is simple: AI shouldn’t replace lawyers — it should remove the 40% of their work that’s repetitive,” or “Most AI legal tools promise speed. We built ours for accuracy in high-risk environments.” Now you’ve given the reporter a clean quote, a clear position, and a line that can anchor a paragraph that’s usable.

Before any interview and for each key message, write a 12–15 word version. If you can’t say it clearly in one or two sentences, it’s not sharp enough yet. The goal isn’t to sound rehearsed, it’s to sound quotable.

9. Understand the outlet’s (and journalist’s) audience.

Is this reporter focused on funding? Legal risk? AI ethics? Industry disruption?

Tailor your answers to their beat, not your generic talking points.

One of the biggest mistakes founders make is giving the same interview to every outlet. A legal industry trade reporter is not looking for the same angle as a business publication. A tech ethics journalist is not looking for a product walkthrough. If you don’t align with what they actually cover, you’re creating friction from the start.

Let’s say you’re announcing a new AI-powered compliance platform. The generic answer looks like, “We built an AI tool that helps companies streamline compliance workflows and improve efficiency.”

Imagine two different reporters:

1. A funding-focused reporter (e.g., covers raises and growth). They care about traction and market validation. A better answer is,“We’ve grown from $0 to $6M ARR in 18 months, and 40% of our pipeline is inbound from regulated fintech companies.”

2. A legal risk / AI ethics reporter. They care about guardrails and exposure. Say something more like,“Most AI compliance tools operate as black boxes. We built audit trails and explainability into every output because regulators are increasingly scrutinizing automated decision-making.”

These are the same company and same product, but three different angles. Before the interview, spend 15 minutes reviewing the reporter’s last 5–10 articles and ask:

• What themes keep showing up?

• Do they quote founders, customers, analysts, or all three?

• Are the stories data-heavy? Regulatory-focused? Trend-driven?

If their recent coverage consistently includes strong executive POV or named customer quotes, that’s your signal to show up prepared with the type of commentary that actually results in ink for that outlet. The goal isn’t to manipulate the story, it’s to meet the reporter where they are and give them exactly what fits their beat.

10. Remember that you’re competing:

This is the part founders often forget: you are rarely the only source. In trend pieces, funding roundups, AI features, or industry analysis stories, reporters are usually speaking to 3–6 companies. They will include the strongest, clearest, most differentiated quotes. If you don’t give a compelling quote or data point, then someone else will. If your answers are generic, overly cautious, or repetitive of what others are saying, you become the easiest cut.

Imagine a reporter is writing about AI adoption in law firms and interviews four CEOs. A generic response would be, “We’re seeing strong interest in AI, and firms are excited about the potential.” That quote could come from anyone. It adds nothing new. A stronger response is,“In the last 12 months, we’ve seen AI move from pilot projects to budget line items. 63% of our customers increased AI spend this year — even as overall tech budgets stayed flat,” or: “The biggest misconception is that AI adoption is a technology problem. In our experience, it’s a partner compensation problem.” Now you’ve added data, introduced tension, given the reporter a sharper angle, and differentiated yourself from other voices, which is how you survive the editing process and get ink.

Before the interview, ask yourself: 1) What can we say that others in our space probably won’t? 2) Do we have one surprising stat or contrarian insight? 3 )If the reporter only includes one quote from us, what do we want it to be? Because that’s the reality: You may only get one line. Make sure it’s the one that earns you a spot in the story.

If you remember nothing else from this post, remember this:

A media interview is an opportunity and not a guarantee. Coverage happens when there’s real news, proof, a clear point of view, and the reporter has something quotable and useful. If you treat every interview like it will result in coverage, you’re already ahead of most.

If 90% of startups flame out because they never really hit product‑market fit, your biggest risk isn’t “nobody knows we exist.” It’s that you’re talking to the wrong people about the wrong problem.

Think of a seed‑stage startup with a simple expense‑tracking tool. At first, they target individual employees and pitch lifestyle outlets about “finally organizing your personal receipts.” They get signups, but almost no paying users. Then they reframe the story for small‑business owners and bookkeepers: not “organize your receipts,” but “stop losing money and time at tax season.” They pitch small‑business blogs, accountant newsletters, and local business journals. Traffic is smaller, but leads are serious, demos convert, and subscriptions grow.

Same product, different PR narrative, and suddenly their real market is obvious. Not busy employees, but business owners terrified of tax mistakes and cash‑flow surprises. That’s PR as a scrappy market‑validation strategy. It shows which problems get attention and which audiences actually turn that attention into pipeline.

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The Uncomfortable Truth About “PMF”

This is where PR is wildly misunderstood. Most teams treat it as a one‑time awareness blast (“We’ll do PR when we launch”), instead of what it can be: a running product marketing fit (PMF) validation system. Look at the failure data: CB Insights‑style post‑mortems repeatedly highlight “no market need” in ~35% of cases. Not “no press,” not “no brand,” but no real demand. That’s a PMF problem.

Used correctly, PR is one of the fastest ways to pressure‑test what the market needs. Every pitch, story angle, and outlet is a tiny experiment.

Every pitch, story, and outlet is a small experiment: who opens, what gets covered, who clicks or books a demo. Used this way, PR stops being vanity coverage and becomes one of your cheapest ways to see who cares about what, and enough to act.

Define What You’re Actually testing

Before you chase coverage, you need to define what you’re actually testing. Treat every PR push as a set of live hypotheses.

Written down, that might look like:

For example, a compliance‑automation startup first bets on: CIOs at mid‑market fintechs, scared of audits, triggered by new regulations, convinced by certifications and case studies. They pitch security and fintech trades, get some coverage but weak inbound traffic or leads.

Next, they try: Ops leaders at fast‑growing SaaS companies, drowning in manual reviews before renewals, triggered by quarter‑end crunch, convinced by time‑saved and revenue‑protected. They aim PR at SaaS ops and RevOps outlets and finally see it. More qualified inquiries, sharper ROI questions, real pipeline. Same product but a different hypothesis.

Why PR is a Market-Evaluation Tool

Your buyers are already self‑educating. They read reviews, niche newsletters, and Slack threads, and they dodge irrelevant outreach. That’s why third‑party context matters. When your story shows up in a trusted outlet or podcast, buyers use it to decide whether the problem is real, who it’s for, and why now, often before you ever reach out. PR turns that behavior into market tests.

For example, an HR tech startup tests one story about “saving HR admins time on paperwork” in general business press, and another about “reducing burnout for frontline managers” in HR‑specific newsletters. The first gets feel‑good coverage but little action; the second drives demo requests from exactly the managers they want. Same product but different PR tests, and the results show where the real market is.

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PR-to-PMF Playbook: 6 Ways to evaluate Target Markets

If you stop treating PR as a launch megaphone and start treating it as a testing lab, it becomes one of your cheapest ways to evaluate markets. The six plays below are deliberately short and tactical, and each one comes with a clear “what to measure” so you’re not guessing.

1. Message Testing:

Instead of betting everything on one “perfect” story, pitch 2–3 sharply different angles to different segments: e.g., one for “save time,” one for “hit revenue targets,” and one for “avoid risk.” Watch which problem editors pick up, which subject lines get replies, and which angles pull in the right titles. Your scoreboard here is simple: reply rates, quality of inbound (titles, company fit), demo requests, and time‑to‑close by segment. The winning story earns its way into your homepage, sales decks, and later your paid campaigns.

Imagine a B2B fintech startup selling a cash‑flow tool. They test three earned angles: “close your books 40% faster,” “never get blindsided by a cash crunch again,” and “stay compliant with new reporting rules.” Accounting trades pick up the “close faster” angle, but it mostly drives junior accountant interest. A CFO newsletter runs the “no surprises” cash‑crunch story and suddenly VP Finance and CFOs start booking demos. The compliance angle lands, but only with a small niche. Same product, three stories—PR makes it obvious that “no more cash‑flow surprises” is the pain senior buyers actually move on.

2. “Problem interviews”:

Don’t just push your story; use PR to pull the real story out of buyers. When a pitch or article sparks interest, treat those replies and demos like mini journalist interviews. For example, ask open questions instead of jumping straight to a deck.

Listen for repeated phrases, trigger events, and budget language—that’s your product‑market data. For example, an HR tech startup offers 20‑minute “burnout briefings” to readers who respond to their PR hits. On calls with frontline managers, they keep hearing:

“We lose good people after peak season”

“New shift policies always blow up Slack”

“We only get budget when turnover is a crisis.”

Those patterns tell them the real buying moment isn’t generic “productivity”—it’s peak season and post‑attrition panic. They feed those exact words and scenarios back into messaging, sales scripts, and future PR angles.

3. Share of Voice + Competitor Narrative Mapping:

Audit how the category is actually talked about, and who “owns” which ideas, using social, search, PR, and content data. For each theme, we quantify SOV by topic, sentiment, and message pull-through – to see where your brand leads, where you’re absent, and where the white space is.

The output is a simple narrative map: what customers actually talk about vs. how strongly each competitor is linked to those topics. This highlights a short list of high-value, low-ownership territories your messaging should claim.

4. Category and Search-Demand Validation:

Validate that PR themes match how people actually search and how media frames the space. We track branded and non-branded search lift, and direct traffic to POV pages after coverage, to confirm that your narratives show up in queries, clicks, and time on page (not just headlines).

These signals tell us which stories convert attention into demand, and which to retire. We double down on themes that reliably move search and direct traffic after each major hit, so your category story is anchored in the language and behavior of how people are actually hunting for solutions.

5. Credibility Assets That Reduce Purchase Anxiety:

Systematically build and deploy proof so buyers feel safe saying “yes.” That means case studies, customer quotes, benchmarks, and “how we did it” explainers mapped to specific objections and stages of the journey. We measure sales-cycle compression and conversion rate changes when assets are used (on calls, in sequences, on key pages).

6. Channel Fit Equals Market Fit:

Treat channel response as a core part of market fit and not a distribution afterthought. If Segment A reliably moves off podcasts and trade coverage while Segment B only reacts to analyst notes and peer reviews, that’s a signal about how they buy, who they trust, and how considered the purchase is. We track **channel-to-pipeline contribution by segment**—which combinations of channel + message actually generate qualified opportunities, not just impressions.

Common Founder Mistakes (and how to fix them)

Startups often cite failure as “the product wasn’t ready.” In CB Insights’ review of 101 failed startups, 42% said the real reason was “no market need”. In translation: they never got real market signals (just vibes).

1. Mistake #1: “We need more coverage.”

Most founders say, “We need more coverage,” when the real problem is, “We don’t know what’s working.” You don’t need more logos and mentions, you need better signal., or clear proof that the right people are moving closer to a decision – like target buyers booking calls, starting trials, paying you, or forwarding your deck. Noise is what most teams optimize for: likes, “great post!” comments, vanity press, unqualified traffic.

2. Mistake #2: “PR is top-of-funnel only.”

Only if you’re lazy about it. Intentional PR is mid- and bottom-of-funnel: long-form case studies in niche outlets your buyers trust, founder pieces that kill objections, expert commentary that shows up in the research phase. Done right, prospects hit your site already primed and pre-sold.

3. Mistake #3: “We’ll figure it out after launch.”

This is how you donate your runway back to the market. The post-mortems are full of teams that shipped, waited, and “optimized later” until the bank account said otherwise. Treat positioning, narrative, and distribution like features. That means you prototype them, test them, and ship them before launch.

Before you pour more money into paid or start hiring a bigger GTM team, hit pause and run a 30-day PR market validation sprint. For the next 30 days, pick:

• Two segments

• Three core messages

• Two channels

• One strong proof asset (case study, demo video, or teardown)

Treat it like an experiment. Push those messages through those channels to those segments and track only one thing: pipeline signal (qualified replies, trials, deals advancing). If that 30-day sprint doesn’t move signal, then more spend and more headcount definitely won’t.

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BONUS: PR Market Fit Scorecards

Message Resonance

Audience Pull

Conversion Evidence

Proof Readiness

Efficiency (PR CAC)

Wrap-Up

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PR measurement is broken, especially for startups. Most early-stage companies are still reporting metrics designed for Fortune 500 brands with massive budgets, dedicated analytics teams, and years of historical data. Meanwhile, founders are being told their PR is “working” because impressions went up… even when pipeline, hiring, and fundraising haven’t moved an inch.

In 2026, PR measurement must answer a simpler question: Is our visibility helping the business grow, right now and over time?

That requires a different KPI framework—one designed for speed, efficiency, and compounding impact.

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Why PR Metrics Are Different for Startups

Startups operate under constraints that traditional PR measurement ignores: founder time is the most expensive resource, budgets are tight, brand equity is minimal, and runways are short. This makes momentum far more important than perfection. With only about 10% of startups surviving long term, every PR activity must earn its place by driving tangible results, not just visibility (source).

Unlike large companies, startups don’t need hundreds of mentions. They need the right mentions in the right places, seen by buyers, investors, and partners who can actually move the business forward. Increasingly, that also means being surfaced by AI systems that now shape buyer research before any human conversation happens, accelerating the shift away from vanity metrics toward PR measurement tied directly to business impact (source).

Startup PR Red Flags

These metrics often look impressive in PR reports but rarely matter for early-stage startups – where total media impressions only signal reach, not results. What matters is whether press drives signups, demos, or revenue.

Advertising Value Equivalency (AVE) remains a widely criticized vanity metric with no proven link to trust or buying behavior. Social media follower counts inflate ego, not impact; engagement rate and founder authority are far stronger indicators of influence. Press release distribution volume measures activity, not outcomes. Earned coverage and real journalist relationships are what move the needle. And domain authority, in isolation, is meaningless unless it contributes to organic traffic, AI visibility, or conversions. If a metric doesn’t inform a business decision, it isn’t insight (it’s noise).

Key Principles for Startup PR Measurement

Before diving into KPIs, startups need a clear measurement philosophy. Revenue must outweigh vanity. If a metric doesn’t connect to pipeline, fundraising conversations, or talent acquisition, it shouldn’t be prioritized. Founder time is the real cost center, so measuring cost-per-coverage in hours is often more revealing than tracking spend.

Visibility inside tools like ChatGPT increasingly matters more than a static press page, while the most effective PR programs focus on compounding momentum and not one-off wins. Above all, quality beats quantity: a single article in the right outlet that drives real signups or credibility is more valuable than a flood of press releases that convert nothing.

The 5 PR KPIs That Actually Matter in 2026

1. AI Discoverability Score (ADS)

Most buyers now start with AI search. If ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity don’t mention you, you effectively don’t exist to your next customer. Say you run a startup that helps companies recover data after cyberattacks. A potential buyer opens ChatGPT or Perplexity and asks, “What’s the best way for a small business to recover quickly after ransomware?”

If the AI answers by explaining backups, disaster recovery, and then mentions your product by name (and describes it correctly), you show up in the buyer’s mental shortlist. That’s a problem-to-solution match. If it also says, “According to [Founder Name], CEO of [Your Company]…” or references a quote you’ve published, that’s founder/product mention rate. If the AI correctly explains what you do, who it’s for, and roughly how you’re priced, that’s accuracy. And if someone asks a broader question like “Who are the leading players in cloud backup for SMBs?” and your brand appears alongside others in that category, that’s category association.

If you’re missing from those answers, even if your product is great, the buyer may never know you exist.

2. Earned Media Efficiency Ratio (EMER)

This is helpful if you land a feature in a major tech outlet. Instead of just tracking the clip, you look at what it actually did: did readers click through and request a demo or sign up (press-to-pipeline)? How many total founder and team hours went into earning that coverage (cost per coverage)? Did the traffic from the article convert into real leads (traffic conversion rate)? And when you compare mentions in that outlet to better-funded competitors, how often did your startup show up (share of voice)?

3. Founder Authority Index (FAI)

For an early-stage startup, buyers, candidates, and investors are really betting on the founder. So instead of just posting into the void, you look at whether people actually engage with the founder’s ideas on LinkedIn (engagement rate). You can also track how often journalists, podcasts, or event organizers reach out without being pitched (media invitations). Take notice when the founder gets quoted or referenced as an expert in articles or by peers (expert citations). And watch whether the founder’s name starts popping up organically in newsletters, Slack groups, Discords, Reddit, or niche forums (community influence).

4. Launch Velocity Score (LVS)

A launch only matters if it reaches. So instead of just announcing news, you measure how fast and how far it spreads: how many people saw it in the first 48 hours (reach), how many different platforms picked it up organically (multi-platform spread), and whether the outlets that actually matter to your buyers covered it (Tier 1 pickup rate). High velocity means your launch broke through (not just that it went live).

5. Organic Search Momentum (OSM)

Good PR should make you easier to find over time. After coverage runs, you look for more people searching your brand by name (branded search growth), new high-quality sites linking back to you from earned media (press-driven backlinks), and improved rankings for the category keywords your buyers actually use (keyword movement). And as AI-powered search expands, you also track whether Google’s AI Overviews start mentioning your brand for those searches. If search visibility isn’t improving, your PR isn’t compounding.

Measure What Compounds

Startup PR measurement isn’t about proving activity, it’s about proving momentum. The strongest PR programs show up where buyers (and AI systems) are actually looking. They turn third-party credibility into measurable conversions, and compound authority over time without draining founder bandwidth. If your KPIs don’t help you make faster, smarter decisions (or don’t map directly to growth) they aren’t KPIs at all. They’re distractions.

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In 2025, I crossed my 100th startup client. After 17 years in PR and hundreds of founders, CEOs, and C-suite leaders across consumer and B2B tech, I’ve seen the same mistake at every stage. It’s time to talk about it.

Launching a product? PR gets called weeks before GA, after the story is locked. But PR belongs in the GTM room early, shaping the narrative before competitors do and before hype outpaces credibility.

Seeing growth? Metrics get hidden instead of amplified. Silence feels safe, but it rarely is. Ongoing PR ensures momentum is translated into trust, demand, and long-term brand value.

Raising capital? PR is considered after the round closes, leaving leverage on the table. Involving PR earlier sharpens the investor narrative and sets up a credible, well-timed announcement.

Different moments. Same mistake. PR is treated as a reaction and not a strategy.

23 reasons startups should have PR right now

(This list is organized by the stage of the company)

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Seed Stage: “We need legitimacy.”

Investors and stakeholders increasingly treat media visibility as a legitimacy signal, not just a nice-to-have. According to industry data, pre-Series A startups with consistent press visibility raise 35% more funding than those with no media coverage, underscoring the impact of early external validation on investor confidence and perceived momentum. 

A survey of investor due diligence practices found that 92% of venture capitalists review press coverage when evaluating early-stage companies, meaning startups without media presence risk being overlooked or seen as less credible. 

Companies that delay PR until major milestones often miss the “freshness window” for shaping perception and lose the chance to build narrative momentum when it matters most, resulting in weaker visibility and diluted brand positioning later in their growth journey. 

At the seed stage, you need to focus on your founders, vision, problem framing, POV, and early traction. No one knows or trusts you yet.

Series A: “We need growth and proof.”

Even at Series A, PR isn’t just “nice to have.” It measurably affects growth, trust, and investor confidence.

Startups that invest in media relationships and earned coverage 12–18 months before a Series A raise are shown to be 3× more likely to hit their target funding amount and can see 15–25% higher valuations compared to peers without early PR efforts because they enter the market with established credibility and narrative presence (source).

Favorable media coverage increases brand trust by roughly 35% (source), directly improving buyer confidence and shortening sales cycles. Companies that delay building visibility are more likely to be overlooked in crowded markets, leading to weaker deal flow and slower go-to-market momentum.

At Series A, your PR focus should be on customer stories, category POV, exec visibility, and product credibility. There’s a significant risk for stalling after the first raise, which underscores the need for PR at this stage.

Series B-C: “We need scale and consistency.”

Even as startups scale through Series B and C rounds, strategic PR remains critical to sustained growth, credibility, and market positioning. Consistent media visibility helps companies build brand authority and reinforces customer and investor confidence at a time when scrutiny is rising and competition is fierce.

Research shows that startups with ongoing PR and media engagement that drive third-party recognition are far more likely to remain top of mind with investors, partners, and customers. This is a form of signal bias that venture capitalists and industry decision-makers increasingly use to differentiate crowded fields and surface investment opportunities. 

Startups that delay building these relationships often struggle to gain traction in new markets, lose momentum in hiring and sales conversations, and miss out on credibility signals that reinforce leadership visibility and long-term category relevance.

At this stage, PR should be focused on consistency, scale, credibility, and leadership visibility. You might be dealing with fragmented messaging and rising scrutiny, driving the need for PR.

Series D/Pre-IPO: “We need trust at scale.”

At the Series D and Pre-IPO stage, reputation isn’t just perception; it’s business risk. According to research on investor behavior in public companies, nearly 70% of investors consider media and analyst sentiment when evaluating late-stage and pre-IPO companies. This is because consistent external validation correlates with marketplace trust and perceived governance quality.

Other research shows that firms with established PR and earned media strategies demonstrate up to 30% higher investor engagement and stronger aftermarket valuation performance than peers that delayed narrative and media groundwork, primarily because early visibility builds familiarity and reduces perceived risk at scale.

Companies that postpone PR until late in their lifecycle often face steeper challenges in shaping long-term narrative, aligning internal and external communications, and managing heightened scrutiny from regulators, customers, and analysts.

Typically by pre-IPO or Series D, PR’s focus is on reputation management, consistency, governance, and long-term brand equity. This is when your reputation risk becomes business risk, making PR imperative.

As I’ve said, I’ve seen the same mistake over and over: PR is treated as something you turn on when you’re already under pressure. A launch is coming. Growth is slowing. A round is closing. Scrutiny is rising.

Then PR gets the call.

But PR doesn’t work on demand. It compounds. The companies that scale well don’t wait until they “need” PR. They build it early, use it consistently, and let credibility, relationships, and trust accumulate over time. Once you need PR urgently, you’ve already lost leverage.

Waiting isn’t neutral. It lets competitors define the narrative, investors meet you without context, and sales fight skepticism that didn’t have to exist. Your story forms either way — the only question is whether you shaped it.

For all of the execs out there waiting until the last minute to loop in PR support, or until you “need” PR, you’re already reacting instead of leading.

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In the previous post in this series on PR measurement, I outlined the first five core KPIs every tech startup should track to determine whether its earned media strategy is working. Those metrics, including share of voice, message penetration, sentiment, coverage quality, and volume, form the baseline most modern PR teams operate from today.

But they’re only half the picture.

If the past decade has taught us anything, it’s that visibility alone is no longer a sufficient measure of PR success. Coverage doesn’t live and die on the publication page anymore. It moves – across websites, social platforms, investor decks, sales conversations, hiring pipelines, and analyst reports.

To understand whether PR is truly contributing to business momentum, teams need to look beyond coverage itself and measure what happens after the story runs.

Below are the next five KPIs that complete a modern, outcome-driven PR measurement framework. Together with the first five, they provide a practical baseline for assessing real PR impact in 2025 and beyond.

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Warning: This post was developed using AI, with significant human oversight.

I recently posted a short video on LinkedIn meant to show my growth over the past year. What surprised me wasn’t the response to the message; it was the response to the mechanics.

Because the LinkedIn algorithm sucks, this post only saw 133 impressions over the course of a week. It reached only 64 members despite my small group of 2,830 followers.

One person’s comment (of two comments), in particular, got my attention. A former colleague, Nick Brackney, now an AI evangelist at Dell, reached out after seeing it:

“You should write about this. What did you use to build the video? You’re one of the few professionals I see really leaning into AI tooling to make yourself look better — and it works. People should learn how to do this.”

So here it is: This story (and LinkedIn video) wasn’t the result of a prompt, which is what most people think of when we say “AI.”

There was no moment where I typed “make me a viral LinkedIn video” and waited for magic. Instead, I started with real data, applied human judgment, and used AI tools to dramatically compress the time it took to turn insight into content. AI didn’t create the story, but it sure helped me see it faster and execute it better.

LinkedIn Analytics → Google Sheets

I exported a full year of LinkedIn analytics and cleaned the data in Google Sheets.

The goal wasn’t to showcase growth or vanity metrics. My engagement was modest. Impressions weren’t explosive. But lead generation? Very strong. As I mentioned in the original post, a large majority of my business leads in 2025 came directly from LinkedIn referrals.

Once the data was organized and appropriately visualized, the story became obvious. That part still requires judgment. AI can help summarize or analyze, but deciding what actually matters to the business is real human work. And for me, that meant leads and not eyeballs on my post.

What’s worth noting is that AI influenced every piece of content I published in 2025 in some way. It was a personal goal of mine to launch my Substack in late 2024. AI is a massive part of my 5-year business plan and growth, too.

In 2025, I used AI to:

• Fine-tune and edit my writing.

• Brainstorm Substack headlines that later became LinkedIn posts.

• Create simple, compelling graphics.

• Learn, create, and launch my first freelancer website, www.lindsbcomms.com.

• Radically reduce the time it takes to find and organize LinkedIn profiles – for example, the top 50 reporters I wanted to build relationships with in 2025.

That last one matters more than it sounds. AI didn’t replace relationship-building. It removed the busywork so I could spend my time engaging with people instead of searching for links. Organizing the right components of a pitch and making sure my story makes sense in a unique (but straightforward) way.

In a world where AI is driving the cost of content creation toward zero and threatening to replace us all, the real pros who survive won’t be the ones producing the most content. They’ll be the ones who use AI to build effective channels, repeatable processes, and work that clearly impacts the bottom line.

For example, I use AI-generated comic-book-style graphics on my website. It’s more of a science experiment than a formal strategy, but I like it because it reflects my personal style: practical, slightly unconventional, and focused on efficiency.

Canva AI as an Accelerator

For the video itself, I used Canva’s AI-assisted search to quickly find a template that matched the tone I wanted (“social media celebration” was close enough). From there:

• I wrote every word.

• Each slide is mapped to a specific data point.

• AI handled layout, pacing, and formatting.

• One of the video elements was created using Canva’s AI tools.

This is what I mean by acceleration. AI didn’t replace my thinking; it removed friction.

A Side Note on AI and Writing

While I wrote the LinkedIn post 100%, that was a deliberate choice. To be clear, AI plays a role in about 95% of my writing process overall. But how I use it depends entirely on the audience and the context.

• Pitches: No AI. I want to build authentic relationships in the most human way I can in a digital world.

• Client emails: Sometimes. Authenticity matters, but I often use AI to generate a clean TL;DR.

• Press release first drafts: Absolutely, with significant human oversight. Drafting is table stakes; strategy and individualized story pitching are where PR pros add value.

• SEO headlines, AP-style edits, publication-specific tuning: 100% yes. AI is incredibly effective here.

My Actual Take on Using AI for Content

Here’s the advice I give professionals who want to “use AI” but don’t know where to start: Start with the tools you already use regularly.

Most of the tools you use every day already include AI features or agents, such as design platforms, analytics dashboards, and productivity software. I have Slack summaries, don’t you?

You can learn a lot about how these systems can help you before jumping into advanced LLM workflows. Once you understand how AI supports your thinking (rather than replacing it), experimenting with tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Perplexity becomes far more intuitive – especially as they increasingly integrate directly into existing stacks.

For example, I use AI-generated visuals using WordPress’s AI image tool on my website instead of stock photography. They’re faster, more specific to my needs, and far less generic. AI didn’t do my job for me, but it dramatically compressed time (and cost).

As a freelancer, I use ChatGPT like a sidekick. I’m constantly asking questions about how my work could be clearer, sharper, or more effective. Not replacement, but acceleration.

Finally, because I’m all about DIY PR here, I offer my fellow professionals the following practical AI tips –especially if you’re just getting started.

10 Practical AI Tips

1. AI is most useful once you know what you’re trying to fix or speed up.

2. If you wouldn’t delegate it to a junior teammate, don’t delegate it to AI.

3. Use AI to eliminate friction, not responsibility.

4. AI is best after the first draft.

5. Speed is the real advantage (quality still requires humans).

6. Let AI handle formatting, organizing, and summarizing. Keep decisions for yourself.

7. If the output feels generic, it probably is.

8. AI shouldn’t make your work louder (just clearer).

9. Use AI where mistakes are cheap.

10. Your voice is the differentiator.

I’d love to hear how other professionals plan to use (or not use) AI in 2026! Leave a comment!

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Why Do Execs Wait Too Long to Use PR?

In 2025, I crossed the 100th startup client milestone. After 17 years in PR and hundreds of founders, CEOs, and C-suite leaders across consumer and B2B tech, I’ve seen the same mistake at every stage. It’s time to talk about it.

Launching a product? PR gets called weeks before GA, after the story is locked. But PR belongs in the GTM room early, shaping the narrative before competitors do and before hype outpaces credibility.

Seeing growth? Metrics get hidden instead of amplified. Silence feels safe, but it rarely is. Ongoing PR ensures momentum is translated into trust, demand, and long-term brand value.

Raising capital? PR is considered after the round closes, leaving leverage on the table. Involving PR earlier sharpens the investor narrative and sets up a credible, well-timed announcement.

Different moments. Same mistake. PR is treated as a reaction and not a strategy.

23 reasons startups should have PR right now 

(This list is organized by stage of company) 

Seed Stage: “We need legitimacy.”

Investors and stakeholders increasingly treat media visibility as a legitimacy signal, not just a nice-to-have. According to industry data, pre-Series A startups with consistent press visibility have been shown to raise 35% more in funding than those with no media coverage, signaling the impact of early external validation on investor confidence and perceived momentum.  

A survey of investor due diligence practices found that 92% of venture capitalists review press coverage when evaluating early-stage companies, meaning startups without media presence risk being overlooked or seen as less credible.  

Companies that delay PR until major milestones often miss the “freshness window” for shaping perception and lose the chance to build narrative momentum when it matters most, resulting in weaker visibility and diluted brand positioning later in their growth journey. 

At Seed Stage, you need to focus on your founders, vision, problem framing, POV, and early traction. No one knows or trusts you yet. 

Series A: “We need growth and proof.”

Even at Series A, PR isn’t just “nice to have.” It measurably affects growth, trust, and investor confidence. 

Startups that invest in media relationships and earned coverage 12–18 months before a Series A raise are shown to be 3× more likely to hit their target funding amount and can see 15–25% higher valuations compared to peers without early PR efforts because they enter the market with established credibility and narrative presence (source). 

Positive media coverage increases brand trust by roughly 35% (source), directly improving buyer confidence and shortening sales cycles. Companies that delay building visibility are more likely to be overlooked in crowded markets, leading to weaker deal flow and slower go-to-market momentum.

At Series A, your PR focus should be on customer stories, category POV, exec visibility, and product credibility. There’s significant risk for stalling after the first raise, which underscores the need for PR at this stage. 

Series B-C: “We need scale and consistency.”

Even as startups scale through Series B and C, strategic PR remains critical for sustained growth, credibility, and market positioning. Consistent media visibility helps companies build brand authority and reinforces customer and investor confidence at a time when scrutiny is rising and competition is fierce. 

Research shows that startups with ongoing PR and media engagement that drive third-party recognition are far more likely to remain top-of-mind with investors, partners, and customers. This is a form of signal bias that venture capitalists and industry decision-makers increasingly use to differentiate crowded fields and surface investment opportunities. 

Startups that delay building these relationships often struggle to gain traction in new markets, lose momentum in hiring and sales conversations, and miss out on credibility signals that reinforce leadership visibility and long-term category relevance.

At this stage, PR should be focused on consistency, scale, credibility, and leadership visibility. You might be dealing with fragmented messaging and rising scrutiny, driving the need for PR. 

Series D/Pre-IPO: “We need trust at scale.”

At the Series D and Pre-IPO stage, reputation isn’t just perception, it’s business risk. According to research on public company investor behavior, nearly 70% of investors consider media and analyst sentiment when evaluating late-stage and pre-IPO companies. This is because consistent external validation correlates with marketplace trust and perceived governance quality. 

Other research shows firms with established PR and earned media strategies demonstrate up to 30 % higher investor engagement and stronger aftermarket valuation performance compared with peers that delayed narrative and media groundwork, largely because early visibility builds familiarity and reduces perceived risk at scale. 

Companies that postpone PR until late in their lifecycle often face steeper challenges in shaping long-term narrative, aligning internal and external communications, and managing heightened scrutiny from regulators, customers, and analysts. 

Typically by pre-IPO or Series D, PR’s focus is on reputation management, consistency, governance, and long-term brand equity. This is when your reputation risk becomes business risk, making PR imperative. 

Like I’ve said, I’ve seen the same mistake over and over: PR is treated as something you turn on when you’re already under pressure. A launch is coming. Growth is slowing. A round is closing. Scrutiny is rising.

Then PR gets the call. 

But PR doesn’t work on demand. It compounds. The companies that scale well don’t wait until they “need” PR. They build it early, use it consistently, and let credibility, relationships, and trust accumulate over time. Once you need PR urgently, you’ve already lost leverage.

Waiting isn’t neutral. It lets competitors define the narrative, investors meet you without context, and sales fight skepticism that didn’t have to exist. Your story forms either way — the only question is whether you shaped it.

For all of the execs out there waiting until the last minute to loop in PR support, or until you “need” PR, you’re already reacting instead of leading.