Demystifying the tech press for early-stage founders
A conversation with Aaron Zamost (ex-Head of Comms, Square) and Lauren Goode (Senior Writer, WIRED)
At Adverb, we’re constantly building community and sharing knowledge with founders - we’ve gotten to connect with over 300 founders and builders at our events this quarter alone!
Last month, we hosted a fireside chat with Aaron Zamost (former Head of Comms, Square) and Lauren Goode (Senior Writer, WIRED) in San Francisco to pull back the curtain on how tech press gets made, how some founders manage to break through a noisy and competitive landscape, and common pitfalls for early-stage founders and their companies.
Our biggest takeaway: it all starts with compelling storytelling, and like all things, empathy for the person on the other side of the table (in this case, a reporter). It turns out that reporters are humans, too – understanding their interests and how to develop the kind of rapport that results in the press founders dream of is a long game.
We’re organizing a similar event in NYC later this summer - let us know if you'd be interested in joining.
Read on for a summary of this valuable conversation.
A conversation with Aaron Zamost (ex-Head of Comms, Square) and Lauren Goode (Senior Writer, WIRED) on Navigating the “Tech Press”
The conversation has been edited for clarity.
Build real relationships
Aaron asked Lauren how many pitches she gets every month. The answer wasn’t pretty. “Hundreds, if not thousands. I have 34,000 unread emails in my inbox.”
So as one of those hundreds (or thousands) of people pitching a top tier reporter, how do you get Lauren’s attention?
Lauren: “If you're a startup founder and you're thinking of hiring [a communications person] internally, or you're thinking of outsourcing PR to an agency, you want to make sure that they are people who can get into reporters’ inboxes, and not in a sales driven way. It's got to be a direct relationship, like ‘I'm in this person's iMessage or Signal. We talk regularly. We go for coffee, we go for lunch. We go for lunch for no reason sometimes. And I know how to get in touch with them, and even if I’m not going to place a story, I’m at least going to get helpful feedback.’”
You don’t always have to pitch something
You might have better luck with a reporter if you’re up front with them that you don’t expect them to write.
Aaron: “I’m a big fan of the no-pressure conversation. I worked with an AI startup, and I told them, ‘There are a thousand AI companies, and reporters can only write about so many of them.’ So I called a reporter I know well, and I said, ‘I know you're trying to get the lay of the AI land these days, learning more about AI generally, and funding, and valuations, and hiring.’ And I said ‘I've been working with a company and I think they have something to say that will be different, and will you give them 25 minutes?’ That was my whole angle. Like, ‘There's no pitch here. I just think when you talk to them you're not going to hear the same things you hear from everybody else and it might be useful to you.’ And she agreed and took the meeting, and now the company has a relationship with a reporter at a major publication.”
Set realistic expectations and take wins where you can
Just because you think you’re interesting (and you very well might be), it doesn’t mean a reporter is necessarily going to write a story about you, especially when you’re small. That’s OK! Communications and storytelling are a long game. Be happy and willing to participate even if you’re not going to be the headline.
Lauren: “When you’re a smaller startup, even a midsize startup, you're probably not going to get a big feature story yet. Of course you would love that, but if you temper your expectations and realize that even if you are just mentioned in a bigger story as a company example, or your quote is included in a bigger trend story, it's still really good visibility for you. And, I'm not sure that all PR people realize that.”
Know what reporters need, not just what they’re interested in
Too often founders and comms people associate a reporter with a specific beat, and think about how best to position themselves within that beat. But reporters are curious people, and they are constantly looking for new and different angles to pursue. Be willing to go “off-script,” and see how you can help the reporter, not just how the reporter can help you.
Aaron: “Often people will pitch a reporter by saying, ‘You recently wrote a story about Topic X. My company is also involved in Topic X, and we have a lot to say about it. Obviously you would be interested in talking to us, right?’ And most reporters think, “Huh? I just wrote about that thing. Why would I write about it again so soon?’”
Lauren: “It’s maddening. The likelihood that I'm going to take your company's [pitch] when I literally just published a story about it, it's slim to none.”
Aaron: “But isn't it intuitive that I would say, ‘Well, you cover wearables, and I am a wearable fitness company, so obviously I would want to reach out to you about that right?”
Lauren: “Yes but here's an example. I had a call with someone who is a startup founder, who's building something in generative AI. And I'm probably unlikely to cover his company directly, but he was so willing to just talk shop about the industry. Like, he was willing to talk about bootstrapping and that’s something I'm very interested in right now as a potential story. And he was willing to talk about the funding environment and some of the challenges of that right now.”
Aaron: “What you're saying is that he was malleable to your interests.”
Lauren: “Yes, at the end I said I thought to myself, I'm going to reach out to him in the future because he was just willing to kind of jaw, and I really like that.”
There’s always an angle
Be creative. Sometimes the best way to pitch your company is to tell a story about something else instead.
Aaron: “A woman on my team at Square led our Hardware comms and we were releasing the new Square register, which was fully integrated, [no longer required an iPad] and ran Android. And she said, ‘I want to pitch Lauren. She would be perfect because she writes device reviews.’ And I said, ‘There is no way Lauren is going to write a review of a hardware point of sale. She's writing about consumer products, like goggles, she's not writing about the register.’ But then we thought about it, and I said if we were going to try, here's what I think we should do. And we pitched ‘The best Android tablet on the market is a cash register.’”
Lauren: “[The pitch] was totally wise. And it's a story that I wrote and it blew up.”
Aaron: “Because that story was not ‘Square announces a new thing.’ Instead it was, well if we take a shit on Android tablets, I’ll bet a reporter would be super into that.”
Lauren: “It was a beautiful tablet. It looked like a Macbook, with an aluminum unibody, but yes it was Android, and that’s what made it more interesting. And then I would go to coffee shops around San Francisco afterwards [and see the register] and be like, I wrote about that.”
And finally: offer exclusives, not embargoes
Lauren: “The fact that the White House, or medical journals, or the IMF use embargoes all makes sense in the context of national security issues or potentially consequential health information or major market-moving information. But when you're a startup no one's ever heard of and you do an embargo blast to a dozen different outlets and think your embargo is sacrosanct, it might even result in less interest.”
Aaron: “Exactly. This is why I’m a fan of exclusives. Companies often want to pitch a bunch of reporters with the hope that they can get one or two to write, but I always tell them, if I could guarantee you that one top-tier publication would write, wouldn’t you take that? Instead of the risk that no one writes because they think someone else will?”
Opportunities to Work with Adverb Portfolio Companies:
Multiple roles including non-technical roles at Particle! Particle, the AI-powered news app, is growing! Now hiring for an SRE, a Backend Engineer, a Community / Editorial Lead, and a News / Media Partnerships Lead.
Founding AI Engineer: Build the future of video generation. Details here.
Founding ML/AI Engineer at Workmate Labs: Build the AI executive assistant for work. Details here.
(Unpaid, but fun!) Minecraft players: a stealth company is looking to connect with adult Minecraft players who would be interested in sharing user perspective and trying an early version of their product. Reply directly if you’re interested.
Neurologists: Piramidal is looking to connect with neurologists within research hospitals. If you know a neurologist interested in connecting a team building a foundational model for the brain, we’d love to introduce them.
General Opportunities: If you are a builder interested in roles at an early-stage company, share your information with us by replying to this email. We will keep you in mind when our portfolio companies are growing.
Admiringly,
Team Adverb 💚