How to Announce Your Seed Funding

Hi, I'm Devon Nash and I lead marketing at vc and I'm here to talk to you about how to make the most of announcing your seed round. So the first thing that you want to do when you raise your seed round is start to think about am I going to announce this funding? And the too long, didn't read version of this is in most cases you should. But I'm going to start with why you maybe shouldn't. There is this age old saying that all press is good press and that is factually incorrect. And the mistake that I see a lot of founders make is they go into this process thinking that they can go in with their press release perfectly polished and that the reporter is going to publish that as written. And that is just not the case. Another reason why you might not want to announce your funding is that you might have trade secrets. You might be super early on in the development of your tech and that tech may be the thing that sets you apart and you don't want to give the scoop to your potential competitors. The other thing that you should think about when you're thinking about announcing is just how much time it actually takes to do that. This isn't you reaching out to one reporter and getting an immediate response. This is a time intensive process where you're reaching out to multiple contacts. And so ultimately this is going to take you a good chunk of time and you as a founder or you as an early marketing lead for a startup might not have that time allocated to do that. So in most cases you should announce your seed funding. And the reason for this is what's the first thing that you do when you hear about a company or a new person? Likely you Google them. And this is a way to build your early digital fingerprint for your company and for yourself as a founder. When your early customers are thinking about using your service or investors are thinking about investing in your next round, they are going to Google you and they are going to see what others have written about you. And largely what they're looking for is third party validation. They're looking to see that somebody else has validated that your idea or your team is a good one. The other reason that I would say that announcing your funding early on is a good idea is that PR ultimately has compounding effects. It works a little bit like a flywheel and the more attention that you get early on, the more accrues to you later on. Everyone has this person or company that's always showing up in their LinkedIn feed and they're thinking like, how is this person always getting this recognition? Or how is this company always showing up in the news headlines? And it's because they started early. And when they do that and they get that first little piece of validation, maybe it's the best startup to work at in Boston, or Rising star award for this founder. Other members of the press and of the community see that. And when they have something that they want to write about or an award that they want to give, it's a lot safer to give that person that award or write about that particular company because it's already been validated by a third party. So before you announce your seed funding, it's important to think about whether you're press ready. And when I say press ready, I'm thinking about a few specific things. One, before you can really do a successful press anything, you have to nurture relationships with the press. So I think about this. Like Toby Lutke at Shopify calls it the trust battery. You need to meet a member of the press. When you meet that individual, your trust battery starts at, I don't know, 50%. And ultimately, over time, you need to build a relationship with that member of the press. So how do you get that 50% trust battery to 75%, then it's 100%. Well, ultimately, it's showing that you're a genuine thought leader in this space and building a natural and organic relationship with this individual by commenting on their social media posts. When they publish a story that you find interesting, you can email them and let them know, hey, I found that story to be really interesting. But you might think about this other piece of it that wasn't included in the story that I think would be really interesting for your next thread. Ultimately, the name of the game is making your name recognizable so that when you do someday have something that you want them to cover, you can email them and they will recognize your name in their inbox. When I first talk to early stage founders about their funding announcement, they often don't have a great deal of empathy for just reading what a crazy place a reporter's inbox is. If you imagine your inbox on its absolute worst day and then you multiply that by 100, that is what a reporter's inbox looks like every single day. And so to break through that noise, your name has to be recognizable to them and you have to have an incredible narrative. And when I say narrative, I don't just mean you've nailed your value prop inside and out. I mean that you've thought about what is truly interesting to the market and to that specific reporter. Every reporter has a beat. They have things that they are regularly covering and storylines that they find to be particularly interesting. It's your job to uncover what those are and to really understand what is ultimately going to be interesting to their readers. The number one thing that I tell founders is that everything you say is on the record. There's lots of fancy PR terms speaking on background, speaking off the record, speaking on the record. And it can get really confusing. Your assumption should just always be that everything you are saying will end up in print. So you want to be really thoughtful about what you do want to say and what you do not want to say. When you identify things that you specifically don't want to say, it can be really helpful to know bridging phrases. They're little statements that allow you to pivot a conversation so you get asked a question you don't want to answer. You can say, hey, that's really interesting. But the real story here is this. Politicians are incredible at bridging phrases. They're important to learn because they allow you to stay within the guardrails that you're comfortable with for an interview. Additionally, if this is your first time talking to a member of the press, it might be a good idea not to go for a zoom, but rather a phone call because that allows you to have a little bit more control over the conversation. And you can have your notes in front of you and it might just feel a little bit like a security blanket as you're talking to that member of the press. So when it comes to executing your funding announcement, you basically have three options. You can hire a PR firm. That's going to be expensive. It's about 15 to 20 grand a month on a retainer. You can hire a freelance PR person. That's a great option. That's usually the one that I recommend to our founders because it's a little bit lower in cost. Think five to ten grand for a one time engagement. And ultimately that PR freelancer has earned credibility to be out in the market working on their own. So they're probably a little bit more senior and they've built relationships with the reporters that matter to you. And then the third option is you can do it diy. I see a lot of founders do it diy. Every time they do it, they come back to me and say, I can't believe just how much work went into that. It's not as simple as writing a press release and pitching one reporter. It's a lot of iteration a lot of email and a lot of back and forth. And so my general recommendation is that if you can find a great freelancer, you should. But your VCs likely know of a few. And in some cases, your VCs might have services in house or on retainer that they can offer to you to make that lift just even a little bit lighter.