Dylan Tweney, former VentureBeat editor, explains why reporters ignore most press releases and seed rounds don't get coverage. He shares what actually works to get journalists talking about your startup.
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Dylan is the founder of Tweeny Media, a content agency that helps companies communicate through blog posts, online magazines, podcasts, video, and more. He's a former editor-in-chief of VentureBeat and was an editor at Wired. He's been writing, editing, and publishing professionally for over 2 decades, and his work has appeared in publications including PRWeek, PC Magazine, Technology Review, CIO, and many others. So with that, let's welcome Dylan.
That's really nice, Andy. Thank you. Come on.
You have to go now.
Do you remember that story about Hero City and Draper University? I'm going to bring this up because— do you remember what it was called? I've forgotten the title. But I think it was something like Tim Draper's weird, goofy—
I just remember you told me to make sure I read the entire article.
Yeah.
Which I did.
Because I definitely did not hold back about the, like, the superhero mural and some other things about Draper University and Hero City that I think some people might find a little bit odd. And I was like, okay, it's definitely a little bit odd, it's quirky here, but I think they might be onto something. Because when I looked around and when I talked to people, I realized that there's really an ecosystem here between the university across the street and Hero City here and the VCs upstairs and all that. So I think it was a good story for you guys, but it wasn't like purely 100% positive, right?
It was positive enough that you're invited back.
There you go. There you go. Yeah, yeah, right. And I wasn't like jumping all over— I wasn't being mean or anything. I just— I bring that up because when you're getting PR coverage, often you don't— well, if you're getting covered by a reporter, you don't control the outcome, right? So you don't really know what they're gonna say. And they may say things that you wouldn't say, or they may put things in a way that you're not used to putting things. You might feel a little uncomfortable about that, or a little— maybe even upset about that. I think it's important to just remember that unless it's factually inaccurate, and we can talk about that during the Q&A if you want, you're getting coverage. And even if it's not perfect, even if it's not the way you would say it, that's still good because what you're after is exposure and influence and communication. So what I'm gonna talk about is PR and content for startups. And let me just start by saying, TweenyMedia, I'm not a PR guy. I don't actually do PR, so I'm not selling my own services here. I do content, so you could say that I'm promoting my own services in that way, but I just want you to be clear. I'm gonna talk about PR from the perspective of a writer and editor and reporter from the years that I was doing tech journalism at places like VentureBeat and Wired, PC Magazine, and other places. to help you get attention. And I'm gonna talk also about content and communications as part of your outreach strategy, because I think a lot of startups think, oh, we just need PR. And you're like, well, why do you need PR? And they say, oh, well, we need to get in TechCrunch. And I actually heard that today. And then you ask them, well, why do you wanna be in TechCrunch? And they're like, well, that's what startups do, right? And we wanna get our next round of funding, and so if you get in TechCrunch, you'll get the next round of funding. And so people kind of have this idea that PR means, for startups, means finding somebody to get you in TechCrunch. And it's— that's actually a very short-sighted and very narrow and limited way to look at things. I think he's got a few things that he wants to add. Okay. Oh, good. He's got noodles. Excellent. So the rest of you enjoy pizza. We've got noodles in that corner, but— There's pizza and drinks over there. If you didn't get any at the start, please feel free to go over. I won't mind if you wanna get up and get some food while it's still warm. Okay, so I'm gonna start with the bad news about PR and getting coverage from reporters. First of all, reporters don't read press releases. It's not necessarily a bad thing to write a press release, but just don't write it, and we can talk later if you want about what a press release can be useful for, but Don't write a press release with the expectation that anyone is ever gonna read it. Sorry. Nobody cares about your product. Sorry. I don't care how cool it is. It's AI, it's 3D, it's VR, it's like 3D VR with AI. Could be amazing.
Hi.
Nobody cares because they don't know, first of all, they don't know how cool it is. Second of all, they don't know what the context is. They don't know, I mean, maybe you're just some crazy guy in a garage, right, and you haven't, got the ability to implement this amazing idea, or you have an amazing product, but you don't have the ability to bring it to market or to sell it effectively. So until all those things line up, reporters won't care. It doesn't matter how cool the product is. Nobody cares about your seed funding, and there's really no way around that. You have to raise several million dollars these days to get any kind of coverage because the stakes have gone up so much. I mean, it's so easy to get $1 million or $2 million in seed funding now. It probably isn't that easy, but from a journalist's point of view, it seems like all you have to do is have a pulse and somebody will give you $1 million in seed funding, right? Seems that way. So nobody cares about that. And then also, there are fewer journalists than there used to be, and that's just a fact of life. Unfortunately, over the past 20 years, the media business has been dying. Newspapers are laying off people. Even the tech publications that used to hire tons of journalists, CNET, TechCrunch, TechCrunch is really kind of small compared to some of the other big ones, but the computer magazines like PCMag, PC World have laid off people or gone away, InfoWorld. It's just like there are fewer journalists out there, and what that means is every single journalist is overworked. Especially in tech where there's a crap ton of news and a ton of people who are emailing them and giving them kind of tips about things that are coming in. Like the typical journalist's inbox is gonna have hundreds of messages a day. Even after you filter out the spam, there's probably gonna be hundreds of messages that could potentially be legitimate news stories, and they have to kind of sift through this and figure out, is this a news story for me and my readers? or is it just some nonsense? And many of them are expected to produce a ridiculous amount of news. So when I was at VentureBeat, which was 2007 to 2011, the average, well, we published probably 35 to 50 news stories a day on VentureBeat with a staff of about a dozen people plus an array of freelancers. What that meant for staff writers is they were expected to write 3 to 5 posts per day. So other publications are not as intense, and I think it may have gotten a little more humane at VentureBeat now too, but even at a typical tech news publication that publishes online, you're expected to write 2, probably 2 stories a day. And what that means is you're never gonna be able to go really in-depth into the stories that you want. Certainly if you're doing 3 to 5 stories a day, maybe one of those is in-depth, And all the rest are just, you're gonna get 'em done as quick as you can and move on to the next one. So, and yes, there's no such thing as the media, but if you don't like this state of affairs, you should subscribe to media outlets because then there'll be more money to pay journalists. That's my little plug for the journalistic business. Okay, so what really—
