Reporter Hermione Way shares how startups get press attention in Silicon Valley. She describes how Punch's stunt of icing investor Dave McClure led to coverage and a Google acquisition, and recounts her own experience on Bravo's Startup Silicon Valley, which landed her on the New York Times front page but also brought negative coverage.
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Do ice VCs. So this is a story of a startup, Punch. They were at 500 Startups. And this is a video of them on their way to meet Dave McClure for the first time. And they decided they were going to ice David McClure, which might seem crazy. But if you know the type of investor, the type of person Dave McClure is, he loves fun stuff. He loves craziness. So they got his attention by icing him, and in the end, he ended up investing, and they got acquired by Google, like, 3 months later. So if you are trying to get the attention of investors or press, think outside the box in terms of how you can get their attention. What do you mean by icing? I think they threw— We'll show you later. Yeah, they'll tell you later. No, they threw ice on. They threw ice on his head. Anyway, so that was their story. Yeah, it's on YouTube. I can't. But, yeah, you can Google it later. But, obviously, be mindful, again, of— you've got to make sure that you know the right type of investor. I'm not sure if Tim Draper would appreciate being iced. Yes. So just be mindful of that. Do a TV show and grow a thick skin. I'm not sure if any of you know, last year I did a TV show on Bravo called Startup Silicon Valley. It was an amazing experience. You know, every day leading up to the broadcast and the show, we were in press, on the front cover of the New York Times. Unfortunately, not all of that press was good press. There was a lot of bad press. There were a lot of haters. There were a lot of negative stuff going into the world about, you know, who we are and who we were and what we were doing. But still, you could never pay to to get your startup on the front of the New York Times. You could never have that much money in advertising to pay for that. So yeah, I had to act like a dick on camera for a few months, but I got my startup on a national TV show in front of 88 million Americans, and I got on the front cover of the New York Times. So for me, it was like a win-win. I would never have been able to— our startup would never have been able to afford that amount of press coverage. So do— if you do get offered a TV show, there's a lot more media in Silicon Valley now. TV is still a great channel. It can get you in front of millions of Americans. If you have a consumer product like we did, it can really get you to your target market. It can get your product in front of the right people. And we actually, from the TV show, have had a lot of new opportunities. We got investment from the TV show. So even though in the end the TV show got a lot of negative press and wasn't necessarily a positive thing, in my view it was a win-win because we got our products in front of millions of Americans and actually global as well. So do a TV show. Yeah? Did you ever feel like your skin wasn't thick enough and you got really hurt by what was going on? Yeah, I mean, at first, you're like, why is she writing that about me? I'm a nice person. But you just, you know, like I say, opinions are like assholes. Everyone has one. So, you know, if you ever stick your head above water, if you ever do something out there, if you're ever disrupting a market, you're going to get people hating on you. You're going to get people, like, beating you down. You know, like, Microsoft called the police on Huddle, this little startup. You know, you're always going to get people that are going to bitch about you or talk about you or criticize what you're doing, and you just have to grow a thick skin. But yeah, at first you're like, mm.
