Brand PR and Thought Leadership for Founders

38

Ghostwritten bylines published 2024

24

Podcast bookings landed

9

Awards won by clients

2-3

LinkedIn posts per week (not 14)

Why this service exists

Your founder is interesting. Your LinkedIn is not.

Every founder we meet has a lens on their industry that is sharper than anything their marketing team has written. It lives in their head, in investor calls, in Slack threads with other founders, and in the voice memos they never publish. The job of brand PR is to extract that lens and put it into bylines and LinkedIn posts that sound like them on their best day.

Your LinkedIn has 14 posts this year. All of them are "Proud to announce" or a re-share of a company update.
A reporter searched for expertise on your topic. They found three of your competitors and not you.
You hired a content agency. They send 11 graphics a week. They average 22 likes. Your sales team cringes.
You paid $40,000 for a "thought leadership" program. The output was ghostwritten filler you would not share.
You want to do this yourself. You have time for it twice a quarter, not twice a week.

How we run brand PR

Six work streams. Running in parallel.

Founder voice development

The first 60 days are listening. We record interviews, read Slack threads the founder sends us, transcribe podcast appearances, pull the sentences that sound like them. Output: a style guide with the founder's three strongest topics, their vocabulary patterns, and their sentence rhythms. Ghostwriting gets dramatically better after this.
Ghostwritten bylines

Two pieces per month. 60-minute interview for the raw material, two drafts, final sign-off always with the founder. Placement targets include Fast Company, Inc., HBR, Entrepreneur, Forbes Council, First Round Review, and vertical trades. Where placement is uncertain, we publish to the founder's own LinkedIn and Substack first.
LinkedIn cadence

Two to three posts per week. Not fourteen. Mix of short observation posts, longer thread posts, and occasional video. We write; the founder approves. The goal is signal, not volume. Two posts a week that get real replies out-performs ten filler posts on every metric we track.
Podcast booking

Proposal list of 10 to 20 relevant podcasts per client. Pitches tuned to what each host actually covers. Typical booking cadence: 4 to 8 podcasts per year for a founder. We prep each appearance with the three talking points, the one honest story, and the call-to-action.
Awards submissions

Two submissions per quarter: Inc 5000, Fast Company Innovation, Time Best, regional 40 Under 40, industry-specific lists. Awards are a known ROI: each win adds a line to the bio, earns a press mention, and gives reporters an anchor for a profile piece. We draft the application, the founder reviews, we submit.
Speaking placements

Conference outreach for keynotes, panel seats, and fireside chats. Targets include SaaStr, TED Residency, industry-specific conferences, and boutique founder summits. Speaking is slow (6 to 12 month lead times) but a single keynote often drives more inbound than a year of LinkedIn.

Deliverables

What shows up each month.

Everything lives in your shared Notion. Drafts, pitch targets, podcast lists, awards deadlines, LinkedIn queue. You see it Tuesday if we wrote it Monday.

Founder voice style guide (delivered end of month one)
Two ghostwritten pieces per month (byline plus LinkedIn long-form)
Weekly LinkedIn post queue (8 to 12 posts visible at any time)
Quarterly contributed column pitch list with named editors
Monthly podcast target list and booking progress
Quarterly awards calendar with deadlines and submissions
Speaker bio, one-pager, and headshot package
Monthly report: published pieces, podcast bookings, LinkedIn metrics
Monthly 45-minute strategy call with the founder

What we do not do

The shortcuts we skip.

We will

Write a LinkedIn post you would actually send yourself.
Kill a draft when it reads as filler, even if it is "ready."
Push you to say something specific and defensible.
Pitch contributed columns only when there is a real thesis.
Tell you when the founder should say no to a podcast.

We will not

Run an AI-generated "thought leadership" mill.
Publish 14 posts a week in the founder's name.
Pay contributor fees for placement at third-tier sites.
Ghostwrite a piece the founder has not read and approved.
Submit your CEO to every award with a "winner's fee."

Where we publish

Bylines land in outlets buyers read.

Tier-one business

Fast Company, Inc., HBR.

The flagship placements. Long lead times, strict editor bars, high trust-signal value. Usually 3 to 6 per year for a strong founder.

Contributor networks

Forbes Council, Entrepreneur.

Recurring column slots. Lower bar than HBR but real audiences. Useful for cadence, brand-building, and backlinks that feed GEO.

Founder-owned

LinkedIn and Substack.

The always-on channel. LinkedIn for the professional audience, Substack for the longer-form thesis that a publication would not take but reporters will find.

VC-owned publications

First Round Review, a16z, Bessemer.

Niche but high-signal. A First Round Review essay often travels further than a Fast Company piece inside the founder ecosystem.

Vertical trades

Modern Healthcare, Inman, Retail Dive.

Where your actual buyer reads Monday morning. Often a faster "yes" than tier-one business press because the beat is narrower.

Podcast ecosystem

Lenny's, Acquired, How I Built This, 20VC.

One 45-minute conversation produces a half-hour of evergreen content, a month of LinkedIn clips, and an SEO asset that ranks for years.

A founder's note

"I did not want to be a LinkedIn poster. I wanted to be taken seriously as a founder with a real thesis. GetDigitize wrote in my voice so well that reporters started emailing me after the Fast Company piece. I have not hired a recruiter in 18 months. It is all inbound."
Founder and CEO, Series B climate SaaS. Name on request.

Ghostwriting is a craft. Done badly it sounds like a consultant wrote your LinkedIn for you. Done well it sounds like you on your best day, with a writer's discipline underneath. We spend 60 days in listening mode because that is how long it takes to write in your voice, not at it.

For founders

Best for. Not best for.

Fit check.

Best for

Seed to Series B founders building a personal brand alongside the company.
Executives with a sharp view they have not written down yet.
Founders whose buyers read Fast Company, HBR, or a specific trade outlet.
Teams that want inbound from reporters, investors, and recruits.
Founders who will commit to two 60-minute interviews per month.

Not best for

Founders who cannot give us 90 minutes per month for interviews.
Companies where the founder does not want to be the public face.
Teams that want us to auto-generate LinkedIn content with AI.
Very early-stage founders without a category or thesis yet.
Leaders who will not let us kill drafts that read as filler.

Pricing

Monthly retainer or brand build.

MONTHLY

Monthly Retainer

$3,500 / mo

Brand PR often bundles with media relations: the founder voice becomes the source reporters email.

See full plan

SIX MONTHS

Brand Build

$12,000 total

Six-month foundation for a new founder: voice, bylines, podcast bench, awards, and GEO base.

See brand build

Recent work

Founders with a public voice we helped build.

SERIES A SAAS · BRAND BUILD

Northbeam AI: 18-month founder voice build

Started with the founder doing no LinkedIn posting. 18 months later: 42,000 LinkedIn followers, a Fast Company byline, an Inc. contributor column, a Lenny's Podcast appearance, two Inc 5000 applications submitted, one regional 40 Under 40 win. Inbound recruiting demand doubled.

Read case study

LOCAL OPERATOR · OWNER VOICE

Apex HVAC: owner as local business voice

Owner had zero public presence. One year later: quarterly Houston Chronicle business column, two podcast appearances in HVAC trade, a Houston Business Journal 40 Under 40, and an AI Overview citation for "HVAC business advice Houston" that still drives inbound leads.

Read case study

Common questions

Answered before the call.

What is the difference between brand PR and media relations?

Media relations sells a news moment (launch, funding, milestone) to reporters. Brand PR builds the founder into a credible voice that reporters already know by the time the news moment arrives. One is episodic. The other is cumulative. They compound when run together.

How does ghostwriting actually work?

A 60-minute interview per piece. We record, transcribe, pull the sentences that sound like the founder, and draft. Two rounds of revision. Final sign-off always with the founder. The goal is the founder sounding like the founder, on their best day, with a writer's editing discipline underneath.

Do bylines in Inc or Fast Company actually matter?

They matter for two things: buyer trust (a prospect Googling the founder finds a Fast Company byline and relaxes) and reporter trust (journalists searching for sources on a topic find the founder's published work and email them). They do not directly drive signups. They make everything else easier.

How many posts per week on LinkedIn?

Two to three. Not fourteen. The goal is signal, not volume. Two thoughtful posts a week out-performs ten filler posts on every metric we track: profile views, inbound, replies from reporters, and buyer-side credibility.

Can you get me on a specific podcast?

We have relationships with most top-50 business podcasts (Lenny's, Acquired, How I Built This, Invest Like the Best, 20VC, Modern Wisdom) but cannot guarantee a specific booking. We propose a list of 10 to 20 podcasts per client, book 4 to 8 per year, and optimize the pitches against what each host typically covers.

What about awards submissions?

We handle Inc 5000, Fast Company Innovation, Time Best, Fortune 40 Under 40, regional 40 Under 40 lists, and industry-specific awards. Awards are a known ROI: 1 to 2 award wins per year gives the founder a line on the bio, a press hit when announced, and something reporters can anchor a profile around.

What if the founder is not a good writer or speaker yet?

Most are not. That is the point of the service. We do voice development in the first 60 days: reading transcripts, pulling patterns, finding the founder's three strongest topics, and drafting early pieces in a voice that sounds like them on their best day. By month three, the founder is editing us, not the other way around.

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What pairs with brand PR.

01

Brand PR and thought leadership. Ghostwritten. Never filler.