For founders.
TechCrunch, The Information, Fast Company, Inc., Forbes Council, Business Insider, Axios, Fortune. Funding rounds, product launches, founder profiles, trend pieces.
Service 01 / Media relations
Press outreach that lands in real outlets.
Named beat reporters. Pitches built from your data, not a template. Coverage in TechCrunch, Forbes Council, Inman, Houzz, Apartment Therapy, and regional Business Journals. Built for founders, local operators, and D2C brands who want the byline, not the impression count.
72
Placements in 2024
41
Outlets placed
21
Avg. days to first hit
11
Tier-one outlet hits
Why this service exists
You sent a good pitch. Nine reporters opened it. Zero replied.
Most pitches die at the subject line. The reporter is on deadline for three other stories, the angle is too broad, the data is too thin, the send hit at 7am on a Friday before a long weekend. This is a craft problem. It needs a person who has pitched those exact reporters, read their last ten pieces, and knows what their editor will buy on a Tuesday.
- Your last agency sent a release to 400 reporters from a bought list. Two trade mentions.
- Your founder did a thoughtful essay on LinkedIn. No journalist ever cited it.
- Your funding announcement went out on PR Newswire. It showed up in three press-release aggregators that bots scrape.
- You pitched a reporter who left that beat nine months ago. The rest of the list had the same problem.
- A competitor got the TechCrunch piece. You are 80 percent as interesting, with a better product. The angle was the difference.
How we run media relations
Six steps. Every campaign. In writing.
-
Angle development
Half the hours go here. We read every prior mention, interview the founder, pull the proprietary data, and land on three angle hypotheses. Angles are a reporter's shortcut to an editor's "yes." Without an angle, the pitch is press-release noise.
-
Reporter list building
Named contacts only. Each reporter on the list has their last three pieces summarized, their beat defined, their preferred pitch format noted. Average list: 40 to 60 reporters for a launch project. We never send to more than 80 from one pitch.
-
Pitch writing
Three pitch templates built from the three angles. One-sentence subject lines tested against what that outlet published last week. Custom first lines for each of the top 15 reporters. Everything after that is variation on the core three.
-
Embargo and exclusive strategy
When a launch can support it, we offer an exclusive to one reporter at the right outlet in exchange for a committed piece on day one. Where the news is broader, we embargo to 8 to 12 reporters with a shared publish time. Both tools, used where they fit.
-
Follow-up cadence
A 10-day follow-up window with two touches. We track every open, every reply, every "maybe next quarter." We do not spam. We do not send six follow-ups. Reporters remember who respected their inbox.
-
Downstream push
After the piece publishes: schema update, llms.txt mention, paid amplification of the coverage, founder social repost, backlink audit. A placement that ends at the publication's domain is a placement we half-finished.
Deliverables
What you get, named.
This is what shows up in your Notion board at the end of week four on a launch project, and every month on a monthly retainer.
- Three written angle hypotheses with editorial rationale
- Reporter list: 40 to 60 named contacts, ranked, with last-three-pieces context
- Press release (when appropriate) in the outlet's preferred format
- Three pitch templates and 15 personalized variants
- Published outreach schedule with timezone and hour noted
- Embargo or exclusive terms in writing where used
- Weekly reply log with ratings and next-move recommendations
- Placement tracker: link, date, reporter, outlet, DA, direct-traffic estimate
- Post-campaign report with three concrete takeaways for the next push
What we do not do
The shortcuts we skip.
We will
- Name the reporters we are targeting before we start.
- Push back when your angle is weak. Often. In writing.
- Pitch only outlets a real buyer of yours reads.
- Share the full reply log, including the silence.
- Count only stories that ran without payment from you to the outlet.
We will not
- Buy a database list of 15,000 contacts and blast.
- Count wire-service pickups as placements.
- Pay a "contributor" to publish your bylined filler.
- Report "media impressions" or "MEV" in place of coverage.
- Pitch a reporter who left the beat nine months ago because the database says they are still there.
Where we place
Outlets we know by name.
For D2C brands.
Apartment Therapy, The Strategist, Allure, Refinery29, House Beautiful, Food52, Glamour, Well+Good. Product reviews, gift guides, trend roundups, founder Q and As.
For category depth.
Inman (real estate), Houzz (home), The Drum (marketing), Modern Healthcare, Retail Dive, TechTarget, AdAge. Where your buyer reads on Monday morning.
For local operators.
Houston Business Journal, San Francisco Business Times, Crain's Chicago, Dallas Morning News, Boston Business Journal. Every top-50 US market has a beat reporter we know.
For founder voice.
Lenny's Podcast, Acquired, How I Built This, Invest Like the Best, 20VC. Tied to our brand PR service when longer narrative fits better than a 600-word news piece.
For multi-location.
Houston Chronicle, Boston Globe, Miami Herald, Austin American-Statesman. Small teams, relationships matter, and a single placement moves the Google Business Profile. Part of the local operator package.
A founder's note
"Our last firm pitched 200 reporters from a bought list. We got two trade mentions. GetDigitize pitched 48 reporters they knew by name. We got a TechCrunch feature, an Inman piece, and a Forbes Council byline in the first 90 days."Founder, Series A proptech startup. Name on request.
We do not have a secret. We have Maya who worked the consumer beat at Apartment Therapy for two years, Daniel who was a Business Journal reporter before moving to PR, and Sunny who has pitched TechCrunch a few hundred times. Relationships come from reps. Reps come from not being a 200-person firm with 40 junior staffers.
Meet the teamWho this works for
Best for three kinds of teams.
01
Seed to Series B founders
You have a funding round, a launch, or a founder narrative worth covering. You want TechCrunch, not wire pickup.
For founders 02Multi-location local operators
HVAC, dental, salons, medical, retail with 3 to 15 sites. Regional Business Journal plus local daily equals real foot traffic lift.
For local operators 03D2C brands between $500K and $10M
You want Apartment Therapy, Allure, The Strategist. Product-review beats where a placement drives actual sales.
For D2C brandsFit check
Best for. Not best for.
Best for
- You have a real news moment: funding, launch, milestone, new hire, data report.
- You have proprietary data or a contrarian view worth writing about.
- Your buyer reads a specific publication and your competitor is in it.
- You accept that a great angle gets no replies some weeks.
- You want to see the reply log, not a summary slide.
Not best for
- You want guaranteed coverage in a named outlet. No honest firm promises that.
- You have no news and no data and no contrarian view. Fix that first.
- You refuse to let your founder talk to a reporter for 20 minutes.
- You measure PR by "media impressions" and want a monthly impression count.
- You need crisis comms for a public-company incident. Call a firm that specializes.
Pricing
Two ways to engage.
PROJECT
Launch Campaign
$4,500 / project
One campaign: a launch, a funding announcement, a milestone push. Six weeks of work, one post-campaign report.
See full planMONTHLY
Monthly Retainer
$3,500 / mo
Ongoing media relations. Three to five named press targets monthly, weekly outreach, 30-day notice.
See full planRecent work
One placement. One compounding outcome.
SERIES A SAAS · LAUNCH CAMPAIGN
Northbeam AI: three TechCrunch beats in one quarter
A 22-person AI infrastructure startup briefed three TechCrunch reporters before announce day using an exclusive plus two follow-up angles. Result: the feature, two follow-up pieces, and a downstream Inman cite. Demo requests ran 4x baseline for six weeks.
Read case studyDENTAL CHAIN · MONTHLY RETAINER
BrightSmile Dental: Houston Chronicle plus Business Journal
A 12-clinic dental group ran a quarterly press cadence. Four Houston Chronicle features, two Business Journal profiles, and one Apartment Therapy home-office piece for the founder. New-patient bookings jumped 41 percent in 90 days.
Read case studyCommon questions
Answered before the call.
What counts as a real placement?
A story by a named reporter at a publication your buyer reads, reviewed by an editor, published without payment from you to the outlet. Wire releases, paid syndication, directory listings, and content farms do not count. If we paid to publish it, it is not a placement.
Which outlets do you have relationships with?
US tier-one tech press (TechCrunch, The Information, Fast Company), consumer press (Apartment Therapy, The Strategist, Allure, Refinery29), vertical trades (Inman for real estate, Houzz for home, The Drum for marketing), the 50 largest regional Business Journals, and most local dailies in the top 40 US markets.
How long until the first placement?
Launch projects average 21 days from kickoff to first published piece. Monthly retainers see the first placement in weeks 3 to 6 depending on the beat. Local regional press often lands faster because the pool of relevant reporters is smaller and our relationships are closer.
Do you write the press release?
Yes, but we try not to lead with it. Reporters do not need more releases. They need a story their editor will buy. We usually write a pitch first, a release second, and send the release only when the angle needs the formal format (funding, M and A, exec announcements).
What about embargoes and exclusives?
We negotiate both when they help. An exclusive gets one reporter to commit in exchange for a first-look advantage. An embargo lets multiple reporters prepare a piece for the same day. We use each where it fits the angle, not as a default.
What happens if a pitch gets no replies?
We rebuild the angle. About 1 in 5 launch pitches goes cold on the first pass. We treat that as data: the angle was wrong, the timing was wrong, the beat was wrong. We regroup in 48 hours with two new angles. Campaigns do not stall because of one cold email.
Do you guarantee placements?
We guarantee the work: the angles, the list, the outreach cadence, and the reporting. We do not guarantee a specific outlet because that would require us to promise a third party's judgment. On launch projects we add a performance bonus tied to a named outlet when both sides want skin in the game.
Related services
What pairs with media relations.
02
Brand PR and thought leadership
Ghostwritten bylines, podcast booking, contributed columns. Turns the founder into a source reporters call.
See brand PR 03Digital, GEO, and SEO
Turns press hits into AI Overview citations. Schema, llms.txt, content built to be quoted back.
See GEO and SEO 04Influencer and celebrity
Tier-2 creator work that extends a press hit into the consumer feed. Paid amplification of organic mentions.
See influencer