How to Get Press for Your Startup

Let's start with the uncomfortable truth: most startups don't need press coverage. At least not yet.

If you don't have product-market fit, press will send a wave of traffic to a product that isn't ready. If you haven't nailed your messaging, a journalist will write the story they want to tell, not the one you need told. If you don't have a conversion funnel that works, a thousand visitors from a news article will bounce and never come back.

Press makes sense in exactly two scenarios:

Your onboarding works. Your value proposition is clear. You've got early traction and you need fuel on the fire. A well-timed article in the right publication can drive hundreds or thousands of qualified visitors to a product that's ready to convert them.

A feature in a respected publication signals credibility. It tells potential hires that this company is going somewhere. It gives them something to show their partner when they say "I'm thinking about joining this startup you've never heard of."

That's it. Those are the two valid reasons. Everything else - ego, investor signalling, "brand awareness" - is noise dressed up as strategy.

If failure is poison, customer conversations are the antidote. Press is not the antidote. Talking to the people who will pay you is.

The timing test: Before you chase press, ask yourself - "If 10,000 people visited my website tomorrow, what would happen?" If the honest answer is "most of them would bounce because our product isn't ready" or "we wouldn't know what to do with them," then you're not ready for press. Go back to customers.

Journalists don't care about your product features. They don't care about your tech stack. They don't care that you pivoted or that you've been "working hard."

Journalists care about stories their readers will click on. That's their job. Once you understand this, everything about getting press coverage becomes clearer.

Here are the five angles that consistently get founders covered:

Your startup represents a broader shift that's happening right now. AI changing an industry, remote work transforming hiring, climate tech going mainstream. You're not the story - you're the proof point for a bigger narrative.

How to pitch it: "Here's a trend that's happening, and we're one of the companies at the centre of it. Here's the data that shows it's real."

You're doing something that goes against conventional wisdom, and it's working. You raised without a pitch deck. You're profitable in a space where everyone burns cash. You hired exclusively juniors instead of expensive senior talent.

How to pitch it: "Everyone in our space does X. We did the opposite. Here's why and here's the result."

You hit a significant number - revenue, users, funding - but the story isn't the number. The story is HOW you got there and what it means.

How to pitch it: Not "We raised $5M" but "We raised $5M from our own customers - here's how we turned our user base into our investor base."

Behind every startup is a founder with a story that resonates. The immigrant who built a company solving a problem from their home country. The parent who started a business because of a personal pain point. The person who left a prestigious career to bet on themselves.

How to pitch it: Lead with the human angle, not the business. Journalists write about people, not products.

This is massively underrated. Local media loves featuring companies from their city or region. "Melbourne startup does X" is a story that SmartCompany, Startup Daily, or your local paper will run when a global outlet wouldn't.

How to pitch it: Make it about the local ecosystem, jobs created locally, or the founder's connection to the community.

The worst cold pitch I've ever seen is just a whole fan piece about the company and all its features. Nobody's interested in that.

Here's the good news: you absolutely don't need a PR agency to get press, especially in the early days. Most of the best founder press coverage I've seen came from scrappy, direct outreach.

A press release is a structured document that gives journalists everything they need to write a story. It's not a sales brochure - it's a news document.

The structure that works:

1. Headline - Clear, factual, newsworthy. Not "Revolutionary AI Platform Launches" but "Australian startup uses AI to cut accounting costs by 60% for small businesses"
2. Sub-headline - One sentence that adds context
3. Opening paragraph - Who, what, when, where, why. The whole story in 3-4 sentences.
4. Quote from founder - Something human and quotable, not corporate speak
5. Supporting details - Numbers, milestones, customer examples
6. Boilerplate - One paragraph about the company
7. Contact details - Name, email, phone

You can use our Press Release builder to generate one in minutes, or search for press release templates online - there are dozens of good free ones.

Don't spray and pray. Identify 10-15 journalists who actually cover your space. Read their recent articles. Understand what they write about and why.

Where to find the right journalists: - Read the publications your customers read (not just TechCrunch) - Search for recent articles about companies similar to yours - Check who covers your industry vertical specifically - Look at your competitors' press coverage and note the bylines - Use our Journalist Directory to find relevant media contacts in the ANZ ecosystem

This is where most founders blow it. They send a 500-word essay about how amazing their product is. Journalists get hundreds of these. They delete them all.

The email structure that works:

Total email length: under 150 words. That's it. If you can't hook a journalist in 150 words, a longer email won't help.

Before going cold, check if anyone in your network knows the journalist. Your VC firm is a great starting point - most funds have media relationships and will happily make warm introductions for portfolio companies. Accelerator networks work the same way.

A warm intro converts at 10x the rate of a cold email. Always try warm first.

The best time to build a relationship with a journalist is months before you need coverage. The worst time is when you're desperately pitching.

Here's how to be on a journalist's radar before you need to be:

1. Be a useful source. When a journalist tweets asking for founders in your space to comment on a trend, respond. When they're writing about your industry, offer data or insights - even if it doesn't directly promote your company. Being helpful makes you memorable.

2. Share their work. Journalists notice who shares their articles. A thoughtful LinkedIn comment or repost of their piece (with genuine commentary, not "great article!") puts you on their radar.

3. Respond to what they've written. Send a short email: "Read your piece on X - thought you might find this data point interesting as a follow-up." No ask. No pitch. Just value.

4. Meet them at events. Startup events, industry conferences, and media panels are where journalists and founders naturally cross paths. A 5-minute conversation at an event creates more goodwill than 10 cold emails.

The more you repeatedly deliver value, the more people seek you out for that value.

This is the same principle as building in public - it's about creating surface area. The journalist who's received three helpful emails from you over six months is far more likely to take your pitch call than one who's never heard your name.

One rule: Never pitch at events. Build the relationship first. The pitch comes later, via email, when you actually have news.

Here's where I see founders leave the most value on the table. They get a great article, share it once on LinkedIn, and move on. That's like catching a wave and forgetting to surf it.

You need a distribution plan before the article goes live. Not after. Before.

Day 1 (article goes live): - Screenshot the article with the publication's logo visible - Post on LinkedIn with a personal story angle (not just "excited to be featured") - Share in relevant Slack communities, WhatsApp groups, and Discord servers - Email your investor and mentor network with the link - Update your website with an "As seen in" logo bar

Day 2-3: - Send the article to OTHER journalists: "Hi [name], we were recently covered in [publication] - thought this might be relevant to the piece you're working on about [topic]." One article begets more articles. Journalists look at what other outlets are covering. - Post a follow-up on social media with a specific insight or quote from the article - Add the article link to your email signature

Week 1-2: - Write a blog post that expands on the article's topic (drives SEO value from the backlink) - Create 3-5 social media posts pulling different angles from the coverage - Use the article in sales outreach: "As featured in [publication]..." - Add the press logo to your pitch deck's credibility slide

Ongoing: - Keep the article linked on your website permanently - Reference it in future pitches to journalists and investors - Use pull quotes in marketing materials

Your reputation is a magnet. Once you become known for something, relevant opportunities come to you.

The key insight: real media coverage gets you social media eyeballs. But you have to actively bridge the two. A newspaper article that sits behind a paywall does nothing if you don't extract the story and bring it to where your audience actually is - LinkedIn, Twitter, your email list.

Before you send a single pitch email, run through this checklist. If you can't tick every box, you're not ready.

1. Is your product ready for a traffic spike? - Does your landing page clearly explain what you do in under 10 seconds? - Does your sign-up or purchase flow actually work? - Can your servers handle 10x your normal traffic?

2. Do you have a clear narrative? - Can you explain why your story matters in two sentences? - Does it tie into something bigger than your company? - Would YOU click on this headline as a reader?

3. Do you have proof points? - Customer numbers, revenue, growth rate, or testimonials - Something quantifiable that makes the story concrete - At least one customer willing to be quoted

4. Is your press kit ready? - Press release (use our Press Release builder) - Founder headshots (professional, not selfies) - Company logo in multiple formats - 2-3 key statistics or milestones - One-paragraph company description

5. Do you have a distribution plan? - Social media posts pre-drafted - Email to network pre-drafted - Website updates planned - Follow-up pitches to other journalists ready

Adding more dishes to the menu will not make a restaurant successful. Making a song longer will not make it a hit.

The same applies to press. One well-timed, well-amplified article is worth more than ten articles that nobody saw because you didn't have a plan to distribute them. Do one thing well. Milk it for everything it's worth. Then go get the next one.