As a founder of a bootstrapped startup, I don't have the money to hire a big PR firm for paid media coverage. Is it possible to cold email reporters/journalists in the relevant sectors to get organic coverage? Really appreciate anyone here who can share their lessons and wisdom, in particular to the following questions:
1) Is it better to start with a long or short email? (A short email might not be able to tell a differentiated story but no one has the patience to read long emails these days.)
2) What should be my specific ask in the first email? (To connect seems too generic. To cover our company seems too big an ask. To stay in touch seems no action item at all!)
3). What can I offer in return as a startup founder? (Good relationships should always be mutually beneficial. In what ways can a startup founder be helpful to the journalist community? )
Adam Cohen is the cofounder of @Weave , an engineering analytics company that helps teams go AI-first. Before Weave, he was head of operations and sales at education software firm Top Hat and VP of operations and revenue at @Causal , which was acquired by Lucanet in 2024.
I saw yesterday that Loom.com (which has just been acquired for $1bn) launched on Product Hunt back in 2016 and got 3k downloads in 36hrs. We ve been building SigmaOS for nearly 2.5 years now, and have done three launches:
- first launch (SigmaOS) = 2k downloads within the first 24hrs
- second launch (Lazy Search) = 1k downloads within the first 24hrs
- third launch (SigmaOS 1.0) = 4k downloads within the first 24hrs Would be super interested to hear what results other startups have seen?
Checklists always look the same: tested, works, has a landing page. The part that actually slowed me down building in personal finance wasn't any of that, it was "would I trust this with my own bank statement," which isn't really a checklist item, it's more of a gut check that doesn't show up until you're already deep in it.
Curious what that bar looks like for people in adjacent spaces, health data, identity, anything where "it works" and "it's safe to trust" aren't the same question.
You barely see in person and sometimes, when you are international in different time zones, you are barely on video meetings + some people working at home can lack socialising.
For a while now, whenever I ve been building different apps, I ve often found myself feeling frustrated and a little scared somewhere in the middle of the process.
There s also another difficult phase that comes after building, especially when the product doesn t get the results you were hoping for. You start feeling disappointed, and thoughts like This is never going to work or No one is going to use this start creeping in.
Have you ever felt the same way? What helped you get through it, and how do you deal with these thoughts when they come up? :)
There s no way to sugarcoat it: COVID-19 has caused me and countless entrepreneurs to reassess our business models in both the long and short term, and many of us have had to pivot in new directions. What are you doing to pivot as an entrepreneur during COVID19?
