Thank you @alexisohanian for hunting us!
Hey Product Hunt,
I’m Ricky, Co-Founder of PRX, along with @dtran320. We’re excited to launch PRX exclusively to Product Hunt.
Some exclusive deals just for this community of makers - 1) $400 PR (20% off) and 2) Free PR for the top tech product hunted every day.
Most makers and founders are either priced out or over-served by traditional PR agencies. Some of you might have experience hiring AND firing PR firms because of unsatisfactory results and high costs. We’re solving this problem by bringing the cost down through software automation of some of the most cumbersome tasks. Additionally, we’re building a PR service from the ground-up with technology in today's environment, so we have the opportunity to tackle the problem in more innovative ways.
The experience for you is simple. Sign up and tell us your story, if we accept you, you'll do a 20-minute call with us and that’s it. Our agents will craft your story, match it with the right reporters, and go to bat for you pitching and coordinating the logistics. Even when it fails, you’ll get feedback from us that will certainly help you with your next story, and you can choose to get a sponsored post.
We’re early and this is our first small reveal, so the experience might not be as smooth as we’d like. Thanks for understanding and we really appreciate your feedback along the way!
@rickyyean Congrats to you and @dtran320 on the launch. The PR industry suffers a severe technology deficit, so it's great to see more people building tools to help founders/makers.
@_jacksmith@rickyyean Ricky's co-founder here. Thanks for the kind words Jack— as someone who’s really tuned into the community, we’d love your thoughts/help on how we can best help it.
We've had some friends successfully launch on ProductHunt and not know how to follow it up to keep the buzz going. We thought this could be a good way to start the conversation about how to best combine social media and communities like ProductHunt with traditional media to tell founders/products' stories.
ok, i know @rrhoover will tag me on here to tease me so I'll save him the trouble :P i'm pretty adamantly against folks trying to "hack" PR like it's a machine-generated ad campaign (i've worked on both sides so know it all thoroughly), but will keep an eye on this one as it seems to more closely resemble how PR should be done than a lot of other "hacks," and uses tech the right way (kudos).
that said, not sure a 20-min call with a rep is gonna be enough, esp if you have an non-consumer product as they're trickier to not only understand but then explain to a journo in one short email. (the number of reps who truly have no idea what their client does and just copy-paste vague paragraphs of marketing-speak is astounding.)
also, what if you want PR that isn't tied to a straightforward piece of news like a launch or funding announcement? that is not something you can nail with this formula -- convincing a reporter to write a "profile" or some sort of trend piece is way more of a crap shoot than shooting 10 emails about an embargoed launch announcement, if you catch my drift.
also, curious how you're viewing your relationship with the reporters themselves. i'm well aware we're perceived as a commodity, there to realize your wishes for glory and fame (and puff pieces) but this is a business of relationships. so, can i get myself removed from the database? can i request to never hear about a company if i so wish? also, there's a lot behind the scenes that software won't pick up on -- e.g. yes i wrote a VR story but no it's not bc i like VR, it's for another reason that your didn't pick up on bc it's more subtle than just a tech category, so how do you account for this in your system?
just thought i'd share some thoughts. (ps: great Medium post on immigration, @rickyyean!)
Echoing everything @imkialikethecar said. As usual, she got to this before me. ;)
Report
Ditto on questions @imkialikethecar raises (it's the chronic marketing strategist in me) but data geek is loving @rickyyean comment below re: learning about reporters' preferences. That is disruptive and a key value of the best agencies.
@imkialikethecar@rrhoover Very, very good comments Kia. So many thoughts. So good.
We are interested in the longer term game so while you can just get everyone's emails and spam, we definitely don't do that and we watch for that. Yes, as a reporter you get to say stop pitching me. Yes, you also get to tell us the reason behind why you don't want this story (e.g. no time or you write about tech but only M&A, not app launches). We try to learn all that. It IS tough to learn about a company and the specific story in 20 minutes, so we allow the company to correct our understanding of the story after the call. We are also leaning towards relatively simple stories for now (e.g. launches). Ultimately, reporters need to trust us and find value in our service in addition to just getting pitches, which they already do get a ton. We are working towards that.
Thank you for the comments. Oh, and thanks liking my post ☺️
@imkialikethecar@rrhoover@rickyyean Yeah this is my thought too. PR is hard and really does boil down to relationships. The crew at publicize.co have been about the most innovative I've seen so far (worked with them on a project so have some ideas about how they work.) Interested in seeing where this goes.
@imkialikethecar@rrhoover@rickyyean 💯
i worked with someone who tried to approach PR like this before and it was the single worst investment decision i made for our company, because sure they got us _some_ coverage but it didn't translate into measurable results at all. which is always what it comes down to.
I was one of their early customers.
They organized a half hour call with their PR specialist. We went over my story and figured out the angle to pitch journalists. I filled out a brief form covering the background of the company and that was it.
In a few days, I started getting emails requesting interviews. I got contacted by a reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle. Within 10 minutes, we were on the phone talking about my launch.
I ended up with two articles from mainstream publications that I wouldn't have gotten otherwise.
$500 seemed like a reasonable price to me. Rather than getting a PR firm with a regular retainer, I liked the idea of getting a shot of PR each time I have a launch or a newsworthy story
I've known these founders for a minute and I was, frankly, skeptical they could pull off "PR on Demand" but everything I've seen over the last few months really does seem like a scalable way to do simpler and more cost-effective PR. We all know traditional PR agencies are broken, but this could actually be a solution--maybe do for PR, what Zenefits did for HR software.
Congrats on the launch @rickyyean and @dtran320. @nootrobox and I had one of the first opportunities to give PRX a spin, and I'm happy to report in to PH a positive, would-use-again result.
We used it to announce our GO CUBES chewable coffee pre-sales launch. It was a smooth experience for us to get ramped up: 1.) 30 minute call with @rickyyean, who is a quick learn and grokked the core value props to engage on; 2.) Inbound warm leads to reporters briefed and ready to engage.
As an exec that's relatively experienced with PR, I can say that PRX accelerated our media relations and outreach game. We were able to get the ball rolling with multiple reporters from legitimate and relevant publications including a meaty, in-depth profile from MIC.
Generating momentum is one of the hardest things to do as a new startup, and PRX helps you do it.
PRX is the real deal. I recently worked on a side project, The Asian American Man Survey, and the team helped me quickly land an amazing story at National Journal (part of Atlantic Media). I never would have been able to afford a traditional PR firm for something like this.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/n...
Additionally...
When my cofounders and I were launching Ridejoy (YC Summer 2011) we were encouraged to "work with pro's" for our first press push. We paid a $6,000 retainer for someone who with "deep tech media experience" and were ultimately disappointed by the ho-hum results.
When we were going to launch our mobile app, we decided to hire a former journalist on a part-time basis and did the launch ourselves. It probably cost us about $1200 to do it ourselves, and we got way better coverage from six different media outlets. PR is definitely hackable.
PRX is taking it one step further and using technology to make the process simple and seamless. I'm into it.
We used PRX for Instapainting.com (we rely a lot on content marketing to bring awareness to our custom oil paintings) and it was the best bang for the product PR wise out of any other service we used.
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