My company, UNUBO just got featured on TechCrunch. Achieving our first ever press coverage at a major tech publication, for a company that is so young, and isn’t well known is pretty cool - if I say so myself. Here’s how I went about it, and why I think it worked.
We launched our app on Product Hunt and Hacker News over a month ago, and enjoyed our first big wave of sign ups and feedback.
After some fixes and enhancements we were ready for the big time - we needed press coverage, but who would care to write about us?
If we summarise this down to one word, the key here is ‘relevance’.
What I did
I started Googling tips on how to get press coverage, and started noticing some trends in the advice given. There's absolutely tons of tips out there, but here’s a few points most sites agreed on:
- Have something newsworthy
- Have an interesting story or angle
- Find a journalist who covers stuff similar to your thing
- Keep the pitch short
There’s more, but this list isn’t meant to be exhaustive. I researched journalists in the relevant publications, and started to reach out to them (I only sent one, but I'll get to that in a sec).
My biggest difficulty, was to condense my pitch to just a few lines. I kept thinking that all the information I wrote, just had to be there.
My next biggest challenge was to cut through the noise, that is the journalist's inbox. They receive hundreds of pitches a day, so how could mine possibly stand out?
I only ever sent one pitch to someone at TechCrunch, but thinking about my chances of being noticed, discouraged me to continue. I never received a response by the way, no surprise there.
Keeping the above press pyramid in mind, I thought to myself that if I perhaps targeted lesser frequented publications, I’d have a better chance of being seen. I never got round to doing that however, as I figured it would be too time consuming.
Some time passed and I stumbled across an article on TrueLayer, in TechCrunch. TrueLayer offer an API, which allows you to connect to the backends of most major banks in the UK.
A journalist named Steve O’Hear wrote the piece, and as we’re in the same space as TrueLayer, and even use their service for UNUBO, I figured that it would be worth investigating further.
I found out that Steve writes about European startups and often covers Fintech related stuff. Getting warmer.
The hack
On Steve’s website, he mentions exactly how he likes to be pitched to:
“My best sources don’t just send me their own pitches but act as tipsters for other news that they know I’ll be interested in.”
A lightbulb went off, so here’s the actual hack: Ask the CEO of TrueLayer, with whom we are are already in contact with, to make an introduction to Steve.
Thankfully, he agreed.
He then got back to me a few days later.
Being completely new to this, I asked a few questions, then eventually reached out to Steve. By the way, if you happen to read this Francesco, thanks a million!
How exciting, but I never assumed he’d actually cover us. I thought the call would just be to get some info, then decide whether he’d feature us, or not.
During the call he asked how I came up with the idea, and asked me to talk about the features - you know, how it all works.
It was a great call, and by the end of it, after a brief pause (seemed like forever), he said that he liked the idea and would cover us.
Fantastic, I couldn’t quite believe it!
He asked if we were ready for TechCrunch, in the sense of traffic, which we were - well, we thought we were anyway.
In the time before the article was published, we triple-checked everything. UNUBO was going to be revealed to the world, on centre stage so everything had to be right - from copy to stability of servers.
Why did this work?
I believe there’s always some amount of luck involved, but here’s why I think we were covered in TechCrunch:
- We’re in the Fintech space, something that is trending right now
- Steve is interested in this space and writes about it often
- We’re an EU startup, something Steve covers predominantly
- I followed exact instructions on how to pitch to him (i.e. not directly)
If we summarise this down to one word, the key here is ‘relevance’.
We’re a relevant company (EU), in a relevant space (Fintech), that is relevant in the tech world right now (Google: 'Fintech') - and for all these reasons is highly relevant to Steve, particularly after receiving a relevant introduction (someone he’s covered before).
Of course UNUBO is an awesome app, but without relevance, I think you’ll mostly be shooting in the dark, when it comes to getting press coverage.
I hang out on Twitter, come say "hi" 🖖🏾.