A Founder's Guide to Getting Featured in the Press

You built the product. You obsessed over every line of code, every pixel, every user flow. You know it solves a real problem. But right now, your genius is trapped inside a bubble. Nobody knows you exist. You see competitors—some with inferior products—getting featured in TechCrunch, and you wonder, "How?"

You think you need to raise a truckload of cash to hire a $20k/month PR agency. I'm here to tell you that's bullshit.

Founder-led PR is not only possible, it's often more effective. Journalists want to hear from the source, the visionary, the one with the actual story. They don't want to talk to a slick intermediary. This guide is your playbook. It’s not magic; it’s a system. It requires grit and process, two things every successful founder already has. Let's get to work.

Why Press Still Matters (Even in 2024)

Let's get one thing straight: chasing press for vanity is a waste of time. Getting your logo on a website means nothing if it doesn't translate to a business outcome. For an early-stage B2B SaaS, a single good press feature delivers three things that actually move the needle.

When you're trying to convince your first 10, 50, or 100 customers to bet on your unproven startup, credibility is everything. A feature in a respected publication is the ultimate third-party validation. It tells potential customers, recruits, and investors that you are not just another vaporware company. It's a trust signal that shortens sales cycles and de-risks the decision to work with you.

High-Quality Backlinks

As a technical founder, you understand the value of a clean codebase. Think of high-quality backlinks as clean code for your SEO. A single, do-follow link from a high-authority publication like Forbes, a top industry blog, or a respected trade journal is worth more than thousands of low-quality links. It's a massive signal to Google that your site is authoritative and trustworthy, directly impacting your ability to rank for valuable keywords for years to come.

Driving Qualified Traffic

Getting featured on a random viral site might give you a traffic spike, but it won't give you customers. Getting featured in a niche publication that your ideal customer profile (ICP) reads every morning with their coffee? That's gold. It drives a smaller, but infinitely more valuable, stream of traffic directly to your digital doorstep. These are the people who will actually sign up for your demo, not just bounce after three seconds.

The Pre-Work: Laying the Foundation for PR Success

Great execution requires great preparation. Don't even think about sending a single email until you have these three things locked down. This is the prep work that separates the pros from the spammers.

Nail Your Narrative: What's Your Story?

Here’s a hard truth: nobody cares about your product launch. They don’t care about your new AI-powered feature. That's an ad, not a story.

A story has a protagonist, a conflict, and a resolution. You need to frame your company within a compelling narrative. Here are three angles that work:

The David vs. Goliath Story: You're the lean, innovative startup taking on an entrenched, bloated incumbent. Your narrative is about agility, customer-centricity, and a fundamentally better way of doing things. Example: "We're not just another project management tool; we're helping remote teams fight back against the soul-crushing complexity of Jira."
The Market Shift Story: You're not just building a product; you're riding a massive wave of change. Your narrative is about a tectonic shift in the market, and your company is the enabler. Example: "With the rise of the creator economy, solo entrepreneurs are becoming media companies. Our tool is the financial back-office that makes it possible."
The Counter-Intuitive Insight Story: You have a unique, data-backed perspective that goes against conventional wisdom. Your narrative is about a surprising truth you've uncovered. Example: "Everyone thinks you need more sales meetings. Our data from 10,000 users shows the most successful B2B teams have 40% fewer meetings, but they're more structured. Here's how."

Pick one narrative and make it the core of your messaging.

Build Your "Press Kit"

A journalist on a deadline doesn't have time to hunt for your logo or a decent photo of you. Make their job ridiculously easy. Create a page at

Plaintext

yourdomain.com/press

and put everything they could possibly need there.

Your press kit must include:

Company Boilerplate: A concise, one-paragraph description of what your company does, for whom, and what makes it unique.
Founder Bios & Headshots: A short bio for each founder and several high-resolution headshots (both professional and a more casual option).
Logos: Your company logo in multiple formats (SVG, high-res PNG) and versions (color, black, white).
Product Visuals: High-resolution screenshots of your product in action. A 2-minute product demo video is even better.
One-Page Summary: A PDF that encapsulates your narrative, key facts about the company (founding date, funding, location), and contact info.

Identify Your Target Publications and Journalists

Pitching TechCrunch for your pre-seed launch is like buying a lottery ticket. Instead, build a tiered list of targets.

Tier 1 (The Dream): The big names like TechCrunch, Forbes, Wall Street Journal. High risk, high reward. Don't start here.
Tier 2 (The Sweet Spot): Top-tier industry publications, influential newsletters, and respected vertical SaaS blogs (e.g., SaaStr, Tomasz Tunguz's blog, Stratechery). A feature here delivers highly qualified traffic and massive credibility within your niche.
Tier 3 (The Momentum Builders): Smaller industry blogs, local tech publications, and podcasts with a relevant audience. These are your easy wins to build social proof and refine your pitch.

Use Twitter/X lists, SparkToro, and simple Google News alerts for keywords like "[your industry] startup" to find journalists who are actively covering your space. Put them in a spreadsheet. This is your target list.

The Founder's PR Playbook: Actionable Strategies

With your foundation in place, it’s time to execute. These are the plays that work.

The Cold Pitch: How to Not Get Ignored

Journalists get hundreds of garbage pitches a day. Yours needs to stand out by being personal, concise, and valuable. Follow this structure precisely.

Subject Line: Make it a headline, not a request. Bad: "Request for Press Coverage" Good: "Story Idea: How [Your Company Name] is cutting onboarding time for remote dev teams by 75%"

The Email Body:

The Personal Hook (1 sentence): Show you've done your homework. "Hi [Journalist Name], I saw your recent piece on the challenges of remote engineering culture. Your point about asynchronous work being key really resonated."
The Story, Not the Product (2-3 sentences): Connect your narrative to their beat. "Building on that theme, we've found that the real bottleneck isn't communication, but tooling context. Engineers spend ~5 hours a week just trying to get their dev environments set up. We have some interesting data on this I can share."
The Ask/Offer (1 sentence): Make it easy to say yes. "I'm happy to walk you through the data or connect you with one of our customers, like [Customer Name], who has lived this problem and can speak to it firsthand."
The Graceful Exit (1 sentence): Link to your assets. "For background, here's a link to our press kit. Let me know if this is of interest."

Here is a complete example:

To: sarah@techjourno.com Subject: Story Idea: The new B2B SaaS playbook is 'product-led sales', not PLG

Hi Sarah,

I really enjoyed your article last week on the cooling of the PLG trend. Your analysis of the need for human-in-the-loop for high ACV products was spot on.

We're seeing that exact shift with our customers. The most successful ones aren't just letting users 'self-serve' into a $50k/year contract. They're using product signals to trigger targeted, consultative outreach from a sales team—a model we're calling 'product-led sales'. We have some internal data that shows companies using this model increase their enterprise conversion rate by over 30%.

I’m happy to share our anonymized data or connect you with the CRO at our customer, Acme Corp, who can talk about how they implemented this playbook.

For more context on what we do, you can find our press kit here:

Plaintext

ourdomain.com/press

Best, [Your Name] Founder, [Your Company]

Newsjacking: Riding the Wave

Newsjacking is the art of inserting your company's perspective into a breaking news story. A major company in your space gets acquired? A new regulation (like GDPR) is announced? A big security breach happens?

This is your chance. Email the journalists already covering the story with a unique angle or expert commentary. Subject line: "Re: Your article on the [Breaking News Story]". In the body, offer your unique take. Example: "Hi, I saw you're covering the Figma acquisition. As the founder of a competing design tool, my take is that this will be great for the industry by forcing a new wave of innovation from smaller, more agile players. Here are three reasons why..." You become a valuable source, not a pitchman.

HARO & Qwoted: The Low-Hanging Fruit

Services like Help a Reporter Out (HARO) and Qwoted are daily emails that list queries from journalists looking for sources. This is free, high-intent lead gen for PR.

Your job is to scan the daily emails for relevant requests and respond fast with a high-quality answer. Don't be overly self-promotional. Just provide a clear, quotable, and expert response to their question. Sign off with your name, title, and company (with a link). If they use your quote, you'll get a mention and often a backlink.

Here’s a good HARO response structure:

Greeting: "Hi [Journalist Name], saw your request in HARO regarding [topic]."
The Quote: Provide a 2-4 sentence, well-written quote that directly answers their question. Write it as if it were already in an article. Use bold for the most important phrase.
Justification: Briefly explain why you're an expert. "As the founder of a B2B SaaS that helps automate [task], I've seen this firsthand..."
Sign-off: Your Name, Title, Company Name (hyperlinked).

Scaling Your Efforts Without Hiring an Agency (Yet)

Doing this manually is a grind. As a founder, you need to systematize. Here’s how to scale without losing the personal touch.

Systematize Your Outreach

You don't need a fancy PR CRM. A simple spreadsheet or a personal Trello board is enough to start. Track the following:

Journalist Name
Publication
Twitter/LinkedIn Profile
Pitch Angle
Date Pitched
Date Followed Up (follow up once, 7 days later, then move on)
Status (Pitched, Responded, Declined, Published)
Link to Article (if successful)

This simple system prevents you from pitching the same person twice and helps you see what angles are working.

When to Use Automation and When to Stay Human

Resist the urge to blast out templated emails. It doesn't work. The initial pitch must always be 100% personalized. However, you can use tools to automate the discovery process. Use Google Alerts to find new articles and journalists to add to your target list.

For founders who are comfortable getting their hands dirty and want to build their own marketing stack, there are more powerful tools to explore. But for most, the key is knowing where to draw the line between human-led strategy and automated tasks. If you're looking for a more guided, hands-on approach to building out these systems, a self-service marketing platform like ours can provide the right scaffolding.

Knowing When to Call in the Experts

Your time is your most valuable asset. It's best spent on product, vision, and talking to customers. When PR and marketing outreach starts consuming more than 5-10 hours of your week, you've hit an inflection point. The process is working, but it's becoming a bottleneck.

This is the time to look for leverage, but it doesn't mean you have to hire a full-time marketing lead for $150k+. Before making that leap, it's worth exploring capital-efficient alternatives. You can check out different pricing models for agencies and services to see what fits your stage. For many startups, a flexible, 'done-for-you' service that can execute your proven playbook is the smartest next step. At AgentWeb, our entire model is built around providing early-stage B2B founders with a dedicated marketing team for less than the cost of a single junior hire, letting you focus on what you do best.

You Got Featured! Now What?

The journalist’s job ends when they hit publish. Yours is just beginning.

Maximize Your Reach: The Amplification Checklist

A press feature is an asset. You need to merchandise it everywhere.

Social Media: Share it on LinkedIn and Twitter/X from both your personal and company accounts. Tag the journalist and the publication. Thank them publicly.
Website: Add the publication's logo to an "As Seen In" section on your homepage and pricing page. This immediately boosts credibility.
Email Newsletter: Share the article with your entire email list of users, leads, and prospects.
Investor & Advisor Updates: Send a quick note to your investors and advisors. It shows progress and momentum.
Sales Enablement: Pull the best quote from the article and add it to your sales decks and demo scripts.

Nurture the Relationship

Send a short, genuine thank-you email to the journalist. No asks, just thanks. "Hey Sarah, just wanted to say thanks again for including us in your piece. The team was thrilled. Let me know if you're ever working on a story about [your space] again, I'm always happy to be a resource." This turns a one-time transaction into a long-term relationship.

Ready to put your marketing on autopilot? Book a call with Harsha to walk through your current marketing workflow and see how AgentWeb can help you scale.