Congratulations: You’ve got your VC money, your product demo is working, your management team is in place, and you have a compelling story to tell. You’re ready to get the word out. You’ve hired a top PR firm, and your rep has managed to get you a meeting with a national business reporter who will be attending a trade show or investment conference. It’s only a matter of time before you see your company profiled in a major business publication, right?
Perhaps, but that time is further off than you think.
When your PR people tell you that you should not expect a story about your company after you meet a business reporter for the first time, believe them. A startup company has an incredibly high bar to vault in order to make it into the national business pages.
There are thousands of startups in the same position as you, and business reporters are running just to keep up with news announcements from major corporations. Unless you’re announcing a major deal with Google or Microsoft or Yahoo or there are a million people visiting your site and using your product every day, you don’t have a news peg that calls for immediate coverage. No major publication wrote about YouTube until it showed them the traffic.
A business reporter is doing extremely well to write half a dozen company profiles in a year, and almost all of them will be pegged to some important event that lends credibility to the story.
Add to that one other important fact. Almost every business reporter, except the few superstars, shares a common trait. They are incredibly insecure.
Some may appear arrogant, even self-assured at times, because they work for prominent publications. They know that you need them more than they need you, and they have power over you. But deep down they feel they’re bluffing when they act like experts.
Business reporters who cover technology companies are on a constant learning curve. They have to keep up with new technologies, the latest marketing strategies, current accounting practices, emerging business models, important tech trends, and the major competitors in a new market. And they probably majored in English or political science in college.
Very few business reporters have MBAs, and even fewer have degrees in any field of science or technology. It’s natural for them to feel like faux experts at time. It’s the nature of the business.
I’ve heard more than one reporter at major publications say, “I always fear that people will find out I don’t really know what I’m talking about.” I’ve said it myself. (After a decade or so in the business, I got over it.)
That’s further complicated by the fact that most business reporters are underpaid and overworked. But their publications expect them to know more about a company’s potential than the VCs who handed you a million dollar check or the executives they talk with every day who pull down seven-figure salaries. In the backs of their minds lurks the question, “Am I really clever enough to pass judgment on someone whose salary is an order of magnitude or two higher than mine?”
They don’t become journalists with the hopes of becoming millionaires. But even if a reporter thinks he’s smarter than you, deep down, he’s jealous of your earning potential, and not likely to cut you much slack unless you seem like you’re worth it.
Why are reporters in the business? They like to write, certainly. They also like the elitism of their position: meeting important people, finding fascinating stories first, bypassing the long lines at trade shows to hear Bill Gates or Sergey Brin speak. They do not want to waste time on over-zealous startups with me-too products.
Over the years I’ve written optimistic stories about entrepreneurs, seen them get rich, and then watch their companies collapse like Jurassic-era reptiles hit by an asteroid. The dot-com fiasco made all tech/business reporters feel like unwitting dupes in a massive PR scheme. I know many reporters who just gave up writing about technology after the bitter disappointment of the dot-com collapse. The rest vowed never to be fooled again.
The only thing worse than writing an adoring profile of a company that ends up going nowhere is getting beaten by a competing reporter who finds the truly promising startup or technology first. It’s a stressful dynamic.
Reporters want to break the good story, but they also look at the odds. They know that the vast majority of startups never make it beyond the point where their B round of money runs out, and they’re going to assume you’re probably one of the majority. If they pick up your story and you go under soon afterwards, they’ve revealed their ignorance to their colleagues and their editors. They lose their credibility faster than a boastful athlete who never wins a bronze medal. Few want to take that risk.
So don't expect that profile right away. But there are ways to spark the interest of the most jaded business reporter. I'll deal with that next time.
