The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 12 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Milosevic: An effective PR firm requires more founder time, not less
“The reality is just because you're hiring a PR firm or consultant doesn't mean that it's going to be less time. If you have a good PR firm, a good consultant, it should be more of your time.”
Milosevic: Startup PR agencies should deliver reporter meetings within month one
“I think it's a warning sign if an agency puts together a plan and two months of that plan is just prep and getting up to speed and onboarding. It's like in those first, definitely within the first month, you should have at least a couple of meetings set up.”
Milosevic: Brands are defined by crisis response, not opportunistic marketing
“I think it's more like your brand is defined by how you handle these situations versus you taking a moment to say, how do we turn this into a brand opportunity?”
Milosevic: Startup founders receive immense responsibility before developing crisis leadership skills
“These young companies, they're raising a lot of money. These founders are getting an immense amount of responsibility very quickly and very early, a lot of times before they have a chance to build their leadership skills and handle a lot of these situations.”
Milosevic: Employees should be informed of major stories before they break publicly
“One of the most important parts of this whole crisis scenario is what happens on the internal communication side. It is so important to be talking to the employees about what's going on. Ideally, they know if it's a big story that's going to break, they know a…”
Milosevic: Founder CEOs cannot separate personal scandals from company brand damage
“There is no division, and especially if you're a founder, CEO, you and the company are essentially the same, and even if the focus, let's say, of the stories are on the personal issue, you Guess what? Your company is going to be mentioned in every single one o…”
Milosevic: Pitching a turnaround narrative prematurely rehashes past crisis details
“Don't rush it. I think that's probably one of the biggest, you know, mistakes that companies make is by trying to do it too early when they don't have enough progress or milestones or growth to show that they have started to turn around. And they may put their…”
Milosevic: Public blog posts are effective internal communication tools for founders
“Using Medium as a vehicle to talk about what they're doing As a company, wasn't just useful for them to get it out there to the public, but was also a really useful vehicle for them to reinforce all this stuff internally. It's like, it's funny, it's all the sa…”
Milosevic: Startups facing strong incumbents should delay PR until establishing traction
“I see that happen more often when a small company is in a very, very competitive space with big incumbents who are innovating and could very quickly squash them if they wanted to. So it makes sense for some of those folks to really build the base, get the vira…”
Milosevic: $10,000 PR Retainers Do Not Make Sense for Seed Startups
“They want, you know, a minimum budget of, let's say, 10,000 dollars a month, which is tough for a very early stage company. And for a seed stage company, that probably doesn't make sense.”
Milosevic: PR must advise strategic decisions, not just execute communications post-facto
“PR should be a really critical input instead of the decision being completely done, wrapped up, and then handed to PR to deal with.”
Milosevic: Early startups must maximize rare funding and launch announcements
“You have very few moments especially in your early life as a company where you have news. And so when you're dealing with like a funding announcement, a company launch, a product launch, a big customer announcement, those are the announcements that you really …”