Press

“What is the, you know, vanguard of tech right now? And one of the things is AI. And so the, of course, the press hates AI with the fury of a thousand suns. And so the press is running this, you know, sustained, you know, kind of fear campaign on AI.”

“Usually the VCs would want to talk to the press, and some of them had been clients, at the IPO time. So they wanted to basically have no risk. But then when the company goes public, it's like, hey, I did that, right?”

“I put a couple hundred million into it, and that's, helps them.”

“Politicians. Used to fear the press and now to a large part, they bought it and use it as a tool.”

“I would never, like, I think there's no reason to like tell your primary story through the press. I think that's very dangerous.”

“Reed said to me early on, you need to pick what the easy narrative is, or the press is going to make it up for you.”

“Being humble about your brand is not the way to go. You can be humble in your life, but don't be humble about in your brand. You have to brag because that's what consumers care about. That is what the press cares about.”

“So a lot of companies want to position themselves as category creators. And I actually hate that. It doesn't work. It doesn't land with press. And most of the time it's not totally true. And so instead it's actually really great when you can talk about how you…”

“There is a pretty active campaign in the other direction and, you know, that, that campaign has taken hold of a lot of universities, a lot of government agencies you know, a lot of the power structure of the people who get to decide whether things are legal. T…”

“This is not something that I think that you should bank on as a strategy for growth. It's a great add-on, but if you think that press by itself is going to solve your problems, you're wrong, because it might, but it's way too unpredictable.”

“Think about press the same way that you think about raising money, which is to say, you do it when you know what the money is for, and you should do it when you know what the press is for.”

“Even if you do land press, it's not a silver bullet. It's not a scalable way to get users. It might help you get in front of some early users and investors, but as you see, press can't be counted on for sustained growth. It will not get you to product market f…”

“Like too often people will be dependent upon the press. Like there's a press good or bad. And actually that, that maybe is only At best, very lightly correlated with whether the company is doing well or poorly.”

“Most of the variants that the press keeps reporting with alarm that are somehow that, that basically are going to be Vaccine proof. They turn out not to be, you know, that we, they're very shortly there comes out a new article basically saying that the vaccine…”

“My experience with the press has been that about 75% of the time when they ask me for comment on something, it ends up being a hit piece.”

“I would just give any entrepreneur the advice of investing in comms. Someone who's wonderful on the comm side, and Taylor Patterson on our team, is just amazing. Keeps me honest. Keeps me trained, and dealing with the press is a job, and you have to have a str…”

“And at the same time, I think it's really important for internal folks to be talking to the press, because you kind of lose touch. What is even a good story? What are they thinking? Like, what, what's kind of in the water? And not knowing that at all is just r…”

“Then, obviously, there's press, which is the least controllable, because whatever you say, it goes through their filter, and like, they end up, what gets used, and how, and all of that, so I'm sure you know the pitfalls, but it also is, in some ways, the most …”

“The vast majority of people are not running around, like, where's my next outlet? Except the press might be. Particularly, you know, you go to CES and, you know, it's a whole day of taking pictures and all that. The 85% use case is completely covered here.”

“Most companies who go through YC wait until they have a launched product and some very early users before they bother pitching to press.”

“Engaging with press is a little bit like selling enterprise software. It's a relationship, and it's a long sales cycle. It's not a transaction.”

“The reason you've seen so much So many changing seats over the last several years is that because of the increased transparency around performance, and then the, so then they get the relative comparisons where, you know, through, you know, the press has turned…”

“I think with press, people expect that they will have customers and people going to their website, et cetera. What we see is it triggers the interest of candidates and investors. That was, that's what press is good, at least for us.”

“Competitors making noise in the press I think probably crushes a company's momentum more often than any other external factor.”

“I think, you know, not to stress about press too much because press is not a sustainable user acquisition strategy, not even for You know, consumer companies, so it's not something to spend too much time thinking about.”

“If you make a really awesome product, you'll get found out by the press because we can't ignore it. And if you make a bad product, You'll get found out by your customers or users, regardless of how much publicity you've gone out.”

“But when you're launching a, an incubator or a studio that, in essence, holds equity in various degrees of a whole portfolio of different companies, it's a very different entity. So honestly, one of the most challenging parts has been Conveying the strategy an…”