Mar 21, 2024 · 1h 33m · lennys-podcast
The ultimate guide to PR | Emilie Gerber (founder of Six Eastern)
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Emilie Gerber, founder of Six Eastern, delivers a tactical masterclass on startup public relations, covering high-converting cold pitches, story positioning against incumbents, and maximizing media ROI. She provides actionable frameworks for founders to secure impactful press across tier-one publications, podcasts, and executive channels without relying on traditional PR agency playbooks.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Lenny holds 25.9% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Lenny as informed peer 3.5 Guest teaching 5.8 Guest disagreement 1.9 Lenny pushing back 1.1
speaking balance: gold is Lenny, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 42:35 Vehement rejection of category creation in PR
Emilie emphatically rejects startup 'category creation' framing as unhelpful marketing fluff that journalists ignore, arguing startups should anchor against known incumbents instead.
Hardest push from Lenny ▶ 42:45 Lenny poking the category creation debateLenny playfully challenges Emilie's dismissal of category creation, highlighting it as one of the most hotly contested debates on his podcast alongside Jobs-to-be-Done.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 31:34 Dismantling the PR Rolodex mythEmilie proves to Lenny that PR Rolodexes are overrated by pointing out she landed her client on his show through sharp cold outreach with zero prior relationship.
Lenny holds their own ▶ 52:18 Lenny dissects Emilie's winning pitchLenny demonstrates his editorial discernment by citing the specific comparative stats and organic growth metrics from Emilie's pitch that made NuBank an undeniable guest match.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Lenny as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Lenny pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Real ROI and Second-Order Effects of Press | 4 | 6 | 2 | 1 | Lenny sets the stage with the common founder objection that PR does not drive signups. Emilie reframes press value around credibility, enterprise trust validation, and hiring leverage, citing Perplexity's zero-spend organic growth. | |
| B2B Credibility, Content Lens, and Affiliate PR | 4 | 6 | 1 | 1 | Lenny shares his personal experience getting press in CNBC and Fast Company with zero direct subscriber conversion. Emilie explains the difference between founder profile storytelling and affiliate review PR models that drive direct sales. | |
| How Startups Can Win TechCrunch Funding Coverage | 4 | 7 | 3 | 1 | Lenny asks how startups should handle fundraising announcements. Emilie breaks down the raw math of TechCrunch funding coverage and contrasts bloated problem statements with concise exclusive pitches. | |
| Matching Your Story to the Right Tech Publication | 3 | 8 | 2 | 1 | Lenny asks for a granular breakdown of tech media outlets. Emilie delivers an extensive taxonomy covering TechCrunch, Axios, Business Insider pitch deck stories, VentureBeat for AI, and Forbes contributor networks. | |
| Targeting Tier-One Outlets and Managing Message Control | 4 | 7 | 3 | 2 | Lenny asks about targeting tier-one legacy outlets like the WSJ and NYT and managing negative coverage risk. Emilie bluntly notes tier-one outlets only cover early-stage startups during crises or with hard revenue and valuation metrics on the record. | |
| Vetting and Pitching Podcasts and Industry Awards | 4 | 6 | 1 | 1 | Lenny inquires about podcast pitching and industry awards. Emilie outlines her qualitative vetting process, emphasizing role alignment (pitching CFOs to CFO podcasts) and casual LinkedIn introductory notes over bloated pitch decks. | |
| The Rolodex Myth and Cold Outreach in Modern PR | 3 | 7 | 4 | 1 | Emilie turns the tables by asking Lenny if they had a relationship before she pitched him, debunking the agency 'Rolodex' myth and proving tailored cold outreach outperforms personal favors. | |
| Mastering the Anatomy of a High-Converting Pitch | 3 | 7 | 2 | 1 | Emilie explains the anatomy of high-converting pitches across email and social DMs, emphasizing three-sentence limits, clear subject lines, and spotlighting coverage gaps rather than flattery. | |
| Contrarian Positioning: Fast Company Clockwise Op-Ed | 5 | 7 | 6 | 3 | Emilie details how Clockwise critiqued Shopify's meeting cancellations in Fast Company and vehemently rejects startup 'category creation' marketing jargon when pitching press. Lenny playfully pokes the hornet's nest on category creation debates. | |
| Sponsor Break: Vanta Trust and Compliance Automation | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Lenny delivers a mid-roll sponsor read for Vanta trust and compliance management, transitioning into an example teardown of Ramp's bill pay launch. | |
| Pitch Teardown: Column Tax and Propel SNAP Integration | 3 | 6 | 1 | 1 | Emilie walks through pitch teardowns for Column Tax partnering with Propel SNAP benefits and Gamma's interactive seed launch deck, highlighting how human storytelling and novel assets beat generic corporate announcements. | |
| Pitch Teardown: Pitching NuBank's CPO to Lenny’s Podcast | 6 | 5 | 1 | 2 | Lenny reads out Emilie's exact cold pitch regarding NuBank's CPO, demonstrating what hooked him (80-90% organic growth and being bigger than Robinhood, Coinbase, and SoFi combined). Emilie explains why tailoring to audience metrics matters. | |
| Managing Pitch Volume, Exclusives, and Staggered Outreach | 4 | 6 | 2 | 1 | Emilie explains pitch volume strategy, exclusive staggering, and mocks buzzword-laden press releases filled with terms like 'human-in-the-loop' and 'multiplayer experience' that obscure what a startup actually builds. | |
| Why Company Blogs Outperform Traditional Press Releases | 3 | 7 | 3 | 1 | Emilie explains why newswire press releases are largely dead for early-stage tech, arguing that founder-led blog posts offer superior SEO, shareability, and authentic tone. | |
| Presenting Meaningful Traction Metrics Over Percentage Hype | 3 | 6 | 2 | 1 | Emilie calls out deceptive percentage growth metrics (e.g. '700% post-stealth growth') and advises sharing grounded traction or leaning into compelling founder backstories when hard metrics are modest. | |
| Executive Social Thought Leadership vs Corporate Channels | 4 | 6 | 2 | 1 | Lenny asks about the trade-off between earned media and social thought leadership. Emilie emphasizes that executive personal accounts radically outperform boring corporate brand channels. | |
| Case Study: Comms Mastery with Aaron Levie at Box | 4 | 6 | 1 | 1 | Emilie reflects on working with Box CEO Aaron Levie, observing how fast comms instincts, news-jacking, and bold stances turn executive social commentary into mainstream press coverage. | |
| Tactical PR Opportunity: Morning Brew Coworking Series | 4 | 7 | 1 | 1 | Emilie reveals an open growth loop via Morning Brew's Coworking Series form and provides practical agency selection advice, lead times (six weeks), and realistic startup PR budget benchmarks ($10k-$15k/month). | |
| Lightning Round: Books, Yellowjackets, Vision Pro, and Mottos | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | In the lightning round, Emilie discusses her upcoming psilocybin retreat, Yellowjackets, Apple Vision Pro PR strategies, and her motto 'strong opinions loosely held.' | |
| Where to Find Emilie Gerber, Six Eastern, and 'On Background' | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Emilie shares where to find Six Eastern and her Substack newsletter 'On Background', followed by Lenny's concluding outro remarks. |
Statements from this episode (34)
Gerber: PR validates early-stage B2B startups for buyers fearing vendor shutdown
“And that ties back to when you look like at a SAS company or something, and they're making decisions, having that validation, I think, and that credibility goes a really long way. Especially for a company that might be early stage, you know, they've raised a l…”
Gerber: Perplexity spends zero on paid marketing and drives growth via PR
“So for instance, perplexity, they have invested essentially zero in any paid marketing. They don't have a marketing person even, but they do do PR. And so essentially after their most recent announcement, they saw, you know, a massive spike in growth, a massiv…”
Rachitsky: Features in Fast Company, CNBC, and Entrepreneur drove zero growth
“So when I got these stories in like Fast Company, I got a story in CNBC, I got a story in Entrepreneur Magazine. And I was telling you, I've seen zero growth impact from all these stories.”
Gerber: Most Consumer Companies Pay Media Publications Affiliate Sales Commissions
“Affiliate is essentially when you work with a publication to give them a percentage of any sales that come from the piece of the article... And it's very common. I would say most consumer companies are doing this, but yes, there's like entire agencies that are…”
Gerber: Startups Can Always Win Funding Press If Pitched Correctly
“I also think not all PR people are going to agree with this, but I do think funding rounds, you can always get a reporter to cover if you go about it the right way.”
Gerber: TechCrunch recently stopped accepting op-ed submissions from founders
“Just a couple of weeks ago, TechCrunch decided they no longer accept op-eds”
Gerber: Startups should never pitch Axios on product announcements
“Axios is really strong on the FinTech side, on the healthcare side. They have some really great like beat reporters. The one thing I will say about them is they are very deals focused. So a hundred percent would need to either have funding. If you're announcin…”
Gerber: Tier-one media features require on-the-record valuation and revenue metrics
“There's a couple criteria that they're always going to want if it's to write a feature on your company. One is your valuation. So that needs to be something that you're sharing on the record. Two is your like hard business metrics, like usually revenue, someti…”
Gerber: PR can fix factual errors post-publication, but not editorial framing
“What we can do is correct any factual inaccuracies, and so, and we do that all the time. If something's, if something is factually wrong, we can get it replaced, but if they don't like that they were called, you know, put in a category of software that they do…”
Gerber: Pitch role-matched executives rather than CEOs to vertical podcasts
“So let's say you have let's say you sell it into CFOs. Don't pitch your CEO for that podcast, pitch your, you know, get a CFO and then pitch your CFO for that podcast. I'm very for companies hiring. Folks are hiring for the roles that they sell into. It helps …”
Gerber: Ask podcast hosts if they accept ideas before sending pitches
“Like I'm a big fan of just reaching out on LinkedIn and saying, Hey, love the show. Are you open to guest ideas? I don't even. Mention what, like the client or anything, just like kind of opening the door. I just feel like that's so much more approachable and …”
Gerber: Well-executed cold outreach is as effective as PR relationships
“And so I think cold outreach done well is just as effective.”
Gerber: Personal relationships with journalists will not secure media coverage
“The only thing that a relationship will get you is, you know, an open and an answer. And so, you know, like any good reporters not going to be making their editorial decisions based on like who their friends are. Like, that's just not the nature. It shouldn't …”
Gerber: The most effective PR pitches are only three sentences long
“I would say my most successful pitches are three sentences and anytime it needs, sometimes it needs to be longer than that than that. And generally I feel like my pitch is weaker for that reason. You know, attention spans are short. And so the more concise you…”
Gerber: Contrarian stances win media coverage when startups lack hard news
“Especially if you don't have hard news that you're pitching, having something like pretty controversial to say. So like we work with a lot of AI companies, if nine of them, you know, have one stance on, you know, something happening in the field and one has th…”
Gerber: Pitching all details upfront destroys leverage for media exclusives
“And usually I'd either say the amount and the investors or the company name. If you give them both, you're kind of just giving them the story and they could run with it right away.”
Gerber: Category creation pitches fail; startups must position against household incumbents
“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…”
Gerber: Product announcements rarely receive major feature media coverage
“Product News rarely gets, you know, big feature coverage, especially for something along the lines of a bill pay offering for B to B companies.”
Gerber: PR should anchor to broader issues rather than company metrics
“It's like identifying the piece of the story that's most interesting and then like doubling down on that. So we were able to get like a great fast company piece instead of pitching this like macro, like. Here are column taxes, latest growth metrics, and they'r…”
Gerber: Everything emailed to a journalist is automatically on the record
“And I guess one important note is everything you say to a reporter in an email is on the record. And so that's why I make the point on not sharing the entire story right off the bat.”
Gerber: PR podcast pitches do not require listening to multiple episodes
“I don't even think you necessarily need to listen to a whole bunch of episodes most of the time. Maybe occasionally you want to gut check something before you reach out, but yeah, you can tell a lot just by doing like a little bit of research.”
Gerber: Stagger pitches when offering exclusives to avoid retracting media offers
“I try to really stagger it because we're offering exclusives and I highly recommend offering exclusives. So the worst thing that can happen is two reporters reply and are both interested and you have to go back to one and say, nevermind.”
Gerber: Funding announcements require pitching only one to six reporters on average
“With the funding story, it could be anywhere from one to six reporters on average, sometimes more”
Gerber: Cold PR outreach converts roughly one opportunity per 30 pitches
“With some clients, maybe they get one opportunity for every 20 or 30 things that we send, and so, yeah, we try not to do Like blasting, we don't do blasting media.”
Gerber: Virtually no reporters monitor newswires for story ideas anymore
“Press releases came about because reporters would be checking news wires for ideas of what stories they want to write. No reporters do that anymore. Or a very small percentage. I don't know any reporters that do that anymore.”
Gerber: Average early-to-mid-stage startups do not need press releases
“At a certain stage in your growth, like public companies, they do press releases for earnings. Makes a hundred percent sense. There are certain rules around when companies do need to issue press releases, so there's still a use case for them. I just think your…”
Gerber: Reporters do not include early-stage vanity percentage growth stats in stories
“Every company wants to do these percentage, like, growth stats when they just launched, and I've never seen reporters include that in their stories, and so there are ways to give signals of how fast you're growing without being that, kind of, like, disingenuou…”
Gerber: Pitching multi-company panels to conferences is far more successful than solo pitches
“If you have an idea for, you know, a conference session, put it reaching out to, you know, colleagues that you've worked with at other companies, peers, people that are building other things that maybe don't compete, but are in a similar space and packaging th…”
Gerber: Companies waste social media investment by ignoring executive profiles
“If you're considering investing in social to just do corporate channels and not think about executives, you're really leaving like a lot on the table. Like, corporate channels. It's very hard to build a, it's very hard to build a following to get someone to fo…”
Rachitsky: Box CEO Aaron Levie makes thousands from X revenue sharing
“He actually makes money from Twitter, and now that Twitter pays you for views and things, and they share ads, he makes, like, thousands of dollars also from X now, by the way, not Twitter.”
Gerber: Six Eastern has a 50% success rate pitching Morning Brew
“We've had, I would say, 50% success rate with, like, getting execs featured that way, and so all, yeah, and all, all you have to do is submit through a Google form and it's just, like, one of the, one of my favorite media opportunities right now.”
Gerber: RFPs weed out the best PR agencies by demanding free work
“One thing I would say don't do is like an extensive RFP process. Like we actually, as an agency don't participate in RFPs. A lot of the two times I've done it, I kind of had regret it just because of the amount of work going in versus the value that's there. A…”
Gerber: Startups should engage PR agencies six weeks before major announcements
“Before an announcement happens, you probably want to kick off six weeks in advance. So when we start with the company, it's like we're working on the blog, we're doing a media training, we're doing the media outreach, we're getting quotes from investors, we're…”