Doug Soltys, Editor-in-Chief of BetaKit, advises early-stage startup founders with limited resources on how to approach PR and marketing narratives efficiently.
“At this stage, all you really need to do is take your best, most impactful story, your juiciest, lowest hanging fruit target audience, and the most, like, accessible channel to you, saturate the hell out of that, learn, and then iterate.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading:
filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard
(the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Doug Soltys
Insight
Soltys: Pitching journalists is fundamentally a form of inbound marketing
“You should not approach your marketing initiatives any differently from your PR initiatives, because the real truth of it is like pitching to journalists is a form of inbound marketing. You are trying to create interesting content that draws back people to you…”
Doug SoltysSep 12, 2024▶ 20:01How to Get Free PR for Your Startup—Tips from the Editor-in-Chief of Canada’s TechCrunch. | Dougl... · PMF Show
Insight
Soltys: Startup traction comes from sales and product, not press attention
“Traction comes from a great product, comes from sales, It comes from customers that love your product. It does not necessarily come from media attention, and it certainly won't if you just assume that it will naturally come from that.”
Doug SoltysSep 12, 2024▶ 7:24How to Get Free PR for Your Startup—Tips from the Editor-in-Chief of Canada’s TechCrunch. | Dougl... · PMF Show
Insight
Soltys: Seeking press coverage during startup distress accelerates business failure
“The problem with this is if you have real problems with your business, if you actually have problems with traction, if you are burning too hot, if your runway is short, If your board hates you, if your technical co-founder just left, not only will pursuing tha…”
Doug SoltysSep 12, 2024▶ 8:39How to Get Free PR for Your Startup—Tips from the Editor-in-Chief of Canada’s TechCrunch. | Dougl... · PMF Show
Insight
Soltys: Niche community channels can drive business goals better than mainstream press
“Whereas depending upon your objectives for your company at stage, you're at a discord server, a slack channel, a newsletter, An in-person meetup could be way more impactful to actually, like, converting on your goals as a business.”
Doug SoltysSep 12, 2024▶ 13:15How to Get Free PR for Your Startup—Tips from the Editor-in-Chief of Canada’s TechCrunch. | Dougl... · PMF Show
Insight
Soltys: Conversations with journalists are always interviews, never casual chats
“Conversations with journalists aren't conversations, they're interviews. You're kind of entering into the arena, and you have to be prepared for that”
Doug SoltysSep 12, 2024▶ 26:01How to Get Free PR for Your Startup—Tips from the Editor-in-Chief of Canada’s TechCrunch. | Dougl... · PMF Show
Insight
Soltys: Business reporters prioritize enterprise metrics over consumer human-interest stories
“Business reporter at Bloomberg, Globe and Mail, BetaKit, TechCrunch, like what enterprise deals are you signing with specific industries? How many units are you moving? How much money you're making? Logistically, can you handle this stuff? Like that, that is t…”
Doug SoltysSep 12, 2024▶ 32:01How to Get Free PR for Your Startup—Tips from the Editor-in-Chief of Canada’s TechCrunch. | Dougl... · PMF Show
Made with StarZero
Turn any episode into a week of clips.
This entire site, over 250 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable,
runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the
moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.
We use essential cookies to make the site work. With your permission we
also use analytics cookies (Google Analytics and Mixpanel) to understand
usage and improve StarZero. See our Cookie Policy.