Building Your Startup’s Attention Flywheel with Vijay Chattha (Founder of VSC)

There’s a concept in network theory called Preferential Attachment. When one node gets ahead, it attracts more resources, and more attention. It's a snowball effect. PR for your company works the same way. Once you become the biggest node, more resources flow to you. Today, NFX General Partner James Currier sits down with Vijay Chattha, founder of PR agency VSC to reveal how to build that attention flywheel. VSC has worked with NFX unicorn companies like Mammoth Biosciences, Poshmark, and Outdoorsy, to build attention and momentum from the ground up.

Episode Transcript

(00:06):
Very much a dark arc.
You know, you'd have to hire these agencieswould take you out to coffee.
They Beller you they promise you things.
Maybe they make an introduction here and there.
It just felt like very not how entrepreneurswere building in tech.
This world appears exact opposite.
It was more like lobbying in DC or something.
Right?

(00:26):
Today, we're talking about how to build anattention flywheel with NFX general partner,
James Currier, Invijay Chadda, the founder ofPR Agency VSC.
DSC has worked with many NSX unicorn companies,including Mammoth Biosciences, Poshmark, and
outdoorsy to build attention and momentum fromtheir earliest days.
Let's dive in.

(00:47):
Welcome to the podcast Thank
you for having me, James.
Always a pleasure to speak with you.
You and I have been investing together andworking together for many, many years now.
And both live here in the Bay Area, and youhave always had an expertise in helping
startups get attention by helping them positionthemselves, helping them make sure that
investors potential employees and otherjournalists knew about them so that they could

(01:09):
continue to grow their network and grow theirbusiness.
And you've been extremely helpful many of theNFX portfolio companies, the NFX skill.
And so thanks for taking time to talk with ustoday.
No.
We often turn to you when we're trying to helpour founders figure out what to do in the area
of communications or PRs that's been publicrelations and that sort of thing.
I'd love to just let everybody know yourbackground and how you got into this and how

(01:31):
long you've been doing it.
You do.
Yeah.
Thanks, James.
So background for me is, first, I grew up atWest Virginia as one of the few, seek families
there and eventually made my way to, upenn inPhilly where I dabbled in a lot of things.
Really sort of always loved the idea ofpromotions, I guess.
We were the ones on campus that were throwingparties.
We were into that world.

(01:52):
Nightlife, I later found out life that peoplelike Elon Musk and Mark Cuban were all night
club promoters in college.
So I don't know about why Nightclub promotingand then entrepreneurship or VC have so many
connections, but you know what it is?
It's about getting people to pay attention andcare.
And then a call to action to drive intent.
So, I mean, really, we've always been in thatrealm of trying to understand our audience, get

(02:15):
them to go somewhere ultimately for somethingpositive and fun.
Right?
I mean, really, that was the nature of it.
And I never was the engineering coding mind,but I had a lot of friends like that in college
And we started a company at senior year, whichis trying to create an online network of
resources for finding out about what to do in acity.
So, you know, 98, if you remember, there wasonly something called City Search, and they

(02:36):
had, like, very generic listings.
Like, here's the time it's open or but, youknow, with something like a club, One night
could be, you know, gay night, one night couldbe Indian night, one night could be salsa
dancing.
Like, you just it had to be more dynamic, andwe realized that it needed like a dynamic
format.
So we started a company in college.
We started to actually pay attention to who wascoming on campus to speak in I remember one guy

(02:59):
came on campus who sold the company to Pete it,the newspaper company, and he created some
software for doing event listings.
My partner at the time to haul said, hey, man.
We gotta go to this thing.
We could, you know, let we gotta skip happyhour and go see this guy speak.
So he went to his talk.
It's pretty interesting.
Pretty impressed.
Asked him to be our advisor.
That guy ended up being Elon Musk before hestarted x.com.
And that was just an example of just like thementality of, finding people that are doing

(03:23):
interesting things, asking them if they'll helpyou.
We got tremendous help from a lot of these web1 founders on the East Coast, but what we
realized was that it was really hard to getattention and venture capital because we didn't
have any credibility.
And the people that got attention got ten timesas much venture capital and often got 10 times

(03:44):
better executive to joining their companies.
And we felt like there's this crazy, like,inequity between who got attention and who
Flint.
And it was always like, these are the sameproducts.
Why is one more buzzy than the other?
And then how do you do that?
Do you buy that?
Like, what is the way?
And it was very much a dark art know, you'dhave to hire these agencies who would take you
out to coffee.
They tell you they promise you things.

(04:04):
Maybe they make an introduction here and there.
It just felt like very nice how entrepreneurswere building in tech.
This world of PR is exact opposite.
It was more like lobbying in DC or something.
Right?
And so was always fascinated with the peoplethat got the most attention, usually got
everything flowing to them, and it pissed meoff.
And so after we sold that company, I kind ofjust grinded away and figuring out how to,

(04:24):
like, talk to journalists.
I took time off.
I went to the Smithsonian.
I worked on a project of seek heritage, and itwas just a different thing than being a
startup.
I show you remember the burnout you trying tobe an entrepreneur.
So I went into the world of nonprofit and art,and I started, like, emailing journalists.
I'm like, can I just email them?
Like, almost like accounting.
Can you buy your taxes without an accountant?
I don't know.
Is it illegal?
Like, like, a ding?

(04:45):
Starting to emailing people and start, yeah,hey, it's just like sales.
It's just like pitching an investor.
You gotta, hey, I read your blog post on thisthing.
I'm interested.
I think I have a story.
And when I started, like, actually justsearching the internet, You could search how to
write a press release.
And then I started, like, learning more.
Like, you know, it's about, like, making thatperson career better.
How can I make this journalist more successfulwith the story they're about to write?

(05:06):
How can I give them that Pulitzer prize winningarticle and sort of visualizing, like, what
would be the best headline of the thing I'mpitching that would make everybody super happy
and super interested instead of like me sellingmy product?
And so started to think differently, hey, letme think about what's happening in the world
instead of just happening with my business.
Right?
So for example, let's say it was nightlife,right, instead of saying, hey, My company,

(05:28):
Urban Groove, launches in 15 cities.
The real story is maybe is the village voicebeing threatened by new internet start ups.
Question mark.
And then I pitched that as the subject linebecause it sounds controversial.
It actually James sounds a little negative, butthey love that stuff.
So, like, let's write the headline that wewant.
We actually think is gonna be the most viral,not the one that's about marketing schlock, if
that goes started doing that for one of myfriend, Naha, with this new company in mobile.

(05:52):
He's like, hey.
Why don't you just help me with some PR stuff?
You seem to be like enjoying this.
And then I'm gonna go back and get my MBA.
Maybe I'll start on the company.
So I crashed on his couch in San Francisco,started pitching reporters on some of the great
deals he was closing with, like, artists usingSMS text messaging, and we just got an enormous
response So this is James after web 1.
So the dot com busted occurred.
San Francisco is cleared out.

(06:12):
Kind of reminds me of San Francisco a littlebit like right now.
You know, air on office chairs were for sale onCraigslist and journalists hated tech founders
and hated PR people because they thought theywere sold a bill of goods in 99 about eyeballs
and zillion dollar valuation every journalistwould say to me, do not pitch me unless you
tell me your revenue.
And this was, like, 2002.
And so is it perfect time to come in and reseton, like, what matters now.

(06:36):
And I bring this up because this is kinda likewhat's happening right now in 2023.
It's a bit of a reset about what matters andwhat doesn't matter.
And so that's how I started my Currier.
And my friend doll, he's like, look, I can'tpay you a big retainer.
I got a tiny amount of money.
I was like, alright.
Cool.
But here's the deal.
Every time you do a newsletter to all thepeople you meet at conferences, Pete a little
logo at the bottom that says public relationsby BSC, the hyperlinks to me.

(06:57):
And he's like, alright.
Deal.
So he started blasting these newsletters out ofall the press he's getting from And we just
started getting free marketing.
So we just get more and more mobile startupscame to us.
The next big one was a company called Advob,and Omar SAR work, He said, hey.
I want that help.
I tried to invest.
He said Sequoia won't let you, but if you getme this many stories in the 1st year, I'll give

(07:17):
you equity.
So I was on a clock and we did it.
And the rest was history, and that was our oneof our biggest first time we actually took
equity in one of these companies.
Then, you know, we've kind of progressed overthe last 20 years now.
And the basic concept is that there should be alevel playing field of a great founder and
attention.
And it shouldn't be about where you grew up or,like, sort of those kind of dark art aspects.

(07:39):
It's about giving someone a playbook and havingthem focus on what matters most to the people
they're reaching and then let them createsupportive repeatability with that and focus on
things that get awareness and don't focus onthings that don't.
Got it.
And so that was the beginning of your companyVSC, which is named after you.
That's your initials.
Right?
That's correct.
And how many people are at that firm now?
We're forty people.

(08:00):
And where do you
have offices?
So we are now work from anywhere.
So there's clusters of us.
So Bay Area, New York, Los Angeles, but then wehave people in North Carolina, Austin, Denmark.
So we're kind of all over.
And so you work with seed stage startups thanseries a stage startups.
You know?
That's right.
And then what sectors?
You know, what we say, we say everything that'sinteresting.

(08:21):
So we're gonna go after things we think thatare transformative, but also there's gonna be
some zeitgeist around.
So we always talk about this.
Like, Snowflake would be a tough client for us,right, because they're super successful, but
they're really hard to get people to writeabout if they're not talking about how much
money they're making.
So some of those are harder, but, like,generally like B2B, AI, automation, biotech,
whatever we think is interesting.
We're gonna go after it.

(08:41):
And I guess that qualifications mostly venturebacked companies.
Right.
So venture backed companies, and you interviewa lot of companies to potentially represent
them, but most of them, you don't.
Some of them you choose and you choose themoften because you either love the founders or
mostly because you feel as if it's some part ofa zeitgeist in the next 2 or 3 years this
company is gonna be a little bit easier to getpress 4.
Is that right?
Yeah.
We call it the 3 Pete and C, which is peopleproduct pedigree capital.

(09:05):
So one, am I gonna enjoy working with thesepeople?
2, is the product give me goosebumps?
Something amazing about this that I'm gonnatell somebody else.
I would tell somebody else anyway even if Iwasn't gonna pay I think pedigree is like,
Beller have any lift when I talk to people asan unknown founder?
Like, did you used to work Pete?
Are some of your investors these people?
Did you solve a problem that was seen before.
And by pedigree, you mean, did they work atGoogle or Facebook or Pinterest something that

(09:29):
the journalists will know?
Exactly.
Or it could be, hey.
I built my first startup at the age of Beller,right, or, you know, I built my last startup at
the age of eighty nine.
So it's something interesting that I think wecan get a lot of attention around, which is
just based on some sort of experience you havein the past.
But you're right.
Like, I mean, company names help.
You know, the universities don't.

(09:49):
Everybody goes to a lot of schools.
I think it's also more about, like, it couldeven be your background.
It could be where you're from.
It could be being unique in some way based onyour ethnicity.
So there's all these things we look to say,like, is the story gonna be stronger here?
Are we gonna get any lift from this?
I guess you'd say organically.
Yeah.
I just bring it up because I think the wordpedigree is so loaded, and I think that
cheasing out what you mean by that, I justthink, is important because what you're saying

(10:12):
is you might not have gone to the top school.
You might not have been born rich.
You might have been born an immigrant that canbe turned into something that's pretty
interesting because at the foundation, a lot ofthese journalists really care about who they're
reporting about.
That is absolutely right.
It's not just
the thing to report.
You're right.
That may not be the right word.
It may be like sort of origin story.
Right?
Is your origin story stronger?
So, okay.
We're gonna be P P OC.
That'll be a thing.
And then the last thing is, you know, thinkcapital, like, we are very specific to only

(10:36):
pick companies where we think they're gonnahave the resources to push this thing all the
way through.
I was a bootstrap founder.
It's hard.
And also with the journalist, I want to tellthem about a company that they're gonna know
will still be around next year when I talk tothem again.
While we do focus early, we're very picky.
About those type of companies where we thinkthere's gonna be an ability to have a extended
storytelling runway.

(10:56):
Right.
So often that charismatic founder who's good atfundraising might be a better client for you
because you can accelerate them, but they'rekinda moving forward anyway because of their
personality, and they're
Yeah.
I think so.
I think if you look at those 4 buckets, James,each of those provides a different type of
Flint.
Right?
So if you have an amazing first of its kindproduct, but the founders not known.

(11:16):
They don't have any well known investors, andmaybe they don't have much, like, maybe they're
just making money and they're just cash fromthem, then it's great.
It's a little bit of an equation.
You just have to see what you're working withand then sort of make a determination.
That's right.
So as C stage founders evaluate themselves, andtheir sort of marketability and why am I not
getting press?
Why are other people being talked about?
Maybe looking at P POC is a good way for themto start thinking about it.

(11:37):
And then building some P POC.
Absolutely.
You know, we say sometimes we say if you don'thave something, then try to hack it.
Right?
If you don't have a well known person in yourcap table, add them as an advisor, right?
So there are ways to kind of work it even ifyou're not born with it, of course, right, and
add it as you go.
Yeah.
Okay.
So this is great because we want this to bevery tack for the seed stage startups.

(11:59):
Right?
We're really going after the world classfounders who are trying to figure out how to
get their attention for the practical thingsthey need to learn.
So when you think about out of the Pete fund asyou work with.
What do you think that they need most?
We talked about P POC.
That helps to give a foundation.
What other things?
Yeah.
So, you know, I think it's really there's fourthings that matter.
One is fundraising.
So you're always fundraising as a seed stagefounder.

(12:21):
You know, the next round matters.
2 is recruiting.
So good publicity could drive very high qualitycandidates your way.
3 is customers.
So certainly like what do you want to call itconsumers, but certainly B2B side, just closing
one deal out of a good communications programpays for the program itself.
And then lastly, I think is positioning.
So positioning is one of those sort of vagueconcepts but it does matter.

(12:42):
Like, are you an ecommerce company?
Are you an AI company that focuses onecommerce?
That could determine your valuation It coulddetermine the type of partners and recruiting
that you attract.
It could determine the next investor because oftheir thesis.
And as we know, with categories, they becomehot and cold.
Right?
And so the savvy founders also know how tosubtly pivot when needed to the category that

(13:03):
is going to be where they're going to get theirnext outcome from.
And so those are the 4 keys for the seed stagefounder.
Got it.
And talk about positioning some more.
Do you help founders think that through or howdo they figure out their position?
What type of thinking works for a founder whenthey think about position?
The number one thing I've found with how tohelp with positioning is when the founder is
talking to their investor and their customer,right?

(13:25):
So the investor could be helpful because theycan say, hey, look, like you, and you've said
this to me before.
I say, hey, if this is an for, therapy is gonnabe this kind of evaluation in the public
market.
If this is an expert diagnostics, it's gonna bethis evaluation.
So you're like VSC, we need to focus on thisone, not that one.
In the end of the day, the public market compsare different.
Right?
And so that's something literally you and Ihave talked about.

(13:46):
So that is a clear example of how positioningcould change the number of zeros on the
valuation of a company.
Right?
1, 2, I think talk to the customer becausesometimes founders smoke us too much on their
fundraising speak.
And put that out to journalists and customers,and it falls flat.
And so ultimately, when you're trying to getthat deal closed, it's about what they want.

(14:06):
Right?
So if it's an enterprise customer, for example,there are line items for things.
Right?
So, like, for example, there's a line item forPR.
For a lot of companies.
But if I said I wanna do strategicstorytelling, they'd be like, I don't even know
what that is.
CFOs, like, I've never paid for that.
What the hell are you talking about?
So that's an example of a crappy positioning ifit were me selling.
Right?
I wanna sell into the line item that exists,right, digital transformation that took a long

(14:29):
time eventually, there's a line item now thatcompanies for that, and you wanna basically go
after the biggest dollars.
So do you wanna be an experimental thing in AI,or do you wanna be in the digital
transformation it where so and so companyspends a $100,000,000 a year.
So talk to the investor, talk to the customers.
They should determine the positioning.
And when we say these words like positioningand strategy, mean, don't we just mean the

(14:51):
words?
Yeah.
We mean the words and the plan.
Right?
So positioning is the words.
You know, my favorite one we did recently was,well, not recently, but outdoorsy.
Hey, We're the Airbnb for RVs.
Right?
Simple.
Everybody gets it.
My dad gets that.
Right?
There are founders, by the way, that would havefought back on like Omar and admah would say,
Vidya, I never wanna be associated with anothercompany.
We're never the Google of mobile ads.

(15:11):
We are admah, and we'll never be that.
YouTube is not the Google of I was like, okay.
That's fair.
Okay.
There's gonna be founders that don't like this,but in terms of the quickest understanding in
the market, I like the x for a while And Ithink it works when you know that the analogy
you're making is a company that would never bein your business anyway.
That's the best ones.
Right?
Like, if you're gonna be the, Tesla of Cheetos,it's like, great.

(15:31):
I know Tesla's not making Cheetos, althoughElon Musk would probably make Cheetos, but,
like, that's the positioning's words.
It's like 3 words, in some cases.
Right.
Yeah.
And I think that there's a lot of hand waving,particularly from business school people and
other folks about strategy and positioning andwhatnot, but I think one of the things I've
seen you do that you really work with founderson, what three words are you picking?
It's a much more simple sort of exercise whenyou think about that way.

(15:54):
And most people see too much complexity, andyou just need to pick the words.
And the words you use for your investors mightbe different than the words you use for your
customers, and then you have to figure out howthat blends together on your homepage on your
website.
So or on the landing page for your customers,which might be different from the home page.
The home page might be for the VCs and thelanding pages where they're onboarding your
customers might say something quite Exactly.
They're getting out of it.

(16:15):
And James, just like pedigree is a weird wordwhere it doesn't always matter where you're
from and actually could hurt you based on toomuch pedigree.
Same thing with marketing James.
When founders think about who they wanna hireinternally, they should be hiring people that
focus on their scale of the business from the cto the a and the c to the b.
It should not be hiring people that just comefrom a big brand because those big brand

(16:36):
people, they have a different world, but theyalso will throw a lot of this stuff in there.
It doesn't matter.
Right?
They're gonna do like these, you know, 20 hourexercises on who are we.
It's like, look, you don't have time for that.
20 hours that could be closing deals.
So It really matters the type of marketingguidance you get at the right stage.
And generally, the further along you go in thestage, the more bullshit marketing sort of
creeps out of there.

(16:56):
Right?
People are doing these random experiments andresearch things in brand surveys, early stage
startups.
Like, let's make it simple to understand andmake people want our product or service.
Yeah.
Pick the three words and then get that, whitehot center of the customers and then Pete the
thing growing.
And so given that for seed stage companies,what are some of the things they can do to be
better storytellers?
Yeah.

(17:16):
I'd say, you know, I think the first thing is,like, you gotta think about media relations
when you talk to a journalist as a dialogue andnot a monologue.
So what I mean by that is just like going on adate, you're not gonna just spew your, like,
you know, your CV to somebody.
That would be very boring.
And the person that you're talking to at thatdate would walk a journalist is a relationship.
So it's first research them, understand whoyou're talking to, whether whoever your

(17:40):
storytelling with, their business is aninvestor.
What is their style?
What do they follow on social media?
What are they into?
Work your story around their interests, andyou'll be a better storyteller.
Number 1.
Number 2, I think think about the headline youwant for the article before you go into the
meeting or before you tell the story becausethen you can visualize what this could manifest
into.
Could be bigger than you.

(18:01):
If a story is bigger than one company.
It's probably gonna be a better story becauseit's gonna be something that more people will
trust and believe in and see as shift in theworld and not just marketing.
I think another thing is, like, founders, Ithink she just have more patience with the
storytelling process.
Many early stage companies because of the senseof urgency, they expect that if they're gonna
do something in communications or talk tojournalists or work with the PR firm that they

(18:24):
need immediate results, the bigger the outlet,the longer time it will take often to be
getting coverage.
And there's always like an anomaly to that,but, like, patience really matters.
I think another thing is avoiding Morgan.
To me, jargon is a sign of inexperience.
So communicating in a way that the averagenontechnical person can understand and get
excited about is mastering communications.

(18:44):
Right?
You know, the last thing I think is just sortof like understand that storytelling is not
just PR.
It's how you use social media.
It's how you build the Discord community.
It's how you run your newsletter.
It's how you talk on your website.
The more human people are, in all of thoseformats, James, the more successful they're
gonna be.
So, like, even on our website, VSC, we saysomething like 90% of the stuff you read on the

(19:06):
on our competitors' websites is Morgan ybullshit.
Just thought we'd save the time and get to ourcase studies.
Right?
And so that's just how I talk.
You know, you know, how I talk.
People love that because people connect withthat.
There may be a whole group of people that don'tlike that, I'm not for them.
Right?
And so founders should also know that can beauthentic, understand your audience.
What is your audience style talking?
Right?
Cause my style is not like everybody's.

(19:26):
There's big companies you have to sell to.
It could be Roche.
It could be Genentech.
It could be, you know, FedEx.
Understand how they operate, talk.
Look at their site style.
If you're trying to sell to them, you wannamatch the same personality also too, because
you'll get the deal faster.
Right?
There are people that don't get contractsbecause a quote, cultural differences or
misalignment of culture now.

(19:46):
And so, like, everything's on the internet.
You can search it.
You can see it.
I could see what the journalists write.
I could see what influencers tweet about.
I could see what VCs post.
I should be able to go into a meeting being ina dialogue more than a monologue.
Got it.
And you brought up something just now, which Iwanted to ask about 2 things.
Number 1, journalist.
Do journalists still matter?
Do journalists still exist?
What is going on?

(20:06):
We got the social media explosion.
We've got everyone saying the mainstream mediathis and that.
We've got all these media outlets behind paywalls, people can't see them.
How's that changing and what should a seedstage start to think about that?
It's a great question.
This is a question that even my team asked inour off-site So I'd say that as we call it
traditional media is going through atransformation, and that has started even

(20:27):
further down to the local newspaper in yourtown that's losing ad revenue to Facebook or
Craigslist all the way up to the mainstreammedia and Twitter, which is now owned by one
person or so.
You know?
And so one thing I will always tell founders isit's always gonna change.
It'll never be one thing.
As it relates to journalism, I think journalismis becoming more important than ever because

(20:49):
the journalists are the ones that are exposingall the cracks in the system.
And they're the ones who are basically playinga big role in how we think about the world
moving forward and looking at the people thatare in charge now and basically, you know, like
questioning authority.
And pushing back.
So and you're seeing that people that believethat content marketing as their only weapon are
sometimes having to do both and having to doall three.

(21:11):
So I'd say like the first thing is like, I lookat it differently and say, send a thing about
media anymore.
Think about influence.
Who are the people that influence yourbusiness?
Could be an investor who does one tweet andonly has fifty people that follow on with those
fifty people matter, or it didn't email foryou, by the way, a private email that you wrote
for them.
All the way to a journalist.
And then there's people on TikTok and LinkedInthat have followings.

(21:34):
There's people on Twitter.
There's analysts And so all of these, you haveto create a personalized grouping of the people
that influence your business and then figureout a way to get in their good side and have
them hopefully talk about you.
Right?
And so I look at it that way now, and I'd saythere's actually 10 x the number of people then
when you think of it that way, and just thejournalists that, you know, have the paywalls

(21:54):
and some of those things.
Got it.
And so, you know, influence was pretty staticuntil the internet came along with newspapers
and magazines and televisions, and thereweren't that many channels.
And the internet comes along, and there's allthese other types of influencers.
So that was a big change.
And now we're getting to a point where thenumber of people has gone way up.

(22:15):
So maybe in your sector, there was there usedto be 25 journalists who matter And now there's
7 journalists that matter, but there's 300influencers of that.
And so you've got just a different math problemabout how you move to get the word out about
what you're up to.
That's exactly right.
I think the one other thing I'd bring up isthat if there's a new industry that's coming
up, there actually may be a net gain ofjournalists as Beller.

(22:37):
Because of the topic being so Morgan, the twoareas that are growing mostly are in biotech
and climate.
So you're seeing a net addition of journalistsat publications because there's so much
interest.
And there's, I mean, for climate change, forexample, it's everybody.
So I think it's gonna always shift You know?
But you're right.
I think with the paywall thing, that's alsosomething that's super annoying to anybody that

(22:58):
wants to get the max awareness, you know, thinkover time, there's gonna be some probably good
technology to unlock these sites with one pay.
You know, like, Apple was trying to do it, butsomeone's gonna solve this because it's silly.
Frankly, we should all be getting all the top20 outlets for one credit card payment.
And then lastly, like the rise of substack.
Right?
So a lot of journalists have left traditionalmedia.
They're making money through Patreon or substack, and they may have ten thousand people on

(23:20):
there, but that audience is more important thanbeing in the Wall Street Journal.
Right, for that particular business.
And so we also are constantly looking at thesesub stacks and seeing who matters who's getting
engagement.
We look at the data from each company.
Hey.
We got that launch for you.
What happened?
Where the traffic come from?
Okay.
Now we start circling these ones.
These ones matter more than these ones now.
So we're always, like, kinda running our owninternal numbers on where we're the value

(23:42):
because it chain this is, like, literallychanging all the time.
Somebody who's even influential becomes lessinfluential.
And so because they do too many posts orsomething, so I think that's just that there
are new categories we gotta look at.
But I think the 2 I'm excited about are TikTokand Substack.
And I think TikTok for enterprise companies isgonna have its moment in 2023.
We're gonna see more companies in B2B startmaking building their brand and just because

(24:05):
the raw eyeballs of people shifting there isinsane.
I mean, I get my news information from TikToknow.
You know, I'm like, I keep up on the SPFscandal because of this one person on TikTok,
who just puts out the best content.
She's always doing it.
So you know, there's always a new socialplatform.
Right?
It was Snapchat and Instagram and TikTok.
There'll be another one.
So there will be that shift always that we haveto sort of apply around.

(24:28):
Got it.
And so when you're working with founders of theseed stage, what's that process you do to help
them figure out where to spend their
time?
Yeah.
So the first thing I always ask them is whatare your goals?
So I wanna know your goals for the next 6months 12 months.
And usually they'll tell me, okay.
We need to Pete out the door.
Okay.

(24:48):
That's not a goal.
That is a tactic.
What is the goal?
Okay.
Sorry.
The goal is that we need to start gettingcustomers.
Okay.
Good.
Thank you.
Customers.
The goal is we need to we need to be positionedin the market for what?
Position the market for raising money.
Okay.
So raising money is the next one.
We'll have to be doing positioning work to getthere.
So really, like, it's goal setting number 1.
I'm surprised how often I will talk to foundersthat already have programs going on with other

(25:11):
PR firms or whatever.
I'm like, what is your PR firm's goal rightnow?
They're like, oh, I don't know.
It's to get a couple stories a month, but forwhy?
You know, it keep us in the news.
For what reason?
Right?
So, like, it's good to just start there withthe goal, and you want, like, 1 or 2 goals.
You don't want 5.
Right?
Seed stage can't do it.
And what you're saying is they're generally 4goals, 4 goals, which is to hire more employees

(25:32):
to get more customers, to raise more money, orto get more It's like to build the cycle.
Yeah.
I think that's pretty much it.
I mean, that's it.
And so usually it comes down to probably 2 or 3of those max.
Okay.
And so
at first, you set up their goals and then yousay, let's go through a positioning exercise.
So you pick the words.
Yeah.
Right?
And then we put those words on the website.
We put those words in various media that you'reputting out there.
Yeah.

(25:53):
So actually goals number 1, number 2 audience.
Who do we need to reach to get to the desiredaudience that will achieve that goal?
Right?
Is it customers?
What are those customers reading?
If it's investors, what are the investorsreading?
So first is audience.
Then we get into sort of, like, roadmap andmessaging.
So messaging is like, how do we wanna ourselvesfor that audience to achieve that goal.

(26:14):
And then roadmap is like, what do we got?
What do we got in the hopper?
We got a funding announcement sitting here.
You know, we wanna dust off and announce Wehave a new product that we're launching.
Do we just bring on this amazing data scientistwho we could position who just came from Omri
or something?
Like, we gotta look at their cupboard.
And if it's empty, we gotta fill it withThanks.
Right?
This happens all the time.
I meet great founders.
They have no news.

(26:34):
And I'm like, man, I love you in this company,but I do not wanna strike out because we have
nothing to talk about right And that's actuallywhen, you know, VCs will send us the deals.
They know that there's something in thecupboard.
They may not have everything else figured out.
They do got a couple things right in thecupboard.
Maybe so we just funded these people they'reready to go, or this company's almost ready to
launch time to come on board.
So let's check the cupboard and fill it.

(26:55):
And then I think that positioning, as youmentioned, we do go to, like, an exercise.
We have like a spreadsheet.
We fill it out with the founders on a Zoom, andwe think through what is your perfect email
subject Flint?
What is your perfect three words.
What is the news you're gonna do?
What are three things about your technologythat is a differentiation?
What is it interesting about your team thatwill solve this problem?

(27:16):
Why should anybody care about your company?
Like, if all the things someone's pitching thatday, why do you matter?
What are you working on that matters in the bigpicture?
Right?
That's the exercise we do, James.
And that's actually pretty awesome.
Like, that's where the neurons fire, and wecome up with the cool words and the little
ditties, things like that.
What's interesting about this process though,BJ, isn't it that once they see the words and

(27:37):
what they need to do in order to be interestingor to be relevant?
Then they realize they need to change somethingabout their product.
They need to change something about their go tomarket.
They need to change what they're doing or whothey're hiring in order to actually be
successful at this.
It's amazing how sometimes as they say the tailwags the dog.
If you start to see something that sounds sogood, you may work backward around delivering

(27:58):
that.
One of my favorite clients once called the PREngineering, you know, once he started to see
the press coverage coming in on certain things,he said, Vijay, I think we're gonna sit
dedicating, like, one engineer to the PR team.
If you guys just keep coming up on ideas, we'llkeep making stuff, right, because it's the tip
of spear, it may not be our core business, butif it keeps us getting all this unaided free
attention that drives everything else, like,let's keep investing.

(28:20):
So, yes, you're right.
It's the exercise forces want to think clearlyand about why they matter into whom and what
they have.
And do they even have enough, right, and is iteven differentiated enough?
I find that's the tough one is that what theythink is their differentiation is not their
differentiation.
We kind of work with them on finding the rightthing.
Like, I'll give you an example.
Sometimes I'll say, well, what are the top 3things about the product?

(28:41):
And some founder will say, well, the firstthing is it's easy to use.
Easy to use.
It's very smooth.
And, like, you know, people like it.
I'm like, that is not differentiation.
That is marketing schlock.
Like, is it that it's the first one that is oniOS?
Is it the first one that's using GPT?
You know, so, like, we try to, like, work withthem to eliminate marketing from PR.
That's it.
By the way, big lesson I've learned.
Marketing and PR are different.

(29:02):
Right?
They're very different.
How you talk to journalists and how you talk toa customer has to be delineated in an exercise.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
So you basically say to them, what's yourgoals?
Who do we need to reach?
What message do we need to reach them with?
This positioning idea and what the message is,the differentiation, why it matter.
That sort of then you gotta think aboutchannels because I think a lot of people think,
oh, I wanna be on TechCrunch.

(29:23):
Oh, yeah.
Okay.
Well, that, you know, you're talking about thechannels.
Like, we haven't even gotten.
That's like step number 4.
Exactly.
That's exactly right.
The beauty of PR is very visible.
You know what you want the end thing to looklike, but you just don't know how to, like,
create the sausage to get Right?
And sometimes you go through the process andrealize you're not ready for that.
Anyway, right, or you go through it andrealize, hey.
I'm totally ready for that.
Nice dude.

(29:43):
It should do it.
I think the one thing people don't talk enoughabout is how many pitches get turned down or
ignored because of the process not being good.
So if you don't make the sausage right, you getdeclined and guess what happens?
You blame your PR firm.
You blame your VC for not making the rightFlint.
Say, oh, screw that journalist.
Like, they just don't care about it.
They don't believe in our companies.
They don't believe in people like us.
It's like, no.

(30:03):
You're a pitch sucked.
Okay?
You had 5 seconds to grab them, and you missedit.
Cause just didn't do all the things Like, andso we don't talk enough about how many things
get rejected in this world.
Right?
You know, founders always say, oh, I had totake 50 meetings to get That's like kind of
with media.
I mean, even with the best pitches, sometimesone out of fifties massive win, right?
But, you know, what you don't wanna do is pitchthe right person with a shitty pitch.

(30:25):
Then they don't wanna talk to you when you havea better pitch.
So the first step out the door should be good.
I mean, classic examples, like, we spend a lotof time with Mammoth on getting that story
right with you in the beginning.
Mammoth Bioscience.
Mammoth Bios has with Trevor early positioning,getting that correct.
There were decisions that were made on are wegonna be like this we gonna be more for that in
CRISPR?
How do we get out the door?

(30:45):
When do we Pete out the door?
And it ended up leading to a great design, likethe format and the process has led to
repeatable publicity, and it just got strongerand stronger and better and better, of course,
credit to their team for amazing science andteam, but the communication design was great as
well from the beginning.
And it led to basically like people wanting totalk to them.
Yeah.
And the more people talk about a company, themore other people talk about that company

(31:08):
because it becomes a loadstone.
It becomes a an anchor or reference that theycan now explain other concepts to people based
on that company.
And so there's this concept of preferredattachment in any network where any node in the
network, which gets ahead, gets further aheadbecause people preferentially attached to that
node.
And so it it builds up the snowball effectessentially.
Absolutely.
And that's why we say that is, like, when PRgoes right.

(31:30):
When the best things flow to the top player,then it worked.
Right?
And it could be attention.
It could be talent.
It could be inclusion.
It could be people saying I need to partnerwith them because they're so well known.
I want some of that halo effect.
That's when things get really cool.
Know?
I remember when a good friend of mine who
was a journalist got hired by the LA James, andI said, well, what's to beat?
And she said, Google.

(31:51):
I have to write at least one article a weekabout Google, and then I can do everything else
I want.
And I just blew my mind that Google had so muchpreferred attachment that in order for the LA
James have more people read their stuff, theyneeded to be talking about Google or Apple or
Elon Musk, and that's what gets the eyeballs.
And then you can have other articles as wellthat sort of tag along, but that's really
drives, viewership is these well known nodes,and you wanna become one of those well known

(32:14):
nodes as fast as you can so it accrues andsnowballs around you.
Exactly.
And now preferential attachment could be hackedin a positive way.
So if you're building a startup and the biggestelephant in
the room is a company everybody hates, then youcan go after all the beat writers that cover
it.
So classic example is Uber.
So we had a company, you know, Rakesh Food fromFizz, but he had a company called Flywheel.

(32:37):
Our entire PR it was preferential attachment.
We found every beat writer that covered Uber,and then we even further filtered the ones that
wrote negative things about Uber because wewere the tack the alternative to Uber, and then
we went just to those people with stories, andwe got amazing stories because we're trashing
Uber at every moment.
And so preferential attachment is a huge partof punching up as well.
If it's not you that has a preferenceinvestment yet, you should latch on to somebody

(33:01):
else that does Airbnb for RVs, right?
We're basically surfing their brand reputationthat 20,000,000, 30,000,000 of dollars of comms
that they've already done for a decade to givethis startup would add no capital attention in
the New York Times.
Got it.
And so say again punching up.
Explain that.
So punching up basically means connect yourself
to something bigger than you that is alreadygetting attention.

(33:24):
Like, you know, GPT right now, you know, if I'mbuilding something in GPT, I'm probably gonna
get people that wanna respond.
Right?
Oh, I built a new PR company using GPT.
By the way, that'd be cool.
So I was gonna PR Wix didn't wanna write aboutthat.
Right?
So I'm I'm latching on to something thateverybody's talking about, and I have a unique
position around it, then I Beller somethingaround it.
Got it.
No.
I think it's a super useful concept to call outfor the founders.

(33:45):
It's like a David versus Goliath.
You know, how do you fit into you know, Elon'splans, how do you counter Twitter?
Everyone's talking about Twitter, or how do youassist Twitter or make Twitter better than
suddenly you're punching up into theconversation that's already happening, even
though you're
Here's a good example, one.
This is one of my favorites.
We had a company in Israel called Petediagnostics, okay, Israeli company doing blood

(34:05):
testing.
Now, obviously, they came out after theTheranos debacle And so what we did, they and
they basically, what they had done, James, isthey basically figured out how to do what
Theranos was claiming to say.
They finally figured it out.
So, again, as I bid you, how do we get in thisconversation?
We don't really wanna be associated with thembecause people won't like it.
And when we're like, we're saying, we're like,listen, we should be Theranos done right.

(34:25):
That's our angle And then tactically, everytime Elizabeth James has a court date, we know
that there's gonna be 16 journalists at CityHall covering it.
So let's make all of our product launches thesame day as the court Pete.
Okay?
And then let's pitch a story instead of badblood email subject line said good blood
question mark.
Okay.

(34:45):
So punching up is fun.
It can be a lot of fun, and I don't like to seecompanies get taken down legacy problems.
You just have to be aware of what peopletalking about and be in the conversation.
Now you mentioned, you know, your productlaunches.
You know, one of the things I think some Cfounders have been frustrated with is that very
hard to get anyone to write about them unlessthey're raising money.
Why is that?
What's going on?
It's a really good question.

(35:06):
You know, I'll tell you what, I think it'ssoftware versus hardware first of all.
I think it's too easy to make a soft product.
And I think journalists are like, why am Iwriting about these things?
You probably just did this in a weekend.
Oh, you got a new feature.
Great.
Oh, you got a new thing.
It's too easy.
If you think about hardware, you get coverageon hardware.
Because it's really hard to do.
And it actually, you can't just make newhardware every year.
I mean, actually Beller year you can, not everymonth.
Right?
So when Apple does something, everybody paysattention, even Samsung does things you pay

(35:29):
attention because we know journalists know thatthat's harder.
Software has become so agile that it's like, Ithink it's been Pete have been pushing these PR
things so much that the editors are like, look,honestly, if this isn't like dramatically
different than the thing before, let's not doit.
And then what you find is people like MarkBenioff literally have to brand the name of the
software throw a big party in town, call itEinstein, like, brand it.

(35:51):
You have to do so much things for a softwareproduct to get people to pay attention if
you're an existing company.
Right?
If you're a company that's launching for thefirst time, then you are getting coverage for
your product, but you're really gettingcoverage for the company also that just wasn't
covered before.
So the novelty of just coming out to market iswhy you got the product coverage, but it's very
hard to get ongoing coverage unless there's adramatic change and, like, a step up if that

(36:13):
makes sense in terms of what you do.
And you see them sometimes, like, I'd say maybe1 out of 10, you'll see a a story that's about
a company that's a software company that'ssomething dramatically ticket.
So given that when these early stage companiestry to get attention, they say, well, have you
done something really remarkable?
You're the first to do something, or Have youraised money?
So often what happens is all the product stuffgets folded in or the partnership stuff and the

(36:38):
other stuff Flint the cupboard is say that'sinteresting about the company Pete folded into
the funding announcement, or it's, you know,has to be accompanied with the funding
announcement in order to get any attention.
Is that
a pattern you're seeing?
I am.
So I didn't answer your first, sorry, the otherpart of the question, which is why is funding
announcements get covered?
Right?
So I think this is just goes back to that whenmoney changes hands, Pete have to write about

(36:59):
it.
It's like a transaction.
So it's almost like the ledger.
Like, there's something that journalists canconvince their editors that something really
happened here.
Something happened something moved from point aof someone's money to someone's point b.
And for some reason, it's more important thanrevenue.
Right?
If you go out and say, hey.
By the way, I wanna do a story about hitting a100,000,000 in revenue.
You will not get covered and say, hey.

(37:20):
I wanna do a story about raising 15,000,000 infunding.
Oh, you got a story.
Right?
It's hilarious, but, so it's not just customermoney coming in.
It's these venture capital organizations orcorporations that put money in.
So it's a transaction match with social statusaround validation.
Correct.
But what's interesting is even revenue doesn'tconfers much validation as somebody who's

(37:41):
supposedly really smart investing their money.
Correct.
And I'll tell you why I don't think revenue iscovered because it's hard to verify.
Don't think it's because it's, like, not a goodsign.
When the money moves from one organization toanother, that's a verifiable moment.
If revenue is generated, no one's opening uptheir books to the journalists to show them the
money coming in.
Like, I'm not a private company, of course,public, maybe.

(38:02):
So I think it's also like people just makestuff in the journal.
So, like, look, I don't believe you.
Your revenue run Pete, oh, growth percentages,that's another one.
It's like, maybe you'll get it covered, butmostly nobody believes it at the seed stage.
I grew I grew 400% this year.
They're like, yeah, from $2000 last year.
What do I care?
Exactly.
So I'd say the funding announcement gets undueamount of attention.
It's a kind of annoying.

(38:23):
I think I feel like I really some of thecompanies look at SBF, by the way.
Okay?
This guy from FTX.
It's almost like he raised more money just toget more press.
Like, it's almost like most of the presscoverage for a while was just I got a
1,000,000,000 more.
I got 2,000,000,000 more.
I got 3,000,000,000 more.
And then, yeah, he got these altruism stories,but those were only because people were
wondering, how the hell is he getting all thismoney?

(38:45):
Right?
So, the announcement of money was part of hisstorytelling.
He abused that.
Right?
Like, you don't wanna see a founder doing itjust for the attention's sake, but it does in,
by the way.
I'll tell you, like, we do this often where wesay, founder says, hey.
I've raised 20, Vijay.
I could take another 20 now and announce it 40,or we could just announced this extra 20 later
when I close a little more.

(39:05):
I'm like, oh, do the later.
We'll get two stories.
Right?
So it does play a role a little bit if you knowit works.
Yeah.
And so how can you help CSA startups beyondthese funding announcements?
How does it like VSC?
What's your strategy to help move the needlepast just another funding announcement?
Yeah.
So I'd say funding announcement is the firstthing.
I think the second thing, I we call it ITD.

(39:26):
So it's innovation thought leadership and data.
So there are things about products that areinteresting and should be announced when they
come out.
We've seen it all the time.
We've seen it with Mammoth.
We've seen it with Fireflies.
People make pretty cool products that areinteresting and visual in some James.
Sometimes not visual.
Sometimes we try to make them visual, even forsoftware.
Thought leadership is an interesting one.
It's one of the weirdest words.
I have a lot of problems with this word becauseI think it's overused, but at the core of it,

(39:50):
it's Do you have ideas that the consensusdisagrees with?
Do you have an insight that nobody's talkingabout that really matters?
If you are one of those people, thoughtleadership could be very powerful in terms of
how you communicate on social media, maybewriting guest pieces.
I think The bar is gonna be so much higher now,James, for thought leadership because of GPT.

(40:11):
There's gonna be tons of mediocre shit outthere, and it's gonna be the truly creative
interesting stuff that breaks through.
So give you a good example.
1 of my other companies, one of the violentideas we have is like, you know, running a
biotech company in a bear market.
I'm interested in reading that.
Like, I wanna know how what do you do that?
And so I think that's one way to do goodthought leadership is think about things that

(40:32):
truly people are curious about.
If it makes you feel a little bit uncomfortableto write it, then it's a good idea.
I mean, if it feels like selling somebody, it'sprobably you have to think twice.
Second thing I'd say about thought leadershipis objection handling.
This is a big one, which is company comes to beseed stage founder after we do the fun thing or
somebody says, Hey, I'm out the door.
I'm out there.
Thank you.
Getting attention.
Great.
But when we're talking to so and so big pharma,they still don't believe X Y Z we say.

(40:57):
Where they're still think it's this way, and wethink it's that way.
So we're saying, okay, objection handling hasto be solved and thought leadership could be
the way to do Pete are three reasons why it'sactually this way and not that way.
Right?
And so that is a pretty important now.
And I've even done it where we've taken thoseblogs We've written, and then we put them on
LinkedIn, and then we run them as an ad just tothose customers so they see it so that we can

(41:21):
see if we can actually start shifting theirperception in some way.
Around a way that they thought and changing howthey think.
And then the last thing I think is data.
So it's like companies are starting to collecta ton of data.
Could they become data PR machines for a newindustry, right, could outdoorsy tell us about
RV trends in America?
Because now they have all the data.
Why shouldn't they just be doing that for theirPR all the time?
So, I mean, that comes with a company havingenough data, and it's not always at the seed

(41:45):
stage, but there are other companies like manyin your portfolio that their entire business is
data.
It's contract negotiation or it's this thing orit's hiring data.
So we also think that that's a big key tosustainable PR.
And again, that goes back to my old daysworking on Advob.
We do these mobile metric reports about, youknow, iOS first Android in Indonesia.
This is that it worked.

(42:06):
And I think you could look at anything.
Look at generative AI right now.
You could look at new categories and saywhoever starts having the data about which
applications start doing well and not.
Probably get press coverage.
So that's the last part of that.
Yeah.
Interesting.
And so when you think about developing thoughtleadership, what percentage of the founders you
work with can actually be thought leaders.
Number 1, do they need to be real thoughtleader, or can you kind of manufacture their

(42:28):
thought leadership simply based on what productthey're selling in the market?
It's not common that the founder and first timemeeting them is like an amazing thought leader.
It has opinions.
Many can be coached into thinking in the rightway.
I call it a PR grade.
So usually if I do one announcement with a afounder and it works, I start to see like a
glimmer in their they start to understand thegame of how it works, and they actually start

(42:51):
coming to me with more ideas.
Like, if it works, if it doesn't work, they'relike, hey, man.
It didn't work.
But if it works, they're like, hey, I haveanother idea.
I have another idea.
And because engineers actually think this way,I think.
They see something that works and they wannascale it.
Right?
So I think first of all, founders can learn andgrow into becoming good thought leaders.
I think they can outsource some of that.
I think when you really wanna create havoc anddisruption, it's gonna be from your core of

(43:15):
your heart, not from a third party consultantwho's gonna do that.
And that comes and you see this, by the way,mixed results too.
Sometimes the people that are most disruptivecan also be taken down because they were not
that nice on social media, and they were too,like, out there, or they're too big of a brand
I see this Morgan.
You see companies that it's almost like, whyare you on social media all day and not

(43:36):
building your business?
Right?
It could become a Frankenstein situation.
But generally, I think founders can becomebetter than they were.
If there is 0, they get to a 5.
If they're 5, they can get to an 8, and thenthere's natural tense.
You know, there's just raw tens that you justwant to show them the tools and the techniques.
They get there.
Sometimes they do it already before they evenadd a PR from.
They're like, look, I already have an audienceon social.

(43:57):
I know how to reach my people.
Now I want VSE to do some other things for me,but this part, I got it like I already did.
And that's, by the way, more of a a typefounder.
Yeah.
And it's interesting.
What you're highlighting here is that differentfounders might have different strengths and
different mediums.
The medium that you're going on is sort of the4th question.
Right?
After the goals and after, you know, thepositioning and who you're trying to reach.

(44:19):
Your 4th thing is what's the medium, and you'resaying some people are naturally gifted
tweeting.
Some are naturally gifted at long form.
Some are naturally gifted at video.
Some actually gives you a short form video.
And do you work with them to try to figure outwhat they're best at?
We do work with them to see what they're bestat, and we always tell them nobody should get
in the way between you and your customer interms of how you communicate and where you

(44:39):
communicate.
That, you should know.
Like, frankly, you probably shouldn't even begetting funding unless you know how to do that.
It's with 1 or 2 Right?
Like, for example, like, if you're in crypto,you should already know how to use Discord.
You should already know how to build acommunity.
If you're gonna get a certain amount of fundingto keep growing it, and we will never advise
them there because that is their core customerrelationship channel, and they should

(44:59):
understand that.
What we can do is figure out how do we broadenyour audience in the best way, and that's
authentic to you.
Right?
So the authenticity part is, James, what you'rehanding on, which is some people are really
uncomfortable with being spokespeoplesometimes.
So Pete are very uncomfortable writing.
This is the big one.
The difference between video and writing.
I cannot sit down and write, but if you put meon a camera, I just go off.

(45:22):
Right?
You actually, I think, could do both.
But, like, if you don't work with thecomfortable method of the founder, nothing will
ever get achieved.
You could spend hours writing stuff.
And then by the time they get to editing it,it's already old.
That's the thing that happens all the time, bythe way.
And so we try to find a medium.
And by the way, the good news is there's somany great like, low production mediums now.
You can just do a selfie.
Actually, we have one of our clients inbiotech.

(45:43):
We're like, hey.
We just do a TikTok Beller day for you, youknow, because you are the best spokesperson for
your company.
And when I hear you talk, I want to follow youmore than any infographic that can be created
or press release.
What's interesting is I think most foundersdon't realize it's okay not to be good at all
the mediums.
Yes.
They beat themselves up about not being a greatwriter about not being great on video or not
being this or that.

(46:03):
And they just need to realize that some peopleare better on different mediums to just pick
your sport, basically.
Pick your sport and optimize Morgan
high volume on the platform.
Don't do a piece de resistance.
Don't try to fix your weaknesses.
Emphasize your strength.
Yes.
And let VSP or somebody else help you do enoughon the other medium so that you show up
everywhere.

(46:23):
Yes.
Exactly.
And, like, what we try to do, like, a contentsession every month.
When you're even running out of ideas, get the3 or 4 brain trust people on there to pop out
the 6 or 7 with you on the call, and then youhave your schedule for the next month.
Right?
So even when you run out of ideas, that couldbe salt.
Ideation is just a process.
Right?
And it shouldn't just be saved for when youthink you have an Flint.

(46:44):
Everybody that's successful at this.
Like you, by the way, have a team, a timeline,and a structure, it actually forces you to
figure out something to say sometimes, but itit's about that the consistency always wins,
James, is what we've found is, like, even ifit's not the coolest idea are the best quote
that day or the best tweet.
The people that are there that oftenneurologically, you remember them.
It's top of mind.
It's branding.

(47:05):
Right?
So founders that are out there more often maybewith less stuff tend to get more recall.
Interesting.
So what frustrates you in working with CJ iswhat are they doing wrong?
When you're pulling your hair out, what arethose moments like?
What are they doing?
The mistakes they're making?
You know, one thing I will say is that we pickfounders often by the investors that are
supporting the company because it's a signal tous of how much that investor cares about

(47:29):
storytelling much that investor is pickingsomebody that's going to be efficient or think
about the right things.
And sometimes there's just a lot of venturecapital out there.
A lot of companies getting funded, and thefounders not getting that other layer of
guidance that we think helps us give usourselves a 3 or 4 x better output.
So first thing I do is I look at the company,like, how are we getting this referral?
First of Morgan then I wanna see their hunger,right, in terms of storytelling.

(47:52):
How much are they believers in PR?
By the way, first time founders don't know.
They just don't know what they don't know, andI've never had a negative feeling about first
time founder because everything's in education.
I didn't know anything.
Right?
I mean, I've had to do this for 20 years tofigure it out.
Like, a lot of these founders could figure outwhat I do in, like, 6 months.
They become better at that than me.
So I think I have a lot of empathy for thefirst time founder.
I try to figure out their goal and make surewhatever happens, it's targeted at that goal

(48:16):
because then they're gonna be Currier.
And it it could be that the result was this orthis, but at least it was on target.
And then we try to convince them out of doingthings that are time wasters because some other
investor or some friend or some employee said,hey.
We need to be doing this.
A lot of what I try to do is say no to them.
I know it's kinda tough but saying no isprobably one of the biggest superpowers of

(48:37):
having a good partner in communications.
This is weird to say, hey, I'm paying thisperson to tell me not to do this.
Because time is money.
That founder spending it with us is notspending it building their products.
What we do has to be something that's 80%chance of working.
Right.
So there might be a podcast that asks them tobe on and they should say no.
Yeah.
We should look at the followers and say, whyare we doing this maybe we chop this one up and

(48:59):
turn it into an ad, and that could be how weuse it.
Yeah.
And we should be creative about content.
But if it's not moving the needle forward inthe audience, you Pete, classic examples,
events, right, conferences.
You probably remember these like, hey.
I got invited to speak of this thing in Boston.
Man, that is a big investment of time, notmoney.
I'm gonna go fly out there, go there.
Is it really, like, what am I speaking on who'son my panel?

(49:19):
How long is that panel?
Who's in the audience?
So, like, that, I think time plays a big rolein what we decide yes on that one as well.
Yeah.
You know, in terms of mistakes that foundersmake, I mean, I think one of the things that
I've seen them make is they've focus so much onwhat it looks like as we've discussed.
Like, I just want my first article inTechCrunch and rather than looking at the whole
lineup to get it right.
I mean, another thing is mean, just recently, Imean, TechCrunch really isn't announcing seed

(49:43):
stage investments anymore.
They're really focused on sort of, you know,10000000 or more 20,000,000 or more rounds
because there's just so many rounds.
There's so many venture firms now.
There's so many startups that TechCrunch hasreally stopped looking at that earliest stage.
And so you can't even get that coverageanymore.
Doesn't happen.
Yeah.
I mean, look, the markets do change, I willsay, a $10,000,000 round in TechCrunch this

(50:03):
year.
Would have been only possible for a$100,000,000 round last year, right, because
the market's shifting, but you're right.
The expectations have to change for the founderand then they gotta look for wherever else
their audience is.
Right?
So maybe it's in a a publication like fastcompany or fortune or Forbes or it's business
insider, or maybe it is a paywall.
But you know that the people that subscribe aregonna be a good group of people to get.

(50:26):
So it does change.
And I think also, like, we try to push them tomaximize social media as a very, like,
sophisticated strategy.
Make the announcements on there sometimes withthe right community behind it, pushing it at
the same time.
You may get to that target audience you want asa creative hacker or work around instead of
using the journalists to do it.
So there are different things that could workBut again, that dollar amount also depends on

(50:50):
that other factors.
What's the team like?
How interesting are they?
Right?
What vertical is it?
I have as generative AI at 3,000,000, maybePete covered say.
Right?
If it's SAS Accounting, probably not.
So I think that also plays a role.
We look at the sort of why now, like,literally.
I by the way, I saw one that's like, so and sogets funding to fix what FTX got wrong.
I'm like, okay.
Perfect timing.

(51:10):
You know, I'm like, that thing would haveprobably got covered at, like, 2,000,000 in
fund
Right.
Right.
There's those other factors do matter.
I think the other thing I'd say is, like, wetry to tell them storytelling is more than
media relations.
Pete this thing right so you can help you withyour recruiting, your fundraising, your
pitching, and then if you think aboutstorytelling, it's actually for everything you
do, and media relations is one part.

(51:32):
So often at the seed stage, they don't havethat.
They just don't they may have a deck they didto raise money from someone like you, but then
they don't have the tightest story Peteeverybody else to care.
So we kinda work with them on that as well.
Maybe sometimes up until the point where theyhave some bigger news to then drop.
Got it.
When there's a seed stage company, is there afunding amount below which they shouldn't hire
a PR firm?

(51:53):
And at what point should they hire a PR firmand then if they should, how do they
choose 1?
I'd say that it's hard to say the number.
Maybe sub 5, I wouldn't do it.
I wouldn't hire one yet.
I think when you get up to 7, you can seecoverage at this 5 to 7.
Again, other factors too.
I mean, sub 5, no.
Don't do it.
Why do you decide when you hire a firm?
I think the first thing you have to askyourself is back to the goals thing.

(52:15):
Right?
If it's like, I just want one story and thenI'm done, then find a consultant or find a
small agency or maybe even your fund hassomeone who could just flip a story to launch
or to do funding.
I see a fair number of founders would just wantsomething out there.
Something, maybe for recruiting or just plantthe flag.
Cool.
When you have bigger goals of like customersand raising attention for the next round of

(52:37):
funding, Those are what I call more likeconsistent communication programs where you're
going to want to really be a market for monthstrying things and pushing stories to get
attention and building relationships with themedia.
That's the other thing I Beller them to say, I,if you're gonna be in this at the long haul,
you should know everybody that matters.
And even if that means that we're we organize adinner, around climate tech or something and
you get to meet seven people that matter, whenyou will have the news, you will then have the

(53:01):
relationship.
So I think those things also do matter, butultimately it's more of like, do you have a
story ready to Beller?
Right?
And I think is it a product that's lost?
Do you need a call to action now for thisthing?
Then we have to figure out a way to someattention.
If you're just building, you know, I did afunding announcement, but I'm gonna go back to
build for the next year, then cool.
You don't wanna invest in like a full timecomps thing there.
Because that happens, by the way.

(53:21):
We see this a lot.
Somebody gets funding, but then you go into labfor a year.
Okay.
And so what you're saying is that if you have areal story to tell, you raise 5,000,000 or
more.
That's the time to hire a PR firm and get thatstory out there, have a strategy, and then
commit to the long term to know the rightpeople because it's that network is gonna be
the influence to get you to the right people.
Right.
And have 2 things in the cupboard.

(53:42):
If it's not a funding announcement, then itshould be data and some new hire.
Grab 2 things.
You know, you don't want just one thing ifyou're gonna go through all the process on
bringing an agency, but in your mind, at leasthave 2 things out of the 3 or 6.
And should you hire a person to be on staff tohelp you with communications and PR?
What point does that make sense?
Excellent question.

(54:03):
So it depends on scale.
I think at the seed stage, you may be fine asthe founder reviewing content.
I think a junior marketing person in house orsomeone on the team that says could do PR half
time to just review deadlines, approve budgets,edit, press releases is super valuable.

(54:24):
And sometimes I'll have a founder come and say,hey.
I'm waiting to make a senior marketing hire towork with you.
And I'm like, oh, no.
No.
No.
No.
Like, how senior do you have this person?
I just need someone who's gonna get shit doneon your side.
I do not need someone who's gonna go throughthat huge branding exercise right Like, you're
ready to go.
You need someone to just offload your work.
So then we try to give them LinkedIn.
It's like, hey, this is an example of someonewho's great at my other Flint.

(54:47):
Just great.
Look at this person's background.
They've been in marketing for a year, right,but they're just super young and smart and fast
learners, blah blah.
So, like, Pete try to find them the rightperson even, but it's usually just the
offloading of the work, James, I'd say, than itis like some huge strategic in house value.
Got it.
Really, the founder needs to do that and maybewith 1 or 2 strategic thinkers, either
investors or they're ahead of their PR firmthat they're working with.

(55:08):
It's really, really talented at that.
And most people aren't really good at it.
They wanna be good at it.
It sounds like a good lifestyle.
A good oh, I'm a really creative person, but myexperience, VJ, is that very few people are
actually good at thinking about positioning thewords and strategy around this stuff.
And they over complicate it, and they don't getit right.
And
All the time.
I would say that my big hot take I would saytoday also is more investors should spend time

(55:31):
with the PR teams and the founders and come upwith those great ideas.
Like, I think that is the magic.
Like, when you and I do something for acompany, we we actually talk about it before we
even look at it.
And you're actually pitching me as if I'm thejournalist on what the story is, and then we
kind of align on what could be the best thingfor them.
And then we talk to them actually.
And that's like super powerful.
And then having that reset once every 6 monthsor some big things happening with the company,

(55:55):
bringing some of the investors in that arefrankly mostly the ones that are either good
storytellers former operators is amazing.
So, like, we love it.
We actually demand it, in some cases, with thefounders, say, hey.
Look, you know, some of the best people youhave in this company are in the Pete table.
Why are we not capping them?
How do we get them?
Right?
Like, I have another company we're launching inthe consumer space.
I looked at the captain.
I'm like, man, these are some of the bestpeople in the valley.

(56:16):
These are some of the best storytellers.
Like, how are we should get their feedback to?
Because they have brilliant people.
So I think the founders have more smart peoplearound them than they think Morgan.
And then just bringing those people in at theright moments once a quarter, once a year,
could actually add so much more creativity.
And also those people know the endgame.
They know the business goal.
They're already aligned.

(56:36):
And so that they're already thinking about theidea based on that goal.
So I think that's one area that'sunderutilized.
Yeah.
And so how much does a PR firm typically cost?
How does it work?
You hire them for a year for 6 months?
Yeah.
So
$5000 a month?
Or 15, 20?
Yeah.
I'd say, like, you know, for if it's in techand you want good quality, I think you're
talking 12,500 up to, like, 25 more or less.

(57:00):
That's the level.
Anything less than that per month and minimum 6months is what I'd say.
If you just have a funding announcement, Thatis a probably consulting person's job for 3
months, and maybe you could get it donesomewhere between 75 110 k a month with one
simple goal.
I want a story for this thing.
Help me write it.
And that probably is the market for that.

(57:20):
Yes.
So and what do you get with the agency versusconsultant?
Pete all the messaging ideas, the positioningwork, probably a bigger database of reporters
to work with, and you're trying to get that,like, longer play of relationship building
versus, like, I wanna just get this one thingout the door.
You've now got a fund.
You're actually investing in a bunch of thecompanies that you see.
Right?
We've got a fund.
We've got amazing LPs like yourself in it, andour belief is just that I believe founders want

(57:44):
everybody in their cap table to operate with asense of urgency and provide value beyond the
check.
That's just my belief.
If I'm gonna take money from anybody Morgannext round, I would do, I wouldn't just want
money.
I'd want money that has value attached to it.
And so because we think that communicationswork is one of the core four parts of the seed
stage, like, you know, fundraising awareness,recruiting, James, like, we think that we

(58:08):
should play a different role.
Right?
Like, for 150 years, people have just beencutting a check to PR firms And I think if
there's some skin in the game, it's different.
It's just there's different conversations.
And there's a lot of ups and downs too.
In this thing where you want someone who's init for the long run.
That's why we did it.
Yeah.
It makes a ton of sense.
You know, one thing that I've noticed is thatif I can get the founders to write their own

(58:31):
launch article that they want to appear inForbes or Wall Street Journal or whatever.
If I can get them to write that, that theyexpect to come out 8 or 9 months from now, it's
really focusing for them.
It's a really good exercise for actually how torun your business.
It's not doing PR.
It's actually laying out how third parties aregonna see you in relation to competitors and

(58:52):
how much you raised and what your mission andyour positioning is.
All that can come out in that launch article.
And if they write it before they're ready,they'll actually drive the business in a much
better way.
And so the PR exercise isn't necessarily PR.
It's almost like you're training yourself as afounder to be driven and directed toward the
goal of the mission, the outcome.
That's super helpful.

(59:13):
It's a perfect point.
So this is what Jeff Bezos was doing at Amazonwhen division leads would come to him with a
new idea he'd asked them to write the pressarticle about the idea.
And in the process of them writing it, theywould sometimes realize it's not actually that
interesting of an idea.
They wouldn't do it.
So it didn't just crystalize a good idea.
It actually shut down a lot of bad ones becauseonce you start to visualize it, you realize it

(59:36):
wasn't that exciting.
Got it.
Yeah.
So bringing in the idea of doing PR early earlyis actually a very helpful thing in terms of
company building.
That's right.
So last point on this I had several foundersthat would edit these press releases like ad
nauseam, like, man, Vidgets, we need to knowanother tournament.
Morgan, we're at the 23rd at it.
Like, do you think a journalist is gonna readthis?

(59:57):
He says, no.
It's not about the journalist.
I said, really?
He's like, this has not become my positioningexercise.
This is about my team.
This is how we wanna talk about ourselves.
You have actually forced us to figure out whowe wanna be and how we wanna say things.
So I want you to be patient with us and help meat redline this thing because really now I'm
just thinking about my team with this thing.
And I know you get the story, but This is now,I'm finally gonna get a moment to think about

(01:00:19):
how I wanna write about ourselves.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, Vijay, this has been amazing.
So great to see you, buddy.
I look forward to all the work we're going todo in the future.
And, I hope that as many people as can listento this so that they can accelerate in their
communications and their PR going forward.
Well done.
Thank you, James.
Thank you, NFX.
Looking forward to a great 2023 ahead.