November 12, 2025 • 33 mins
A crisp crash course on announcing your fundraise correctly, including:
a good timeline for drafting, reviewing, and sending out the press release
how to correctly manage stakeholder feedback
and how to maximize the benefits of the announcement
The guest you’ll hear from today, Elisheva Marcus, and I met at the Deep Tech Momentum conference in Berlin and connected over nerding out about comms.
Elisheva Marcus has an MSc in Biomedical Communication and brings expertise from the San Jose Mercury News, Ada Health, Bayer, and more. Since 2020, she has been the VP of Communications at Earlybird Venture Capital, supporting portfolio founders as a sparring partner.
By the way, Earlybird Venture Capital was founded in 1997 and is among the most experienced venture investors in Europe, covering all development and growth stages from pre-seed to growth in industries like fintech, health tech, and deep tech.
---
Links
Connect with Elli:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/elisheva-marcus/
Check out Earlybird:
Connect with me:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/schmidt-marina/
Structure of a Strong Press Release or Announcement
Title
Use active, direct language.
Avoid buzzwords.
Commit to a single, powerful title (no subtitle).
Key Bullet Points
Three concise bullets summarizing the essential news.
Designed for quick journalistic scanning.
Represent the three to four main ideas the body will expand on.
Header Information
Include date and location.
Opening Paragraph
Start with a strong, engaging first sentence.
Avoid generic or slow openings.
Main Body
Expand on the bullet points in a clear, logical flow.
Ensure coherence and story progression.
Cover the who, what, where, when, and why.
Include:
Amount raised (with correct denomination)
Impact and significance
The team and why they’re the right people
A quote from leadership or a client
How the funds will be used and why it’s memorable
Closing Section
End with a short About section or call to action.
Provide contact or follow-up information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hi there. Recently I talked to his serial
entrepreneur with two major exits who had just started his
third company. I told him, wow, I've read the
news about your precede race. And that was impressive.
Congrats. And he just.
Shook his head saying, yeah, well, coordinating the press
(00:20):
release was so incredibly stressful that made me wonder,
wait, if someone with so much experience as a startup founder
still struggles with the fundraising press release, we
have to clean this up. This is why this.
Episode will give you a. Criss Crash course on announcing
your fundraise without losing your mind I met today's guest
(00:43):
Elisheva Marcus at a conference called Deep Tech Momentum and
Ellie and I connected over nerding out about.
Comms. Elisheva Marcus has a Master of
Science and Biomedical Communication.
She brings experience from the San Jose Mercury News, ADA
Health, Bayer and more. Since 20/20, she has been the
Vice President of Communicationsat Early Bird Venture Capital,
(01:08):
supporting portfolio founders asa sparing partner.
And by the way. Early Bird VC was founded in
1997, covering all development and growth stages from precede
to growth in industries like fintech, health tech and of
course. Deep tech.
You're listening to Scaling Nerds, the one and only podcast
(01:29):
covering all things communications for and tech
founders. My name is Marina Schmidt.
Let's jump right in. Yeah.
And, you know, a lot of people in this space say, well, press
releases are dead. Yes, I have strong feelings
about that. I have been around long enough
to see that if you don't state clearly what you're doing, you
(01:51):
don't expect other people to know what you're doing.
And the press releases is just aperfect vehicle to get the
basics confirmed and conveyed. I absolutely don't think that
they're dead. I think that you should be
realistic. And how about your expectations
of people's excitement about them?
I don't say that they're by nature exciting, but you have
(02:14):
the opportunity to state the facts, make it clear, and if you
are seeking earned media, you absolutely need to convey your
story. So the press release is just a
great way to do that. And so why would you like miss
out on that opportunity? Owned media is the content you
create and control on your own. Platforms like your website.
(02:36):
Or social profiles. Earned media is publicity and
exposure. You receive through third
parties. Which you do not pay for.
And do not have. Direct control over.
I guess some founders may wonder, like how important is it
really to announce the investment round?
(02:56):
Like what's the purpose? What are they trying to achieve
if they do that? Apart from like everybody seems
to do that, right? Yeah.
I mean I have like a quick answer to that, which is pretty
much three parts, which is 1, you raise the attention of
potential future investors to talent that you can hire more
(03:20):
easily and 3rd would be acquire customers.
To me it's a triple win. Like this is the path.
But I wonder looking. At the amounts that founders
raise, whether at some point it may not be good to publish it
because some some sort of so, sokind of keep it secret.
(03:40):
How would you guide a founder todecide you know when not to
maybe make it public? Very good point.
I just always think like publication criteria, like I
think about sifted sort of has aminimum and Bloomberg minimum
and you know, it's quite, that'squite a different range.
So there are some sort of facts that need, we need to factor in
(04:04):
about what's realistic. But I think when you talk about
your fundraise, you're stating something that shows that you're
building credibility. You're showing that you're sort
of a vetted, that someone believes in you and is willing
to back you. And that says quite a lot to
speak to your question, you know, is there a minimum?
(04:26):
I mean, I think if you've raisedlike circa 1,000,000 ish, go for
it. If you have like a smaller round
also could be interesting. Depends on on the story.
Always. I always say like, it's not
enough to get funding. What are you doing that's
interesting and amazing? Not just that, like don't focus
on the features. What are you enabling?
(04:48):
And I think if you're looking atall those kinds of questions,
you're getting closer to deciding whether you should go
out with the news and when. A lot of PR is story focused and
the fundraising pretty much justadds a little bit of a boost to
be featured, at least for certain media outlets.
It's kind of an easier push to actually be featured, let's say,
(05:12):
on TechCrunch. If you can say it is news if.
It's news exactly right, becausewhat is important for a lot of
the outlets is there needs to besome kind of urgency, otherwise
it just falls off the table. I've experienced fundraising
announcements from the startup side.
So being a consultant, doing theannouncements and it is quite a
(05:32):
stressful process. I just talked to another founder
a week ago who was saying, Oh myGod, it like burned him out.
And he's super experienced, right?
Like he's done several companiesand this is not his first rodeo.
Entrepreneur. Yes, Siri.
And entrepreneur and he's like, Oh my God, this process like
just just like. I mean, that's how I really try
(05:54):
to help founders have better experience with that because I
know it's hard. I've definitely been in the
trenches long. I have to know it's hard.
And so if there's someone who can guide you a bit with that,
it's extremely, I think, advantageous.
Yeah, let's look at like an example of a founder already
looking at the horizon, seeing that let's say they're serious a
(06:17):
or their seat round will close soon.
When should they start thinking about it and how?
Oh, I love it. I mean, I would thank someone
for just asking me that because I'm like, hey, you're thinking
about it. Excellent.
Let's start there. So The thing is never too early
to start thinking about it. I have over the past four to
(06:38):
five years developed like a fourweek rule, like circa one month.
And that just is like out of practice and habit that that's
what I've seen works best. I'm a big like visualizer.
I try to think like where would I want to have it appear?
What would be the great outcome?And they can imagine that we
work backwards from there. But I have seen that it takes
(06:59):
approximately 2 weeks to pitch. So I'm starting at this in mark
of the time, time zone and date before which the news is not
live. So there's the embargo.
So then two weeks to pitch that because we can talk about how
busy journalists are with their 200 emails a day.
And then before that, you have to have something to pitch them
right. Whoops, let me just slide in a
(07:21):
few jargon explanations. A press release embargo is an
agreement where you provide infoto a journalist or media outlet
with the condition that the information cannot be published
until a specific date and time. And in a press release, it can
look. Quite simple embargo, double
point and the date. So I imagine about two weeks to
(07:43):
get all your stakeholders blind,including your investors, your
angels, your Co founders, as well as all the things I think
we might be talking about soon. But getting your storyline set
up, your brand assets, your website, so all the stuff that
you can control, then the stuff you kind of can't control but
you want to influence and then the embargo and how I've seen
(08:05):
that over time is about a four week ish cycle.
It can be done faster, but no guarantees.
I would like to highlight the embargo timeline because yes,
I've seen founders be very worried about it.
Like Oh my God, like if we give them more.
Than like a few days of embargo.If we give them an embargo at
(08:26):
all, like will they respect it? Two weeks of embargo is totally
fine, and founders can generallytrust that journalists will
respect that embargo. OK, so The thing is I can count
on one hand how many times in burgers and broken I'm going to
go with like twice and I've beenhere five years.
(08:47):
So it is not a high risk situation.
And there's a lot of reasons we could unpack why that is.
Journalists are busy. They're not trying to harp you.
They have their own things to work on.
They're trying to be respectful and match the date that you're
asking. Now can they do that?
Well, I don't know. So this is the whole thing about
like trust building between you and them, respect for their
(09:12):
deadlines and that you'd they don't work for you.
Like it's not a service industry.
They're looking out for their readers and are you sharing with
them something that is viable and interesting and noteworthy
for their reader. So there's a sort of like this
foundational logic behind if they're even going to pursue
(09:33):
this. But then the embargo, I mean,
there are two schools of thoughts about this of like,
should you send something under embargo with the complete
information or not? I've seen like heated debates on
LinkedIn about this. My personal practice for better
or worse is will build the trustand then share the information.
I'd rather do one e-mail unless it's like a mega mega mega story
(09:57):
and I need to tease it out and or there's an exclusive is on
some other level. But if it's like your basic PR
situation, if there's a baselinetrust, then it's easier to share
something under embargo with very clear indication of said
embargo. I think 2 weeks is reasonable
and a lot of people would go with a lot less.
But I'm just like, if you're under one week and that on the
(10:20):
other stream, if you're talking about a next day, I mean, forget
about it. Like, yeah, feel like I
literally heard from a journalist in Germany just last
month where he said emails preferred plenty of time, kind
of nothing is too early for him to digest about it.
And then one to two polite follow-ups.
(10:42):
That's kind of the protocol because they just need time to
consider. And in the end, it's like a lot
about respect, right? And respecting also the role
that journalists have. I would get so many pictures as
a broadcast producer, right? Like, hey, feature this, feature
that and then it's a super off topic and super unfitting and
(11:02):
I'll just be like, block, block,block.
I wouldn't hesitate to block emails if I feel like they
didn't even do their homework atall.
So that's why I rather like go for quality over quantity.
Yeah, agreed. Right.
The spray and pray of PR can be very tempting and just like
said, blast out to hundreds of people, but like I, I've never
(11:24):
been a fan of that. Don't even start on Newswires.
Oh my God I'm allergic. Yeah.
So yeah, for for the listener, right.
Like the Newswires are platformswhere you can post your press
release and it gets. Shared that you pay for.
You pay. You pay for the sharing, yes,
and it gets distributed to all sorts of also non fitting media
(11:46):
outlets now. I will give it a little grace
and say there are some companiesthat are legally bound to do so.
I understand. I think as in the medical space,
I could be some valid reasons why they literally have to do
this and to respect for that. But if it's your choice, if it's
optional, I have my answer. I think it's good to start
(12:06):
building your knowledge of the media landscape as soon as you
can. And basically that that just
means paying attention who's covering your industry.
Like I think that kind of curiosity is very healthy.
And so the sooner you start to pay attention to you know,
what's going on around you, who's covering what.
(12:28):
And in an ideal world, follow them a little bit on LinkedIn,
see what they're posting, go there, search your keywords, see
who's covering, use it as a resource, create a spreadsheet
who name, journal, etcetera, region, geography, whatever beat
it is not that hard to start with like a very thin little
(12:50):
skeleton of ideal journalist. Yes, they may move around, but
if you kind of are keeping tabs on them, it's going to make life
so much easier if later you wantto pitch them because like,
they've seen your name, sharing their posts, sharing their
articles, tuning into their podcast.
So it's like this subconscious familiarity that you can
(13:11):
actually generate that will behoove you later.
So I really believe in that. Actually there is a browser
extension on Chrome that is called Raindrop and it is
actually for saving tabs. For all I needed, yeah.
OK, it's incredible. Like it saves my life all the
time. So you can just very easily save
(13:33):
your tabs and different folders.And a hack that I sometimes
share with founders is if there are people on LinkedIn that you
do want to keep in touch with because they are your investors,
because there are important journalists in your space.
You can even give this potentially to an intern, right?
Like go to the LinkedIn page, then go to the post section, and
(13:56):
then save their post section link in a folder so that when
you click on it you get immediately to the overview of
the posts and can engage with what they've shared or comment.
Very clever. That sounds more organized than
I've done tweets and LinkedIn posts about.
The fact that I saved so many posts on LinkedIn that it's kind
(14:19):
of driving me a bit crazy. That should be better organized.
Yeah, I'm not affiliated. With Raindrop.
But I'm a big promoter of it. Excellent.
Let's look at the actual like work on the press release.
What does a good fundraising press release look like?
How would you go about it? A really killer title that has
(14:42):
active words that really says itlike it is.
Please avoid buzzwords if you can.
Yes. And then I usually do a couple
bullet points of the key news. So imagine a journalist is
looking at this thing and they just want to quickly digest what
is happening. So if you encapsulate and like 3
bullet points under the main title, I don't always go for
(15:04):
like subhead subtitles. I'm just like, commit to the
title, commit to these bullet points.
Then comes the date, the location, a strong start, like
not boring in the first sentencebecause you don't want to lose
your reader so fast. And then you're matching those
bullet points those, you know, people can usually consume like
(15:24):
3 things or just simplify and belike, OK, these are the three to
four things that must get conveyed.
And now with there they are in their paragraphs and they're
lining up. So it's logical you're reading
this thing. It's got a flow, it's got a
story. It features The Who, what,
where, when. And make sure that you're
stating the amount raised. Make sure denomination is as you
(15:46):
need to be for whatever geography you're in.
You know the actual news. The impact is having the team,
why are they awesome and the right ones to bring this
wonderful thing to life. A nice quote from the leadership
or maybe a client where what arethey going to do with these
funds? You know, how does this have an
impact or why is it memorable? And then some sort of call to
(16:08):
action or maybe about section isrecommended at the end so that
they have a way to reach you. And that's kind of it is like a
simple sandwich. Yeah, what I also have come
across is like a lot of self congratulatory language.
I mean, that's the nuance of it.Should we do first person
plural? Third person, I mean, I usually
(16:31):
do the third person, not the we,because again, yes, what you're
trying to do is get the journalists have the simplest
path to publication. Yes, they see your news.
They can ideally expand, embellish whatever they need to
do. Possibly they're going to
replicate depending on how much time they have.
But if you if now they have the extra work to translate it into
(16:54):
they it's exactly it's more work.
So if you just give them the material that is fact based and
impactful, they can then spread the word easier about your
story. Yeah, I mean a lot of founders I
guess will be working with PR freelancers or PR agencies,
(17:15):
something so crucial. And I think that's kind of
strategy over tactics. Part here is like really just
the understanding the journalists, this is their
resource like pretty much like apre write of the article that
should make their job as easy aspossible and be relevant for
their target audience. For example, compare the press
(17:35):
release with like an article in an ideal outlet, like you put
like TechCrunch, like a similar fundraising related article next
to it and look at the wording that the journalists use.
And then you look at the press release.
And if the press release is likesuper off, buzzword bingo off
(17:56):
and there's some kind of gap to slightly close there.
Agree that that's like the idealscenario if you have ample time
and opportunity to do that. Really nice mash up.
I think that's really wise, yeah.
It's a question of like bandwidth and tailoring and.
I wouldn't do it for every journalist.
(18:17):
Like, yeah, yeah, that's that's like way too much more like the
archetype. No, I agree with you.
It's useful, yeah. Yeah.
And that tone, like this consistent tone of voice can
really like go out of the windowif there are too many people
editing the document. I mean, especially in a
fundraising situation, dependingon which country the company is
(18:37):
in, it can be kind of tricky regarding when is the
fundraising really closed, when it can really be announced.
And then you need to coordinate a lot of stakeholders.
The classic risk is to have so many loops of reviews and so
many rewrites that it loses any substance like that.
(18:58):
That happens all the time, right?
How How to navigate that right? I worked in science publishing
for humorous years and yeah, we had rounds of edits and you best
stick to those. So there's a publication date
lubing and there's press date. And you do not mess around like
you need to commit. And that's something that I
culturally bring with me now is commit.
(19:20):
Commit to your words. Everything can be edited until
the cows come home. Editing always makes something
better. Probably.
Hopefully at some point you justneed to commit and say this is
truth. This is our truth.
This is a great story. This is how we can tell it for
now, public relations, it's the relationship with the public you
have over the startup cycle lifetime.
(19:42):
If you don't just get like one shot, in my view, you have a
cadence of stories and information that you're sharing
over time. So just do your best with this
one and try to get it over the line.
I do recommend Google Docs commenting, editing suggestions,
etcetera, and have a plan and say like, OK, and this needs to
(20:02):
be done by this date. In order to pitch On this date,
we need to have this content finalized, including that team
picture, by the way, because youdo not want to send one picture
and then try to swap in another one.
And it's just a little dance that you can avoid if you just
have everything ready and this and sometimes I'm a bit hard
lines. I look if you don't have this
step ready. You're going to have to push the
(20:23):
pitch date out and therefore theembark like then if you don't,
then now you have a shorter, youknow, reverse engineered
timeline to that embargo. So yeah, I'm all for getting
those reviews, giving people a chance to weigh in for sure
important, guiding them through that process.
It's nice. Somebody has to be the person
(20:44):
who approves the edits and also says no.
I found that giving people the opportunity to feedback can
easily spiral. And what makes a big difference
is how they're briefed. And if you kind of just give an
investor the the press release and say a please comment or
whatever it may like go to completely South and you have to
(21:04):
go back and forth trying to revisit their comments or like
run after them to get them to approve it.
Like if I had jewelry, it would say stakeholder management.
Just if we're talking about likeit's a thing, it's definitely a
thing. You know, I mean, I have a
couple takes on this. One is like, well, if the
founder is guided and how to do this or, you know, generating
(21:26):
the core story, then like respect for that because it is
their story to tell. And so I would err on the side
of what the founder says is the way to go forth.
Now the investor can give informed advice along the way,
let's say, but it is the founderstory.
Now. I also think it's fine to be
realistic and say we need to wrap like edits need to get
(21:50):
completed by Friday in order forthat thing to move forward.
So that's also completely legitimate to put some
guardrails up and encourage folks to agree on things or
disagree, to disagree, whatever it is, but ultimately commit,
right. Yeah.
And also I find that like the way that it's phrased makes a
big difference in terms of if you ask kind of for approval and
(22:14):
you're like, hey, please tell me.
Or if you say, hey, we're sharing this with you so you can
review if you like and can shareyour opinion if you like until
this and this state. Yeah, we would proceed with this
version type of thing. Yeah, agreed.
You don't open the can of arms. Yeah, Yeah, Green.
I mean, we could talk a lot about how to speak with
(22:37):
investors this. Stakeholder managing investors.
Stakeholder management not soliciting tons of feedback at
the end of the cycle would probably be optimal.
Being inclusive upfront is probably the best plan to gather
inspiration information at the beginning of the cycle helps
too. Yeah, yeah, I agree with you.
Yeah. And you're exercising like the
(22:58):
tone of your company. You know, we didn't really get
into it, but I do usually recommend, and I say what I
recommend is not like me making stuff up is like, I literally
have talked to founders. I don't want to name names, but
like, it's a two way street. So when they tell me what works,
I'm like, OK, that does work. So one of them told me like they
created A1 pager and it's their mission statement and their
(23:22):
values and they worked on it as Co founders together.
And by the way, it evolves. So that's something that will
maybe change in two years time. Maybe that mission evolves.
But if you have that as a foundation, you're setting
yourself up for success. By the time you get to the press
release part, you're sorted because you already know what
you stand for, what you're building and you've bothered to
(23:42):
put it into words, commit to your words.
And I think that's a really goodnice exercise of like the one
pager and it brings a bit of unity to your small group of
like, how do we talk about what we do?
But that's going to end up on your website, you know, so it's
purposeful. The So what cannot be over
emphasized. And I mean, I definitely written
(24:03):
was before and heard it from other PR experts.
It's just like help people care because everybody's busy and
kind of nobody has time. So it's like, how do you make
you what you're doing noteworthyand worth paying attention to?
You you'll find this hilarious, but like I actually when you
said help people care, it just got goosebumps.
Look, I have goosebumps. Oh, I thought you were going to
(24:25):
show me a tattoo that said help people care.
And I'm like. Oh, get it again.
I need to get it apparently anyway.
So there's some real, real deep truth in here.
Yeah, good. So I think we've really covered
the understanding of the journalists side and starting
the process. Like maybe we can look at like
media kit or on that side. Would you attach a media kit
with a link, or would you ratherjust attach it directly to the
(24:48):
e-mail? I do love a media kit, I must
say. I'm always impressed by those.
OK, so basic level. Basic level is your press
release that you can copy and paste into the body of the
e-mail because no attachments are preferred typically.
Again, I have worked on a newspaper, I worked on the San
(25:10):
Jose American News, but I'm not a journalist myself.
So there will be different viewsabout this from different
journalists depending on how youask.
But it seems like you could safely say best practice.
You have a really great subject line, You can have a short pitch
why this matters, It's concise. Body of the e-mail has the PR
doc, the content that you have aligned and worked so hard on.
(25:32):
And here it is, embargo clearly stated and you attach a very
lovely team photo that personalizes your story.
Now behind that you have your website graphics sorted, All
this good stuff. And if you are exiting the
stealth, I would recommend that you test the heck out of it so
that you don't have so many bugsand things going wrong in the
day that you're driving all thisvisibility onto yourself.
(25:55):
So that's just another thing now.
So next level you mentioned press kit, very good idea.
And if you're going there, then I would recommend having your
press release stock. And maybe it's in English, maybe
it's in other languages and it'sin a folder.
But you, what you definitely have is a folder with images.
And maybe they're, you know, sealevels and then the team shot is
(26:16):
nice. And then maybe you even have
product images and maybe you areable to share that when if we're
talking deep tech could be really cool stuff in there.
So yeah, I've definitely supportmaking your story tangible and
visual. We haven't even talked about
inviting journalists on site. I've written a whole article
about like deep tech startups, how they should make it tangible
(26:37):
because I think it can get so abstract.
No, no. So agree with you.
Journalists are in the end content producers, right?
The visual of an article is actually a really important
choice. There has been a trend of more
images in media, I mean, alreadyfor such a long time, right?
Because it just increases engagement of readers, yeah.
And we haven't even talked aboutother things like if you want to
(27:00):
own media and then you have evenmore possibilities.
Are you going to record a beautiful video that tells your
story? It does cost energy or time to
do such a thing, but could be worth it, could be very
powerful. It depends on your sort of
aesthetic and ethos and what youwant to convey.
(27:20):
But at minimum 1. Great team shot.
Yeah, Expand from there. So let's go to the last part,
making announcements last. So I mean, OK, the big day
comes, the embargo is lifted. The journalist hopefully within
like a day or two or directly onthe day will post.
(27:40):
Fingers crossed, you know. But then what happens apart from
that, right? I actually find that fundraising
announcement Sunlington do get pushed by the algorithm quite a
lot. So how should founders think
about promotion outside of just PR?
So, you know, just keep in mind this fundraisers, hopefully one
(28:03):
of many. So you are doing your best with
this one and extending its shelflife.
So now let's say those articles are out, you can do your
yourself a favor by sharing the news from the journal
journalistic just, you know, tone down but grateful like
giving them a hat tip for their efforts, as well as tagging your
(28:28):
Co founders and possibly your Angel.
So all of these things are like tinging the nodes in the
network. So now more people are seeing it
because more people are sharing it and reacting to it, and
that's kind of what you want. Is this like network effect of
you? When I see people who don't tag
anyone, I just think, man, what a loss.
(28:48):
So like, how do you help people pay attention?
You tap them and say like this is worth your time.
Like look at this, this applies to you.
So I think being mindful about who you're tagging carefully and
activating people beforehand. Hey, fellow investors or hey,
angels, we're going to go out with this news at 9:00 AM on
(29:10):
October 1st. So be ready to promote.
And by the way, here's a little blurb you can say about us.
Like it's basic hygiene of how to do social media marketing
well. And I think you can do it in a
very authentic way that's careful and specific and
eloquent. And then you're amplifying your
(29:31):
news in this way. I mean, a lot of companies also
use Slack channels to trigger, Hey, this announcement went out.
If you want to energize your employees to want to be part of
the story with you and give thema reason to do that with you.
And then I would also say, and this is true for a lot of
people. I read this a lot on LinkedIn is
(29:51):
like all that long form content,podcast transcripts, turn it
into a little bite sized pieces.Short form comes out of a long
form. So make sure that you're, you
know, not wasting opportunities when you have long form content
to turn it into bite sized pieces, whether that's PDF slide
or maybe you're quote tweeting something, but you know, stay on
(30:13):
top of that. Yeah, so this is called content
atomization, where smaller pieces of content are usually
made from larger pieces of content.
So instead of reinventing the wheel over and over, you spend
so much time on this press release and it's like, well, now
it's a resource. Now you can hopefully use it as
a draft for your LinkedIn post instead of starting all over
again, right, and share it with the team so they can use parts
(30:37):
of it to share on their LinkedInand so on.
So we talked about PR being a vehicle for driving credibility
and then you want to capture that credibility.
So how would you make sure that you kind of retain the
credibility that you built? Well, I just was thinking about
the fact that maybe you listenedto podcasts, but then you have
(30:57):
your news and now all of a sudden you have something that
you can go to a podcaster and say, hey, we've raced in this
industry in this specialty area.You cover that.
Would you like to have a conversation about what we
learned and what our customers are informing us about?
And your one step of credibilityleads to the next one, to the
(31:21):
next one. And that's how I think it goes.
You know, another thing that comes to mind is say you want to
speak at a conference. It helps if you've speaked at
other conferences and you have videos of this and you prove I
can be on stage and I can cover this well and gracefully and
effectively. I work with a lot of conference
(31:42):
organizers and they want to see that.
And so where can you speak aboutyour topic?
Like is it on a podcast? Is it on a small stage?
You're not going to be on slush at first try, but maybe you can
have a smaller venue and get it recorded.
You can watch that recording andcritique yourself.
And might be harsh, but you learn.
(32:03):
You try and learn and then you can say, OK, I'd like to be on
your stage. And here's the example of me
speaking at this other event. I think it's very wise.
You can build credibility in different ways.
Yeah, and like have a PDF with the sightings.
On your. Website of the logos, yeah,
that's a it's just something that I think it's a bit of the
(32:25):
Halo of like, OK, this company is doing something relevant
enough that these media outlets are covering it.
So it just gives visitors of thewebsite the kind of push to be
like, maybe I should look into this, you know?
Like, oh, really? OK, so maybe.
There is a story here that is worth checking out, right?
Yeah, By the way, I just put in the plug.
(32:45):
One of our profile companies just recently went through this
whole cycle and then they did a very nice recap on LinkedIn
where they said, look at all these things that have happened
this month. We spoke here, we were in this
paper there internationally there.
They did a little roundup and itwas really nice to see.
And I think that felt that you're doing the work of
compiling all your wins in a place that's shareable and let's
(33:08):
other people on your team and your investors be excited for
what you're building. It's cool.
And I'm, I know that you're alsovery active on LinkedIn, so I'm
just going to encourage our listeners to reach out to you.
So if you want to get in touch with Ellie, you can find her at
Ellie Shiva Marcus and her LinkedIn is also going to be in
(33:29):
the show notes. Thank you so much.
I have been known to say LinkedIn is my happy place and
it's just true. I love hanging out there.
So come hang out with me on LinkedIn.
Do you know anyone who might benefit from a little crash
course on fundraising announcements?
Well, please share this episode with them.
This hels us continue with Scaling Nerds, the one and only
podcast on all things communications for science and
(33:53):
tech founders.
Hi there. Recently I talked to his serial
entrepreneur with two major exits who had just started his
third company. I told him, wow, I've read the
news about your precede race. And that was impressive.
Congrats. And he just.
Shook his head saying, yeah, well, coordinating the press
(00:20):
release was so incredibly stressful that made me wonder,
wait, if someone with so much experience as a startup founder
still struggles with the fundraising press release, we
have to clean this up. This is why this.
Episode will give you a. Criss Crash course on announcing
your fundraise without losing your mind I met today's guest
(00:43):
Elisheva Marcus at a conference called Deep Tech Momentum and
Ellie and I connected over nerding out about.
Comms. Elisheva Marcus has a Master of
Science and Biomedical Communication.
She brings experience from the San Jose Mercury News, ADA
Health, Bayer and more. Since 20/20, she has been the
Vice President of Communicationsat Early Bird Venture Capital,
(01:08):
supporting portfolio founders asa sparing partner.
And by the way. Early Bird VC was founded in
1997, covering all development and growth stages from precede
to growth in industries like fintech, health tech and of
course. Deep tech.
You're listening to Scaling Nerds, the one and only podcast
(01:29):
covering all things communications for and tech
founders. My name is Marina Schmidt.
Let's jump right in. Yeah.
And, you know, a lot of people in this space say, well, press
releases are dead. Yes, I have strong feelings
about that. I have been around long enough
to see that if you don't state clearly what you're doing, you
(01:51):
don't expect other people to know what you're doing.
And the press releases is just aperfect vehicle to get the
basics confirmed and conveyed. I absolutely don't think that
they're dead. I think that you should be
realistic. And how about your expectations
of people's excitement about them?
I don't say that they're by nature exciting, but you have
(02:14):
the opportunity to state the facts, make it clear, and if you
are seeking earned media, you absolutely need to convey your
story. So the press release is just a
great way to do that. And so why would you like miss
out on that opportunity? Owned media is the content you
create and control on your own. Platforms like your website.
(02:36):
Or social profiles. Earned media is publicity and
exposure. You receive through third
parties. Which you do not pay for.
And do not have. Direct control over.
I guess some founders may wonder, like how important is it
really to announce the investment round?
(02:56):
Like what's the purpose? What are they trying to achieve
if they do that? Apart from like everybody seems
to do that, right? Yeah.
I mean I have like a quick answer to that, which is pretty
much three parts, which is 1, you raise the attention of
potential future investors to talent that you can hire more
(03:20):
easily and 3rd would be acquire customers.
To me it's a triple win. Like this is the path.
But I wonder looking. At the amounts that founders
raise, whether at some point it may not be good to publish it
because some some sort of so, sokind of keep it secret.
(03:40):
How would you guide a founder todecide you know when not to
maybe make it public? Very good point.
I just always think like publication criteria, like I
think about sifted sort of has aminimum and Bloomberg minimum
and you know, it's quite, that'squite a different range.
So there are some sort of facts that need, we need to factor in
(04:04):
about what's realistic. But I think when you talk about
your fundraise, you're stating something that shows that you're
building credibility. You're showing that you're sort
of a vetted, that someone believes in you and is willing
to back you. And that says quite a lot to
speak to your question, you know, is there a minimum?
(04:26):
I mean, I think if you've raisedlike circa 1,000,000 ish, go for
it. If you have like a smaller round
also could be interesting. Depends on on the story.
Always. I always say like, it's not
enough to get funding. What are you doing that's
interesting and amazing? Not just that, like don't focus
on the features. What are you enabling?
(04:48):
And I think if you're looking atall those kinds of questions,
you're getting closer to deciding whether you should go
out with the news and when. A lot of PR is story focused and
the fundraising pretty much justadds a little bit of a boost to
be featured, at least for certain media outlets.
It's kind of an easier push to actually be featured, let's say,
(05:12):
on TechCrunch. If you can say it is news if.
It's news exactly right, becausewhat is important for a lot of
the outlets is there needs to besome kind of urgency, otherwise
it just falls off the table. I've experienced fundraising
announcements from the startup side.
So being a consultant, doing theannouncements and it is quite a
(05:32):
stressful process. I just talked to another founder
a week ago who was saying, Oh myGod, it like burned him out.
And he's super experienced, right?
Like he's done several companiesand this is not his first rodeo.
Entrepreneur. Yes, Siri.
And entrepreneur and he's like, Oh my God, this process like
just just like. I mean, that's how I really try
(05:54):
to help founders have better experience with that because I
know it's hard. I've definitely been in the
trenches long. I have to know it's hard.
And so if there's someone who can guide you a bit with that,
it's extremely, I think, advantageous.
Yeah, let's look at like an example of a founder already
looking at the horizon, seeing that let's say they're serious a
(06:17):
or their seat round will close soon.
When should they start thinking about it and how?
Oh, I love it. I mean, I would thank someone
for just asking me that because I'm like, hey, you're thinking
about it. Excellent.
Let's start there. So The thing is never too early
to start thinking about it. I have over the past four to
(06:38):
five years developed like a fourweek rule, like circa one month.
And that just is like out of practice and habit that that's
what I've seen works best. I'm a big like visualizer.
I try to think like where would I want to have it appear?
What would be the great outcome?And they can imagine that we
work backwards from there. But I have seen that it takes
(06:59):
approximately 2 weeks to pitch. So I'm starting at this in mark
of the time, time zone and date before which the news is not
live. So there's the embargo.
So then two weeks to pitch that because we can talk about how
busy journalists are with their 200 emails a day.
And then before that, you have to have something to pitch them
right. Whoops, let me just slide in a
(07:21):
few jargon explanations. A press release embargo is an
agreement where you provide infoto a journalist or media outlet
with the condition that the information cannot be published
until a specific date and time. And in a press release, it can
look. Quite simple embargo, double
point and the date. So I imagine about two weeks to
(07:43):
get all your stakeholders blind,including your investors, your
angels, your Co founders, as well as all the things I think
we might be talking about soon. But getting your storyline set
up, your brand assets, your website, so all the stuff that
you can control, then the stuff you kind of can't control but
you want to influence and then the embargo and how I've seen
(08:05):
that over time is about a four week ish cycle.
It can be done faster, but no guarantees.
I would like to highlight the embargo timeline because yes,
I've seen founders be very worried about it.
Like Oh my God, like if we give them more.
Than like a few days of embargo.If we give them an embargo at
(08:26):
all, like will they respect it? Two weeks of embargo is totally
fine, and founders can generallytrust that journalists will
respect that embargo. OK, so The thing is I can count
on one hand how many times in burgers and broken I'm going to
go with like twice and I've beenhere five years.
(08:47):
So it is not a high risk situation.
And there's a lot of reasons we could unpack why that is.
Journalists are busy. They're not trying to harp you.
They have their own things to work on.
They're trying to be respectful and match the date that you're
asking. Now can they do that?
Well, I don't know. So this is the whole thing about
like trust building between you and them, respect for their
(09:12):
deadlines and that you'd they don't work for you.
Like it's not a service industry.
They're looking out for their readers and are you sharing with
them something that is viable and interesting and noteworthy
for their reader. So there's a sort of like this
foundational logic behind if they're even going to pursue
(09:33):
this. But then the embargo, I mean,
there are two schools of thoughts about this of like,
should you send something under embargo with the complete
information or not? I've seen like heated debates on
LinkedIn about this. My personal practice for better
or worse is will build the trustand then share the information.
I'd rather do one e-mail unless it's like a mega mega mega story
(09:57):
and I need to tease it out and or there's an exclusive is on
some other level. But if it's like your basic PR
situation, if there's a baselinetrust, then it's easier to share
something under embargo with very clear indication of said
embargo. I think 2 weeks is reasonable
and a lot of people would go with a lot less.
But I'm just like, if you're under one week and that on the
(10:20):
other stream, if you're talking about a next day, I mean, forget
about it. Like, yeah, feel like I
literally heard from a journalist in Germany just last
month where he said emails preferred plenty of time, kind
of nothing is too early for him to digest about it.
And then one to two polite follow-ups.
(10:42):
That's kind of the protocol because they just need time to
consider. And in the end, it's like a lot
about respect, right? And respecting also the role
that journalists have. I would get so many pictures as
a broadcast producer, right? Like, hey, feature this, feature
that and then it's a super off topic and super unfitting and
(11:02):
I'll just be like, block, block,block.
I wouldn't hesitate to block emails if I feel like they
didn't even do their homework atall.
So that's why I rather like go for quality over quantity.
Yeah, agreed. Right.
The spray and pray of PR can be very tempting and just like
said, blast out to hundreds of people, but like I, I've never
(11:24):
been a fan of that. Don't even start on Newswires.
Oh my God I'm allergic. Yeah.
So yeah, for for the listener, right.
Like the Newswires are platformswhere you can post your press
release and it gets. Shared that you pay for.
You pay. You pay for the sharing, yes,
and it gets distributed to all sorts of also non fitting media
(11:46):
outlets now. I will give it a little grace
and say there are some companiesthat are legally bound to do so.
I understand. I think as in the medical space,
I could be some valid reasons why they literally have to do
this and to respect for that. But if it's your choice, if it's
optional, I have my answer. I think it's good to start
(12:06):
building your knowledge of the media landscape as soon as you
can. And basically that that just
means paying attention who's covering your industry.
Like I think that kind of curiosity is very healthy.
And so the sooner you start to pay attention to you know,
what's going on around you, who's covering what.
(12:28):
And in an ideal world, follow them a little bit on LinkedIn,
see what they're posting, go there, search your keywords, see
who's covering, use it as a resource, create a spreadsheet
who name, journal, etcetera, region, geography, whatever beat
it is not that hard to start with like a very thin little
(12:50):
skeleton of ideal journalist. Yes, they may move around, but
if you kind of are keeping tabs on them, it's going to make life
so much easier if later you wantto pitch them because like,
they've seen your name, sharing their posts, sharing their
articles, tuning into their podcast.
So it's like this subconscious familiarity that you can
(13:11):
actually generate that will behoove you later.
So I really believe in that. Actually there is a browser
extension on Chrome that is called Raindrop and it is
actually for saving tabs. For all I needed, yeah.
OK, it's incredible. Like it saves my life all the
time. So you can just very easily save
(13:33):
your tabs and different folders.And a hack that I sometimes
share with founders is if there are people on LinkedIn that you
do want to keep in touch with because they are your investors,
because there are important journalists in your space.
You can even give this potentially to an intern, right?
Like go to the LinkedIn page, then go to the post section, and
(13:56):
then save their post section link in a folder so that when
you click on it you get immediately to the overview of
the posts and can engage with what they've shared or comment.
Very clever. That sounds more organized than
I've done tweets and LinkedIn posts about.
The fact that I saved so many posts on LinkedIn that it's kind
(14:19):
of driving me a bit crazy. That should be better organized.
Yeah, I'm not affiliated. With Raindrop.
But I'm a big promoter of it. Excellent.
Let's look at the actual like work on the press release.
What does a good fundraising press release look like?
How would you go about it? A really killer title that has
(14:42):
active words that really says itlike it is.
Please avoid buzzwords if you can.
Yes. And then I usually do a couple
bullet points of the key news. So imagine a journalist is
looking at this thing and they just want to quickly digest what
is happening. So if you encapsulate and like 3
bullet points under the main title, I don't always go for
(15:04):
like subhead subtitles. I'm just like, commit to the
title, commit to these bullet points.
Then comes the date, the location, a strong start, like
not boring in the first sentencebecause you don't want to lose
your reader so fast. And then you're matching those
bullet points those, you know, people can usually consume like
(15:24):
3 things or just simplify and belike, OK, these are the three to
four things that must get conveyed.
And now with there they are in their paragraphs and they're
lining up. So it's logical you're reading
this thing. It's got a flow, it's got a
story. It features The Who, what,
where, when. And make sure that you're
stating the amount raised. Make sure denomination is as you
(15:46):
need to be for whatever geography you're in.
You know the actual news. The impact is having the team,
why are they awesome and the right ones to bring this
wonderful thing to life. A nice quote from the leadership
or maybe a client where what arethey going to do with these
funds? You know, how does this have an
impact or why is it memorable? And then some sort of call to
(16:08):
action or maybe about section isrecommended at the end so that
they have a way to reach you. And that's kind of it is like a
simple sandwich. Yeah, what I also have come
across is like a lot of self congratulatory language.
I mean, that's the nuance of it.Should we do first person
plural? Third person, I mean, I usually
(16:31):
do the third person, not the we,because again, yes, what you're
trying to do is get the journalists have the simplest
path to publication. Yes, they see your news.
They can ideally expand, embellish whatever they need to
do. Possibly they're going to
replicate depending on how much time they have.
But if you if now they have the extra work to translate it into
(16:54):
they it's exactly it's more work.
So if you just give them the material that is fact based and
impactful, they can then spread the word easier about your
story. Yeah, I mean a lot of founders I
guess will be working with PR freelancers or PR agencies,
(17:15):
something so crucial. And I think that's kind of
strategy over tactics. Part here is like really just
the understanding the journalists, this is their
resource like pretty much like apre write of the article that
should make their job as easy aspossible and be relevant for
their target audience. For example, compare the press
(17:35):
release with like an article in an ideal outlet, like you put
like TechCrunch, like a similar fundraising related article next
to it and look at the wording that the journalists use.
And then you look at the press release.
And if the press release is likesuper off, buzzword bingo off
(17:56):
and there's some kind of gap to slightly close there.
Agree that that's like the idealscenario if you have ample time
and opportunity to do that. Really nice mash up.
I think that's really wise, yeah.
It's a question of like bandwidth and tailoring and.
I wouldn't do it for every journalist.
(18:17):
Like, yeah, yeah, that's that's like way too much more like the
archetype. No, I agree with you.
It's useful, yeah. Yeah.
And that tone, like this consistent tone of voice can
really like go out of the windowif there are too many people
editing the document. I mean, especially in a
fundraising situation, dependingon which country the company is
(18:37):
in, it can be kind of tricky regarding when is the
fundraising really closed, when it can really be announced.
And then you need to coordinate a lot of stakeholders.
The classic risk is to have so many loops of reviews and so
many rewrites that it loses any substance like that.
(18:58):
That happens all the time, right?
How How to navigate that right? I worked in science publishing
for humorous years and yeah, we had rounds of edits and you best
stick to those. So there's a publication date
lubing and there's press date. And you do not mess around like
you need to commit. And that's something that I
culturally bring with me now is commit.
(19:20):
Commit to your words. Everything can be edited until
the cows come home. Editing always makes something
better. Probably.
Hopefully at some point you justneed to commit and say this is
truth. This is our truth.
This is a great story. This is how we can tell it for
now, public relations, it's the relationship with the public you
have over the startup cycle lifetime.
(19:42):
If you don't just get like one shot, in my view, you have a
cadence of stories and information that you're sharing
over time. So just do your best with this
one and try to get it over the line.
I do recommend Google Docs commenting, editing suggestions,
etcetera, and have a plan and say like, OK, and this needs to
(20:02):
be done by this date. In order to pitch On this date,
we need to have this content finalized, including that team
picture, by the way, because youdo not want to send one picture
and then try to swap in another one.
And it's just a little dance that you can avoid if you just
have everything ready and this and sometimes I'm a bit hard
lines. I look if you don't have this
step ready. You're going to have to push the
(20:23):
pitch date out and therefore theembark like then if you don't,
then now you have a shorter, youknow, reverse engineered
timeline to that embargo. So yeah, I'm all for getting
those reviews, giving people a chance to weigh in for sure
important, guiding them through that process.
It's nice. Somebody has to be the person
(20:44):
who approves the edits and also says no.
I found that giving people the opportunity to feedback can
easily spiral. And what makes a big difference
is how they're briefed. And if you kind of just give an
investor the the press release and say a please comment or
whatever it may like go to completely South and you have to
(21:04):
go back and forth trying to revisit their comments or like
run after them to get them to approve it.
Like if I had jewelry, it would say stakeholder management.
Just if we're talking about likeit's a thing, it's definitely a
thing. You know, I mean, I have a
couple takes on this. One is like, well, if the
founder is guided and how to do this or, you know, generating
(21:26):
the core story, then like respect for that because it is
their story to tell. And so I would err on the side
of what the founder says is the way to go forth.
Now the investor can give informed advice along the way,
let's say, but it is the founderstory.
Now. I also think it's fine to be
realistic and say we need to wrap like edits need to get
(21:50):
completed by Friday in order forthat thing to move forward.
So that's also completely legitimate to put some
guardrails up and encourage folks to agree on things or
disagree, to disagree, whatever it is, but ultimately commit,
right. Yeah.
And also I find that like the way that it's phrased makes a
big difference in terms of if you ask kind of for approval and
(22:14):
you're like, hey, please tell me.
Or if you say, hey, we're sharing this with you so you can
review if you like and can shareyour opinion if you like until
this and this state. Yeah, we would proceed with this
version type of thing. Yeah, agreed.
You don't open the can of arms. Yeah, Yeah, Green.
I mean, we could talk a lot about how to speak with
(22:37):
investors this. Stakeholder managing investors.
Stakeholder management not soliciting tons of feedback at
the end of the cycle would probably be optimal.
Being inclusive upfront is probably the best plan to gather
inspiration information at the beginning of the cycle helps
too. Yeah, yeah, I agree with you.
Yeah. And you're exercising like the
(22:58):
tone of your company. You know, we didn't really get
into it, but I do usually recommend, and I say what I
recommend is not like me making stuff up is like, I literally
have talked to founders. I don't want to name names, but
like, it's a two way street. So when they tell me what works,
I'm like, OK, that does work. So one of them told me like they
created A1 pager and it's their mission statement and their
(23:22):
values and they worked on it as Co founders together.
And by the way, it evolves. So that's something that will
maybe change in two years time. Maybe that mission evolves.
But if you have that as a foundation, you're setting
yourself up for success. By the time you get to the press
release part, you're sorted because you already know what
you stand for, what you're building and you've bothered to
(23:42):
put it into words, commit to your words.
And I think that's a really goodnice exercise of like the one
pager and it brings a bit of unity to your small group of
like, how do we talk about what we do?
But that's going to end up on your website, you know, so it's
purposeful. The So what cannot be over
emphasized. And I mean, I definitely written
(24:03):
was before and heard it from other PR experts.
It's just like help people care because everybody's busy and
kind of nobody has time. So it's like, how do you make
you what you're doing noteworthyand worth paying attention to?
You you'll find this hilarious, but like I actually when you
said help people care, it just got goosebumps.
Look, I have goosebumps. Oh, I thought you were going to
(24:25):
show me a tattoo that said help people care.
And I'm like. Oh, get it again.
I need to get it apparently anyway.
So there's some real, real deep truth in here.
Yeah, good. So I think we've really covered
the understanding of the journalists side and starting
the process. Like maybe we can look at like
media kit or on that side. Would you attach a media kit
with a link, or would you ratherjust attach it directly to the
(24:48):
e-mail? I do love a media kit, I must
say. I'm always impressed by those.
OK, so basic level. Basic level is your press
release that you can copy and paste into the body of the
e-mail because no attachments are preferred typically.
Again, I have worked on a newspaper, I worked on the San
(25:10):
Jose American News, but I'm not a journalist myself.
So there will be different viewsabout this from different
journalists depending on how youask.
But it seems like you could safely say best practice.
You have a really great subject line, You can have a short pitch
why this matters, It's concise. Body of the e-mail has the PR
doc, the content that you have aligned and worked so hard on.
(25:32):
And here it is, embargo clearly stated and you attach a very
lovely team photo that personalizes your story.
Now behind that you have your website graphics sorted, All
this good stuff. And if you are exiting the
stealth, I would recommend that you test the heck out of it so
that you don't have so many bugsand things going wrong in the
day that you're driving all thisvisibility onto yourself.
(25:55):
So that's just another thing now.
So next level you mentioned press kit, very good idea.
And if you're going there, then I would recommend having your
press release stock. And maybe it's in English, maybe
it's in other languages and it'sin a folder.
But you, what you definitely have is a folder with images.
And maybe they're, you know, sealevels and then the team shot is
(26:16):
nice. And then maybe you even have
product images and maybe you areable to share that when if we're
talking deep tech could be really cool stuff in there.
So yeah, I've definitely supportmaking your story tangible and
visual. We haven't even talked about
inviting journalists on site. I've written a whole article
about like deep tech startups, how they should make it tangible
(26:37):
because I think it can get so abstract.
No, no. So agree with you.
Journalists are in the end content producers, right?
The visual of an article is actually a really important
choice. There has been a trend of more
images in media, I mean, alreadyfor such a long time, right?
Because it just increases engagement of readers, yeah.
And we haven't even talked aboutother things like if you want to
(27:00):
own media and then you have evenmore possibilities.
Are you going to record a beautiful video that tells your
story? It does cost energy or time to
do such a thing, but could be worth it, could be very
powerful. It depends on your sort of
aesthetic and ethos and what youwant to convey.
(27:20):
But at minimum 1. Great team shot.
Yeah, Expand from there. So let's go to the last part,
making announcements last. So I mean, OK, the big day
comes, the embargo is lifted. The journalist hopefully within
like a day or two or directly onthe day will post.
(27:40):
Fingers crossed, you know. But then what happens apart from
that, right? I actually find that fundraising
announcement Sunlington do get pushed by the algorithm quite a
lot. So how should founders think
about promotion outside of just PR?
So, you know, just keep in mind this fundraisers, hopefully one
(28:03):
of many. So you are doing your best with
this one and extending its shelflife.
So now let's say those articles are out, you can do your
yourself a favor by sharing the news from the journal
journalistic just, you know, tone down but grateful like
giving them a hat tip for their efforts, as well as tagging your
(28:28):
Co founders and possibly your Angel.
So all of these things are like tinging the nodes in the
network. So now more people are seeing it
because more people are sharing it and reacting to it, and
that's kind of what you want. Is this like network effect of
you? When I see people who don't tag
anyone, I just think, man, what a loss.
(28:48):
So like, how do you help people pay attention?
You tap them and say like this is worth your time.
Like look at this, this applies to you.
So I think being mindful about who you're tagging carefully and
activating people beforehand. Hey, fellow investors or hey,
angels, we're going to go out with this news at 9:00 AM on
(29:10):
October 1st. So be ready to promote.
And by the way, here's a little blurb you can say about us.
Like it's basic hygiene of how to do social media marketing
well. And I think you can do it in a
very authentic way that's careful and specific and
eloquent. And then you're amplifying your
(29:31):
news in this way. I mean, a lot of companies also
use Slack channels to trigger, Hey, this announcement went out.
If you want to energize your employees to want to be part of
the story with you and give thema reason to do that with you.
And then I would also say, and this is true for a lot of
people. I read this a lot on LinkedIn is
(29:51):
like all that long form content,podcast transcripts, turn it
into a little bite sized pieces.Short form comes out of a long
form. So make sure that you're, you
know, not wasting opportunities when you have long form content
to turn it into bite sized pieces, whether that's PDF slide
or maybe you're quote tweeting something, but you know, stay on
(30:13):
top of that. Yeah, so this is called content
atomization, where smaller pieces of content are usually
made from larger pieces of content.
So instead of reinventing the wheel over and over, you spend
so much time on this press release and it's like, well, now
it's a resource. Now you can hopefully use it as
a draft for your LinkedIn post instead of starting all over
again, right, and share it with the team so they can use parts
(30:37):
of it to share on their LinkedInand so on.
So we talked about PR being a vehicle for driving credibility
and then you want to capture that credibility.
So how would you make sure that you kind of retain the
credibility that you built? Well, I just was thinking about
the fact that maybe you listenedto podcasts, but then you have
(30:57):
your news and now all of a sudden you have something that
you can go to a podcaster and say, hey, we've raced in this
industry in this specialty area.You cover that.
Would you like to have a conversation about what we
learned and what our customers are informing us about?
And your one step of credibilityleads to the next one, to the
(31:21):
next one. And that's how I think it goes.
You know, another thing that comes to mind is say you want to
speak at a conference. It helps if you've speaked at
other conferences and you have videos of this and you prove I
can be on stage and I can cover this well and gracefully and
effectively. I work with a lot of conference
(31:42):
organizers and they want to see that.
And so where can you speak aboutyour topic?
Like is it on a podcast? Is it on a small stage?
You're not going to be on slush at first try, but maybe you can
have a smaller venue and get it recorded.
You can watch that recording andcritique yourself.
And might be harsh, but you learn.
(32:03):
You try and learn and then you can say, OK, I'd like to be on
your stage. And here's the example of me
speaking at this other event. I think it's very wise.
You can build credibility in different ways.
Yeah, and like have a PDF with the sightings.
On your. Website of the logos, yeah,
that's a it's just something that I think it's a bit of the
(32:25):
Halo of like, OK, this company is doing something relevant
enough that these media outlets are covering it.
So it just gives visitors of thewebsite the kind of push to be
like, maybe I should look into this, you know?
Like, oh, really? OK, so maybe.
There is a story here that is worth checking out, right?
Yeah, By the way, I just put in the plug.
(32:45):
One of our profile companies just recently went through this
whole cycle and then they did a very nice recap on LinkedIn
where they said, look at all these things that have happened
this month. We spoke here, we were in this
paper there internationally there.
They did a little roundup and itwas really nice to see.
And I think that felt that you're doing the work of
compiling all your wins in a place that's shareable and let's
(33:08):
other people on your team and your investors be excited for
what you're building. It's cool.
And I'm, I know that you're alsovery active on LinkedIn, so I'm
just going to encourage our listeners to reach out to you.
So if you want to get in touch with Ellie, you can find her at
Ellie Shiva Marcus and her LinkedIn is also going to be in
(33:29):
the show notes. Thank you so much.
I have been known to say LinkedIn is my happy place and
it's just true. I love hanging out there.
So come hang out with me on LinkedIn.
Do you know anyone who might benefit from a little crash
course on fundraising announcements?
Well, please share this episode with them.
This hels us continue with Scaling Nerds, the one and only
podcast on all things communications for science and
(33:53):
tech founders.
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