Ten Profitable Years Is a Great Business and a Terrible Press Release

There is a specific kind of enterprise software company that conventional PR advice doesn't fit. It's profitable. It has thousands of customers, some of them names you'd recognize. It has been operating for a decade or more. And it has barely been written about, because it has never needed to be.

This is more common than the funding-announcement playbook admits, and it is the situation where conventional PR advice fails most completely. There is no round to announce, no launch, no executive hire, no crisis, no growth curve that looks dramatic on a chart. There is just a good business that nobody has heard of. The way to get press coverage for a company like this is to make the fact it finds boring about itself, such as years of profit without outside money, part of the story, and to tie whatever news it does have to a market shift reporters already cover.

In my experience, the routine news a company like this does produce, a compliance certification or a new marketplace listing, earns a line in a trade roundup at most. That kind of news belongs on the wire, and the team's hours belong on things that can earn a story.

Two of our enterprise engagements started exactly here.

Key takeaways

• Campaign Monitor was profitable every quarter for ten years, with more than 100,000 paying customers, before taking its first outside money: $250 million from Insight Venture Partners in April 2014. Fortune's headline called the round "a long time coming."
• Files.com's strongest coverage came in March 2022, more than a year after its $46.5 million round was announced, when VentureBeat covered its ExaVault acquisition as a story about a $1.2 billion market still running on outdated on-premises technology.
• The fact a company finds boring about itself can make its news more interesting, as Campaign Monitor's decade without outside money did for coverage of its first funding round.

The Campaign Monitor version

Campaign Monitor was founded in Sydney in 2004 and was profitable every quarter for ten straight years without raising a dollar. Insight Venture Partners first called in 2008 and got a polite no. In April 2014 the answer changed, and Insight put in $250 million, close to 10% of its latest fund.

The company had more than 100,000 paying customers in 170 countries, including Apple, Facebook and Intel, and effectively no profile in American media. Email marketing in 2014 was widely treated as a mature category dominated by MailChimp and Constant Contact.

The $250 million was the obvious story and the wrong one. Fundraising numbers are interchangeable; every reader has seen one. The interesting fact was the decade without outside money, six years of it spent saying no to the firm that finally wrote the check. Fortune framed it that way: the round was "a long time coming." Ben Kepes profiled the US hiring push for Forbes under the line "the hottest 10 year old startup comes to town." By 2016 the Sydney Morning Herald was calling it "the biggest Australian tech company you have never heard of," the headline we'd spent two years arguing.

Across three news moments (the round, the GetFeedback acquisition and US headquarters, and a 2017 product launch) the program earned coverage in eleven outlets, from Forbes and The Wall Street Journal through to MediaPost and CRM magazine — an 89 average domain rating, 94 at the top, and 33.9 million combined monthly reach. The launch is the part Salient ran directly. Campaign Monitor announced 1-to-1 Email Marketing at the end of October 2017, and MediaPost built its write-up around a customer's results: Flight Centre's 57% rise in click-through rates.

The Files.com version

Files.com, known for most of its life as BrickFTP, had been bootstrapped and profitable for more than a decade. Thirteen years, no outside money, thousands of business customers, almost no public identity. In February 2021 it announced a $46.5 million investment from Riverwood Capital, its first institutional capital, and the announcement came before we started. The funding news had already run. My rule is that once an announcement has been covered, the next pitch needs something new to say.

It was also a file transfer company. That's infrastructure: essential, and rarely the subject of a headline.

What worked was refusing to sell the product. Files.com was quietly pulling enterprise customers off IBM, HelpSystems and Progress, which makes it a displacement story rather than a feature comparison. Its CEO's argument was that legacy vendors charged high prices and hadn't innovated in decades. Customers leaving them for cloud platforms is a market shift, and a market shift gives a reporter more to write about than a feature list.

We banked the tier-one moment for the ExaVault acquisition and took it to VentureBeat. The announcement said it plainly, with the CEO calling the legacy vendors expensive and decades behind. Fortune's Term Sheet listed the deal the day it was announced, and VentureBeat ran it as a market story: a $1.2 billion file-sharing market whose largest providers still ran on outdated on-premises technology, and Files.com's claim that the deal made it the largest cloud-native platform in it.

Thirteen pieces of coverage, 83 average domain rating, 91 at the top, 5.7 million combined monthly reach — plus a review cycle in IT Pro, PC Pro and Tom's Guide that compounded quietly all year. The Files.com case study covers the full program.

How do you get press coverage when your story seems boring?

A company whose story seems boring gets press coverage by putting the thing it considers boring about itself at the center of whatever news it has. Campaign Monitor's funding coverage led with its decade without outside money. Files.com's acquisition coverage led with its competition against legacy vendors. Founders tend to describe facts like those apologetically, as the reason there's no story. In my view they are the story, because they're unusual and specific.

Three approaches show up in both companies' coverage:

Make the absence the subject. A company that grew to 100,000 customers without raising money is inherently more interesting than one that raised $250 million, and the second fact only becomes interesting when told through the first.

Find the market shift you're evidence of. A reporter has little reason to write about file transfer, but customers leaving expensive legacy vendors for cloud platforms is a business story. The company and the product stay the same; the subject changes.

Give the trades what the trades want. Reviews, benchmarks, comparisons, migrations. These are the pages buyers actually read, they don't require news, and they run all year. If you're hiring help, ask which trade and review outlets an agency has placed in; it's one of the questions that separate enterprise tech PR agencies.

Why do bootstrapped companies find this hard?

Getting covered on an angle like this requires a company to say something specific about its market, usually including something critical about a competitor or an industry norm. In my experience, bootstrapped companies with long customer relationships can be careful communicators, because they have a lot to protect.

In my view, a point of view is worth more to these companies than a neutrality that keeps a good business out of the news.

Common questions

How do you get press coverage with no funding announcement? Lead with a market shift you're evidence of, a dataset only you have, or a customer willing to be quoted. Files.com's strongest coverage came more than a year after its funding was announced, on an acquisition framed as a market displacement story rather than as company news.

Is being bootstrapped bad for PR? It removes the standard hook and replaces it with a better one. Sustained profitability without outside capital is rare, verifiable and interesting. It just has to be told as the subject rather than as background, the way Fortune framed Campaign Monitor's first round as "a long time coming."

What if our category rarely makes news? A boring category can still carry a good story when the pitch is about a customer problem or a competitive shift rather than the product. Files.com's coverage came from framing file transfer as customers leaving expensive legacy vendors, not as a product improvement. VentureBeat ran its acquisition as a story about a $1.2 billion market still running on outdated on-premises technology.

How long does it take to build a profile? There is no fixed timetable. It depends on the strength of the story, the evidence behind it and what the outlets you want are covering. Campaign Monitor's positioning argument took two years to land in the outlets we most wanted it in.

Why do trade reviews matter when there's no news? Reviews and buying guides don't depend on an announcement, so a company can earn them at any time. Files.com got a review in IT Pro in March 2022 and a pick in a Tom's Guide buying guide. Pages like those help buyers judge product fit, which a story about the company itself doesn't always do.

Sources

• Campaign Monitor, Campaign Monitor Receives US$250 Million Investment from Insight Venture Partners to Continue Global Expansion, PR Newswire, April 16, 2014
• Dan Primack, Campaign Monitor's $250 million round was a long time coming, Fortune, April 17, 2014
• Jon Russell, Campaign Monitor Buys GetFeedback To Expand Into Surveys And Open A U.S. Office, TechCrunch, November 18, 2014
• Ben Kepes, Campaign Monitor Hires Up, The Hottest 10 Year Old Startup Comes To Town, Forbes, February 25, 2015
• John McDuling, Campaign Monitor: the biggest Australian tech company you have never heard of, The Sydney Morning Herald, May 25, 2016
• Files.com, Files.com Secures $46.5 Million Growth Investment from Riverwood Capital, ACCESSWIRE via Yahoo Finance, February 2, 2021
• Jess Nelson, Campaign Monitor Launches 1-1 Email Marketing, MediaPost, November 1, 2017
• Jessica Mathews, Term Sheet: Katie Haun lands $1.5B for two crypto funds in historic raise for solo VC, Fortune, March 23, 2022
• Nichole Naoum, Files acquires ExaVault to provide automated, secure cloud platform, VentureBeat, March 25, 2022
• Dave Mitchell, Files.com review: A great all-round cloud collaborator, IT Pro, March 28, 2022
• Salient PR case studies: Campaign Monitor and Files.com

Salient PR works with enterprise software companies on market entry and category positioning, including Campaign Monitor's US launch and Files.com's repositioning from file transfer to enterprise displacement.