News breaks once

Four to six weeks before you want the news out. Most of that time goes to the two things founders assume take an afternoon: finding an angle that is not "company raises money," and getting the executive ready for the question they would rather not be asked. Reporters need lead time too. Come to us the week of and we are distributing news, not landing coverage. We will tell you that on the call, not after the invoice. If the date is still soft, start anyway.

You need a press release, but the wire is not what produces coverage. A wire release creates a record, and investors, customers and your legal team all expect one to exist. Reporters almost never write from a wire feed. They write from a pitch that reached them personally with a story in it. So we write the release, then spend the real effort on individual outreach to the reporters who cover your market. If you can only pay for one, buy the outreach.

No, and neither can anyone else. An agency that guarantees it is either selling sponsored content with the label filed off, or lying. What we will do, before you spend anything, is tell you what your news can realistically land. Sometimes that is the Wall Street Journal. More often the right target is the trade publications your buyers read more carefully than they read the Journal. We would rather have that conversation up front than manage your disappointment later.

We tell you before you pay us, and sometimes the answer is that there is no story yet. A seed extension with nothing built on it will not get written up, and the right call is to hold the news until you have something to attach. More often the round is not the story but something next to it is: what the money says about where your market is heading, or what you can now build that nobody could before. That angle is rarely in the press release draft.

We give selected reporters the story ahead of time, on the condition that nothing publishes before an agreed hour. Done well, reporters get time to write something considered instead of racing the wire. Done badly, somebody breaks it early and the rest of your list is annoyed with you and with us. So we keep the list short and tell you exactly who is on it. Nobody can enforce an embargo. It is a handshake, and the only penalty for breaking one is not being offered the next one.

Some stories run on announcement day, and a lot run weeks after it. Reporters often take a week or more to reply, which is why we keep pitching after the embargo lifts instead of treating the launch as a one-day event.