This is a good introduction to PR. I've worked as both a reporter and PR person, and I would add that PR faces a relational bottleneck. Most startups opt for PR agencies because those agencies, if they are effective, have established relationships with journalists. Tech reporters, as you can imagine, are overwhelmed with pitches, with tons of startups fighting for the same oxygen. Startup CEOs need to think good and hard about how interesting their company's story is for strangers. Creating a good story is like creating a good product -- it appeals to people on some fundamental level. A really good story solves both the reader's problem of looking for valuable information, and a reporter's problem of justifying her existence to her editor and fulfilling her quota for the day. I wrote an ebook about this for anyone interested, hosted at Celery: https://www.trycelery.com/
I think it helps to think of your story as a second product that sells the first. PR has a hell of a lot of moving parts, and could definitely be better serviced if you can provide for all of them. I like that it's been mentioned how many people's problems it has to solve. That's a really good start to outrospecting for this goal.
Totally agree. It's a second product, which a supply chain that travels from real events through a CEO and PR person to a reporter's desk, and a product manager, who is usually that PR person. The one other thing I would add is that there's a real temptation to overmanage the message you send to reporters, which leads to too much business-speak where everything is sunshine and roses. The best stories are frank, they involve struggle and color, and they usually piss someone off.
