Omer (00:11.840)
Welcome to another episode of the SaaS Podcast.
I'm your host Omer Khan and this is the show where I interview proven founders and industry experts who share their stories, strategies and insights to help you build, launch and grow your SaaS business.
In this episode, we're going to give you a crash course in PR or public relations.
Now, PR can be a really cost effective way to get great media coverage, build exposure for your business, and it can even help with search engine optimization.
My guest today is a PR expert who is going to share his five step process that you can start using today without spending any money to get PR working for your business.
All right, today's guest is the founder and CEO of Publicize, a startup that's aiming to change the way companies approach PR.
As opposed to PR companies that charge $10,000 a month, publicize provides a month to month solution starting from just $399.
My guest has been featured in publications such as the Financial Times, Bloomberg and TechCrunch.
And he's also a global mentor at 500 Startups and Founder Institute.
So today I'd like to welcome Konrad Egosa.
Konrad, welcome to the show.
Conrad Egusa (01:42.580)
Thank you so much for having me.
Omer.
Cool.
Omer (01:45.260)
Now, I like to start off by trying to figure out what gets my guests out of bed, what drives them, what motivates them.
Is there a quote that resonates most with you?
Conrad Egusa (01:59.590)
I would say the quote that most resonates me was by Warren Buffett who said it takes 20 years to build a reputation and only a few minutes to lose it.
And I think especially in Silicon Valley where I spent, I think several years, to me, all that matters is a person's reputation.
And, um, and it's just important to, to do things the right way, whether it's in business or kind of any aspect of a person's life.
Omer (02:30.370)
Okay, so let's, let's talk about pr.
I would say let's start from the real basics like 101.
Help us understand what exactly is PR and why should somebody running a SaaS business care about it?
Conrad Egusa (02:47.730)
Yeah, I would say PR is really important for a number of reasons.
I think one is in terms of a marketing channel, it is inherently free.
So one of the things I always stress to people is that they can do PR themselves.
They don't need to pay, they don't need to pay $10,000.
They don't need to pay any money for this.
And I think that's really important for a lot of companies who are just starting out.
The advantages are not only in terms of new traffic and new kind of potential new revenue, I think it provides a level of social proof.
You know, if somebody's looking to learn about, publicize, if I can send a link and be able to say, hey, if you want to see, read about us on Forbes and TechCrunch on here, ET cetera, they'll say, oh, wow, if they're strong enough to be covered on these publications, that says something about them.
And I think that's a level of social proof that other marketing channels don't provide.
So.
And I think that carries over not only to clients, but to potential partners, to potential investors, if they're looking to go that route.
So there are a number of different benefits.
Omer (03:45.110)
Let's say I am a. I have a SaaS business.
Maybe I'm in the early stages.
I'm not funded, so I'm probably, maybe even paying somebody $400 a month right now.
Doesn't make a lot of sense for me.
Or maybe I'm just not comfortable enough going down that road.
Let's talk about some of the things that those people could start to do themselves.
So you'd mentioned earlier about having sort of deconstructed the PR process.
Tell us a little bit about that and help us sort of understand in a simpler way what that process looks like.
Conrad Egusa (04:24.160)
Absolutely.
So they're basically five steps.
And I'll use kind of an example of a SaaS business that's about to launch and whether, again, they're looking to raise funding or whether they just want to gain a lot of new users.
Let's say they say we want to be on techruns or Business Insider.
We're about to launch.
The very first thing to do is to come up with a specific announcement you're going to make a story of.
This is when I was writing for VentureBeat in New York, a lot of my friends would come up to me and they would say, hey, Conrad, I know you're writing for VentureBeat.
Would you be able to cover my company?
And I would say, sure, what do you have to announce?
And they would say, well, we don't have anything to announce.
And I would say, if you don't have anything to announce, I can't write anything because there's no story there.
So kind of the takeaway from this is companies especially, I think SaaS companies will have specific milestones and announcements to make throughout their lifetime.
So when they're first launching, first starting their first announcement might be a company launch.
Maybe three weeks later, they launch a mobile app.
Maybe three months later they hit a certain milestone.
Three months later they raise 100,000 in funding.
Six months later they raised 2 million in funding, whatever it may be.
But when you're reaching out to these publications, what you shouldn't say is, hi, my name is David.
Will you cover my company?
But what you should say is, hi, my name is David.
My company is about to launch.
Would you like to cover the announcement about the launch?
Because that's the specific story that they're going to focus on.
I hope that kind of makes sense, that difference there.
Omer (05:49.790)
Yeah, no, absolutely.
I think another way to think about it is when you're reading something on TechCrunch or VentureBeat or any of these sites, what's the kind of content that attracts you?
What's the stuff that you're interested in reading?
And inevitably, there's always some kind of story or angle behind the coverage.
It's not just here's a product.
Conrad Egusa (06:16.760)
Yeah, yeah.
And I think the big thing is there are almost two stories involved.
There's the primary story, which is the announcement, whatever that might be, that could be a milestone or funding.
And the second story, kind of the secondary story, is usually a specific angle.
So it could be about the founding team, it could be about like, something about the market.
And the second thing is identifying social proof of the team.
So whether it's the founding team or the executive team, and the primary reason you want to do this is you want to show why are you.
Why is the team the right team to kind of fulfill the mission of this company.
And as an example, if you're trying to launch a SaaS business in the language industry, it's going to help if you say, well, the Two founders are PhDs from Stanford in linguistics, or they graduated from this business school, or they worked for this company.
That's why they're the right people to fix.
And usually points of social proof come from companies worked at or universities or awards received.
But especially with new announcements, it's important to remember that about half the story comes from the company itself, and half of what makes an interesting story comes from the founding team.
So Another example from VentureBeat, I remember talking to my editor and he said, hey, Connor, can you cover the story?
And I said, yeah, what is the company about?
And he said, hey, it doesn't even matter.
It's about Bill Gates, former assistant, starting this venture.
So it's like, that's what makes it interesting is the founding team.
So something to kind of keep in mind for people.
Omer (07:46.920)
Okay, so even if somebody doesn't have a PhD, they can still sort of take those two ingredients that you talked about.
One is what's the story about your product?
And that could be you're launching or you've released a version of the product on a different platform or something like that, and then combine that with the founder story in terms of what is there about you that maybe can make this piece a little bit more interesting.
Maybe something about your background or maybe the type of people that you have on the team or whatever.
Conrad Egusa (08:24.580)
Absolutely.
And just there are a lot of founders who I talk to and they say, hey, my company's just not that interesting.
And I usually say, well, if the company itself isn't that interesting, try to shift a lot of the angle more to the founding team and kind of vice versa.
And one of the things mention about social proof is that there are kind of two types of social proof.
The one is the kind of impressive social proof.
So, hey, I graduated from Harvard, I used to work, I worked at Microsoft, kind of, okay, wow, kind of that obvious one.
One of the less obvious ones is sometimes I speak to founders and they would say, hey, no one's ever going to cover me because I'm a 65 year old founder in Chicago or I'm a 16 year old developer.
And I always say, well, you don't understand.
That's the exact reason why they will cover you.
Because there are not that many 65 year olds who are writing Business Insider and they're not many 15 and 16 year old developers who are writing these publications.
So it's almost like if you don't have anything kind of impressive social proof to write, to comment on, think about, maybe there's maybe you were once a founder, was once homeless, and that's something they can highlight that can kind of make the story particularly interesting.
Omer (09:32.600)
Well, every episode I ask my guests at the end of the lightning round, what if there's something about them that most people don't know and that has often brought out so many interesting stories and shown that person in such a different light that I think that using or thinking about it that way, it doesn't necessarily have to be, as you said, these credentials or the big companies you worked at.
But what is something about you as a person that people would talk about anyway?
Right.
And then can you kind of integrate that into the story?
Okay, so figuring out the announcement is step one, and then we go on to step two.
What does that involve?
Conrad Egusa (10:16.510)
Step two is adding the social proof in into this.
And step three is making the mission much bigger.
So usually What I like to say is a lot of founders, they'll just talk about what their product is today.
And the reality is most products today aren't particularly interesting when they're first getting launched.
You know, Twitter wasn't that fantastic.
Facebook was pretty basic as well.
But what is really interesting is where does the founder want to take it in three or five years?
So usually what I ask is, do you know when you're about to fall asleep or you're in the gym and you're daydreaming about how big your company is going to be and you're like, hey, in three years we're going to have 100 employees and we're going to be taking over the world.
Right, Whatever that mission is.
Like, talk about that and highlight that in your email and press release to a journalist.
And, and a specific example of that is I co founded a coworking space in Medellin in South America, and we were featured in TechCrunch, BBC Financial Times, like most of the biggest publications.
And there was really no reason for that because a co working space isn't that interesting.
Right?
It's office space and there are hundreds being started every month around the world.
But the reason why I was featured in all these publications was the story that I pitched wasn't the launch of a coworking space.
The story was, we want to turn this city into the Silicon Valley of Latin America.
I would always just emphasize to everyone, look for that kind of big story, because that's what I think journalists are more interested in.
Omer (11:43.420)
I want to go back to the first two steps because maybe I just want to be clear about this.
So when you said social proof, which part of the conversation was that about?
Was that really about the founder story?
Is that what you were talking about there?
Conrad Egusa (11:57.660)
Yeah, primarily the founder story.
I would say as a company grows, it could be about the founding team or the executive team.
Omer (12:05.280)
Okay, okay, got it.
So step one is a specific announcement about the product.
Step two is the social proof around the founders or the founding team.
And then step three is the mission.
Conrad Egusa (12:22.800)
Exactly.
And what an entrepreneur is going to do, let's say launching a SaaS business, is they're going to communicate to the media this specific announcement via an email.
In general, I like to attach a press release onto that and it's important.
The reason why I mentioned the social proof and the bigger mission is you really want to lead with that.
If a founder could say like, hi, Anthony, and I can actually send you an exact email of coverage that we've gotten on TechCrunch and these different companies that would say something, I'm happy to, it would say something like, hi, Anthony, like, this is John.
I'm a, a Ph.D. from Stanford that is about to launch this new SaaS business that is, you know, aiming to kind of the big mission of that specific company.
That, that's why.
And you'll see in the emails that how it's structured there.
But it's really important to kind of lead with all that information as opposed to a lot of founders won't even include that in there.
Omer (13:15.880)
Okay, well, what's a typical mistake that you see with that?
Because when you talk about the mission, I don't know it.
To me it seems like, you know, I could say, hey, I'm kind of launching this SaaS product and today I have no funding and no customers and in the next 12 months I'm going to turn this into a billion dollar business.
Right.
It's not going to happen.
Conrad Egusa (13:44.560)
Well, so I'll give an example though.
So I was talking to these two founders and they had this.
It was a Google Chrome plugin to help basically translate how people translate words online from like English to Spanish and Spanish to basically help people learn languages.
Right.
But it's pretty basic and at the very end they mentioned to me, oh, I don't know if this is even relevant that we should include this, but we're both Stanford PhDs and I said even include this, we have to lead with this.
And as opposed to talking about what the product is today, which is a Google Chrome kind of a browser plugin, the story was these two Stanford PhD founders have spent two years building this company that wants to change the way people learn languages online.
So that's really what we led with.
And then after we said, hey, we're starting off with this Google Chrome plugin and then we plan to go into these, create these other products to kind of better fulfill the mission as well.
But so you can see that by kind of changing the viewpoint of that, you know, you can look at it as this product that, you know, there are kind of a lot of different ways you can view a very similar story, I hope, if that makes sense.
Omer (14:58.520)
Yeah, yeah, I get, I understand that.
I think the, I still kind of wonder about the mission in terms of, I think you kind of have a creative license there to maybe just, yeah, you know, maybe come up with something where we're, you know, somebody at TechCrunch is gonna sort of look at it and roll their eyes and say, yeah, right, you're Gonna do that.
So how do you sort of, what's the best way to frame it in a way that people are gonna think that it's believable?
Conrad Egusa (15:27.180)
Yeah, well, so I'll give, let's say, you know, your, your background as an example.
Let's say you, as opposed to saying like, you know, hi, my name's Omer and I want to build this billion dollar company.
I would say something like, hi, my name is Omer, I'm a former Microsoft employee and I left because I'm about to launch this sauce company.
And the goal of this is to change and kind of go into the main mission of the company and then talk.
Go.
And usually below that you would talk more about the specifics of the individual product.
But that would be an example of, of.
Okay, well now you have that social proof because hey, this person used to work at Microsoft, so he's probably bright and he's probably hard working and hey, that mission of the company sounds pretty interesting.
I'm going to learn more about it.
Omer (16:19.310)
Okay.
Okay.
All right.
Conrad Egusa (16:22.270)
Yeah, I wouldn't say.
And the social proof matters a lot because publicizing we're featured on TechCrunch, it wouldn't have mattered if I was just a random someone just graduating from university without any experience.
But the reason why it was more legitimate was because, hey, this person's a global mentor of 500 startups.
Hey, he used to write for Venture, but he has that background.
And so I look like for you, you have a great, fantastic background as well.
Formerly of Microsoft.
All these things I think most founders as well have that they just don't highlight it in the very beginning.
Omer (16:56.250)
Yeah, but what if I didn't, what if I didn't work at Microsoft?
What if I'd worked somewhere else that nobody had ever heard of?
Conrad Egusa (17:03.340)
Yeah, well, so then what I would do is try to highlight these other things that might be particularly interesting about yourself.
So the company of the 65 year old that we'd helped, this one safely filed the big pitch about.
That was kind of the story wasn't necessarily about the product, it was about, hey, Here are these two 60 plus year old founders doing something really interesting.
So then it would be kind of a different angle there.
Omer (17:30.130)
Yeah, okay, got it.
All right, so that was step three.
And what is step four?
Conrad Egusa (17:36.850)
Yeah, step four is.
Okay, so you are going to email this specific announcement that has the social proof and the big mission to these journalists.
How do you go about doing that?
So there are basically two ways to contact the media.
An exclusive and an or an embargo.
And I'll kind of explain the reasoning.
So when we launched the co working space and we got on TechCrunch, I emailed the next web the next day, another popular tech publication.
And the journalist wrote me and said, hey, we would have covered this, but TechCrunch already covered it.
It's kind of old news.
Let me know when you have the next announcement.
New media publications compete with one another to try to break stories.
This is a big challenge that an entrepreneur has when you're about to launch and you think, how can I get all these companies to basically publish a story at, at basically the same time so no one breaks the story?
So entrepreneurs, if they decide to go with embargo, would email, let's say, 25 publications and they would say, hey, I'm about to launch this sauce product.
That's the announcement.
Would you like to cover it?
If you would like to, you have to agree to this embargo, which basically means you won't publish the story before, let's say, 12 o' clock next Wednesday.
So ideally at 12 o' clock next Wednesday, five publications cover the announcement and it's a big win for your company.
So the challenge that you have with the embargo is that, and you see actually this happen a lot with Apple, or let's say the president makes an announcement and a dozen publications all cover it at 12 o'.
Clock.
How is it possible that they all had timed it that they could write a story that quickly right after the announcement?
So the challenge that an entrepreneur has especially that doesn't have prior success to stand on is if a TechCrunch writer is getting 1,000 emails every day and covering five stories.
You know, it's hard for them to agree to this embargo when, hey, you know, you're not Elon Musk type of thing or not yet.
So who do you.
Omer (19:30.840)
Sorry, go ahead.
Conrad Egusa (19:32.360)
Oh, I was going to say the other option is to offer an exclusive.
So basically what you would do is email an individual writer at, let's say, Business Insider and say, would you like first write to publish this story?
And by doing that, that's a really effective way that maybe you don't know a journalist that you can kind of stand out from the crowd.
Omer (19:47.890)
Got it.
Yeah, no, I was gonna, I was wondering how do you know who to contact at these publications?
Conrad Egusa (19:55.650)
I think the, the easiest thing is if you're, let's say you're set on, on getting covered on TechCrunch, you can Google search techcrunch.com sauce and you have a SaaS business and you could see really quickly kind of prior stories that these writers have contacted.
And one of the things to keep in mind is not only contacting the writers, but also the tips that emails.
So adventurebee.
Back in the day, about half our stories every day were written about people who'd pitch stories to tipsenterbeat.com so those emails are read every day.
So just something for founders to think about.
Omer (20:30.480)
Okay, If I was contacting a publication like TechCrunch and maybe I find three writers that all write about SAS products, would I send emails to all of them?
Conrad Egusa (20:46.190)
Yeah.
So here's the thing about the exclusive.
So let's say you decide to do an exclusive.
The challenge with the exclusive is that you can't offer it to multiple publications at the same time.
So sorry, now I'm going to make sure to answer your question, but because let's say you say, hey, I'm about to launch this SaaS product and you offer an exclusive to TechCrunch and VentureBeat and they both come back to you and say, hey, we're interested in covering the story.
Well then it's no longer an exclusive.
Right.
You have to choose one and you'll get blacklisted really quickly by that publication.
So what I would recommend doing is on Monday you'd email a journalist and in the email let them know, hey, this exclusive is available for the next 24 hours and you should send one follow up, but if you haven't heard back then you could email another writer.
Omer (21:29.950)
Okay, so you mentioned that in addition to the email, you also would attach a.
A press release.
Conrad Egusa (21:40.380)
Yeah, and I'm happy to send an example press release as well so people can see how it's looked at.
Two things that are really important to note about the press release, it's hard for most for the general public to read because that's not the audience it's meant for.
So a lot of people, when they first write a press release, it almost reads like a novel and it shouldn't.
The goal is basically that provide as much information as possible for journalists to then take and then add into an article however they wish.
So that's the first thing to keep in mind.
And there's a specific format, but probably the easiest way to model that format is to look at an existing press release.
The second thing to keep in mind is a big misconception about press releases is people think that that is what will sell a journalist on the story and that's not what its Purpose is.
So a journalist would never look at PR Web, I think, would very rarely ever look at.
@pr web and say, hey, this story sounds really interesting.
From this press release, I'm going to reach out what really will sell a journalist.
Uncovering the story is the email that you send.
And then the goal of the press release is basically to reduce the amount of friction to write the article as possible.
So most journalists, they'll know when you pitch them on a story, hey, is this article going to take me 25 minutes to write or is it going to take me five hours to do all this research?
So the goal with the press release is if, you know, hey, I'm targeting this really big market with my sauce company and, and you know, I'm going to add all those data points in the press release because as opposed to a journalist having to look up all this himself, they can just refer to the press release that already has it in there.
It's basically you're just reducing the friction and the time it's going to need for them to write.
Write an article.
Omer (23:17.610)
Okay, okay, so got it.
So it's kind of like, how do you make it as easy as possible for them to.
If, if they sense some interest in the story, how do you make it as easy as possible for them to be able to write that piece and get it published without having to waste hours going and figuring out more about your product and you.
Conrad Egusa (23:38.370)
Yeah, 100%.
And one of the things to keep in mind is a lot of writers are paid per article too.
So it makes even more of a difference.
So that's why it's just important to be as proactive as possible, because somebody is going to have to do that research.
It's either going to be you or it's going to be the journalists on their own time.
Omer (23:53.330)
Now, how does this fit into what some people do where, you know, you get a press release written up and then you use sites like PR Web to distribute the press release?
We wouldn't be doing that in this sense.
Conrad Egusa (24:11.060)
Right?
Omer (24:11.220)
I mean, you wouldn't be sending out a press, you wouldn't be making that public.
So are you writing the press release just for the eyes of the.
The writers at these publications?
Conrad Egusa (24:23.030)
Yeah.
So now a lot of it's going to kind of tie together.
Well, there are a lot of misconceptions about those PR syndication sites.
So when you do the press release, when you write the press release, it can later be syndicated on PR Web, et cetera, but you don't want it to be public.
Yet and in regards to those syndication sites like Business Wire and PRWeb.
So some of the misunderstanding about that is let's say you syndicate it on PRWeb and it gets on Yahoo.
Finance.
Like that's not on kind of the homepage of Yahoo Finance, where that's ready to.
That's almost.
We call it the graveyard of the Web, where it'll be indexed by Google, but very few people will read it.
And I think the goal, I look at PR is how do you get on the front page of Wall Street Journal, on the front page of TechCrunch, where people are really reading those articles.
The reason why you should send out the press release, get the article covered, and then syndicate the press release is it all comes about, it's all about timing.
So let's say you write this press release and you syndicate it online and then you email a journalist two days later and say, do you want to cover the story?
They're going to Google search it and they're going to say, hey, I would have covered this, but two days ago you syndicated this press release.
So it's already old news and it's
Omer (25:36.180)
already available on like a thousand sites or something, depending on how you syndicated it.
Conrad Egusa (25:40.420)
Exactly, yeah.
So they no longer want to cover it, which is why you should aim.
As a general rule, what I recommend is if it's below a seed round of funding, so let's say less than 1.5 million in funding in general offered as an exclusive, and then once it's published by a leading publication, further coverage, and then you can syndicate the press release.
Omer (26:03.990)
Okay.
And so once it's published any sort of the same day, it would be fine to go and.
And syndicate the press release.
Conrad Egusa (26:13.240)
Yeah, and one thing that's important, and you can actually see this a lot with Publicize, because everything I'm saying is like, what I do myself, like, you can see, hey, when Publicize launched, we got on TechCrunch, that was the exclusive.
A few days later we got on Forbes.
That was when we furthered coverage.
So it's not that other publications won't necessarily cover you if you've already been covered before.
It's just something to kind of keep in mind.
Usually in the email I like to mention, hey, we were already covered by this site, but I'm happy to provide additional information for a new story and the syndication.
I think a lot of people will use pr, Web or Business Wire, let's say, for search reasons, to make sure that they're indexed online.
But if people are expecting that they're going to get several thousand visits from syndicating a press release.
I mean, that won't happen, but just something for people to keep in mind.
Got it.
Omer (27:14.880)
Okay.
And so step five is what?
Conrad Egusa (27:19.760)
Yeah, step five is just to go over the first four again.
So people are going to come up with specific announcement.
So they're launching their SaaS business, they're going to add social proof.
Step number two, they're going to make the mission as big as possible and they're going to formulate this into an email and a press release.
Then if it's a launch, which is, let's say a smaller announcement than a big round of funding, let's say they're going to offer it as an exclusive to, let's say, TechCrunch.
TechCrunch calls them, they say, hey, we want to have a phone interview.
They bring the story online.
The founder will email all their publications to further coverage, which is step four.
And the fifth one is to repeat the process.
So a big thing about PR is I think people think like, hey, we're going to make this announcement and we're going to just get a ton of coverage after one month and we're just going to stop.
And PR really compounds over time.
So I think the strongest companies every eight to ten weeks will have these different announcements and maybe one month will aim for an exclusive on TechCrunch.
Maybe they announce a milestone and they aim for an exclusive on VentureBeat.
And over time, I think the benefits of PR isn't just with social proof and new visits.
I actually think of it as kind of a secret weapon for SEO.
Just because these sites are such high pagering sites linking to companies.
So yeah, the idea is that it will kind of compound over time.
Can I talk really quickly about just the exclusive and furthering coverage?
Because I think there's sometimes confusion with that.
Omer (28:44.870)
Sure, sure.
Conrad Egusa (28:45.990)
So let's say you're launching the SaaS company and you get it on TechCrunch.
Well, who do you email after?
And it's important that you email the most time sensitive to the least time sensitive publications after.
So the most time sensitive in general are tech publications because if you email 24 hours later, it might already be old news.
So you want to email the next web tech cocktail all these other publications and there are many, and then you go to more mainstream publications.
So let's say a publication like Time, Time magazine, Forbes, for example, Fast Company Inc.
They're less time sensitive so you can email them, let's say two or three days after the announcement comes online.
And if it's an interesting story, they'll still cover it, even though TechCrunch already already covered the story.
Omer (29:30.480)
Let me just make sure I understood this.
So we're saying that there are two possible approaches to work with when you're doing pr.
One is to either offer an exclusive, the other is to have some kind of embargo where everybody has to commit to not publishing any story until a certain date.
And that probably doesn't work if you're at the early stages of a startup.
So focus on the exclusive.
And if you're going down that road, whoever has agreed to the exclusive story once they've published, then you have the opportunity then to follow up with other time sensitive publications and try to get additional coverage there before you go to some of these other publications like Forbes or Fast Company, who might be okay still covering the story a month later.
Conrad Egusa (30:26.080)
Absolutely.
And part of it is just the nature.
Like new media, I think they care more about, they're more time sensitive as opposed to a lot of these publications.
Historically they were monthly magazines, so they just are less time sensitive.
And then the third, the least time sensitive tend to be industry verticals.
So let's say you have a sports app and you get it featured on TechCrunch.
Well, they're all or health app.
There are all these publications in the sports industry and the health industry that are probably even much larger than the largest technology publications.
So it's important to email them as well.
And they tend to be the least time sensitive in that group.
But pr, I think is different than a lot of marketing channels because to me, when I think about social media or content marketing, it's really kind of consistency over time.
I think PR look at it more as, hey, within this two to three period, three week period, it's going to be super intense because you have to email all these publications before basically the story gets old and there's so many that you can cover.
And then usually there's like a kind of a rest period for you to prepare for the next announcement.
Omer (31:34.490)
Got it.
Okay.
So this is really an ongoing process, right?
This never really stops.
Obviously you want to try and time your efforts with something, you know, going back to step one, having some specific announcement to talk about.
But this is, this is just ongoing.
I assume you have to continue this cycle and sort of go through those steps consistently.
Conrad Egusa (31:57.300)
I think the most effective companies, it is a continuous cycle.
And one of the things to keep in mind, you asked before about the big mistakes people make and I see this a lot.
So we work with over a dozen Y Combinator startups and a big mistake they make is that they combine announcements.
So as an example, they'll say, hey, say it's a sauce Y Combinator startup.
They say, we're going to launch and we just raised 1.5 million in funding.
And they announced both in the same article.
When you think about it, that's really hurting.
They're not optimizing pr.
What they should do is month one announce their launch and then month three announced their funding and they'll basically double the amount of PR coverage they get.
So something to keep in mind for a lot of founders is you can kind of strategize ahead of time and say, okay, well this next year we have these five to six big announcements.
Let's kind of break them up.
And the big thing about it is a lot of founders, let's say they raised funding six months ago and they just haven't announced it.
They can still announce that they don't, you know, because it, because it hasn't come online yet.
Omer (32:57.160)
Got it.
Now, if somebody didn't want to do all of this and they just wanted to work with your company to do this, how does that process work?
Do you guys like sync up every month and sort of say, okay, well what's the plan for this month and here's how we're going to tackle that
Conrad Egusa (33:15.340)
or everything that I mentioned that people should do.
We do it all for clients and we have several calls throughout the month.
And in general it's probably about a six to eight week process for each announcement and we handle all of that.
But I mean, companies can do it themselves.
So it just kind of depends on the founder and their background and their preferences, really.
Omer (33:42.460)
Yeah, I think this is great what you shared here and thank you for doing that.
And I think that if somebody is at the very early stages of a startup, doing this themselves can really be a cost effective way to try and get some priority.
But I think that over time, as the business starts to grow and you start to get more customers, you're gonna get to a point where you really have to ask yourself, how much of my time do I wanna spend doing PR or using that time to build a better product for my customers or acquiring more customers or whatever it is.
So I think there's a natural push points for every startup at some point where it would make sense for them to at least have somebody doing this for them and who can do it probably a lot more efficiently than they could.
Conrad Egusa (34:42.790)
Yeah, Absolutely.
And sorry, just two last things that I think mistakes that I've seen founders make.
Let's say that your hope is to get a response rate of 20 or 30% because journalists are just bombarded with emails every day.
A lot of founders I see will email two people and not get a response and say, oh, something's, you know, when they're doing it on themselves, by themselves, and then they'll stop and they're, you know, it is important to email, you know, a certain number of publications to get a good response.
And there's so many cases where we've worked with the client and they have a smaller announcement.
And let's say the next web says they're not interested and VentureBeat says they're not interested and then the Wall Street Journal says they are interested and they cover it, which doesn't make sense necessarily because Wall Street Journal should be the most competitive.
But it's just keeping your goal.
You can never guarantee anything, but your goal is to kind of maximize your probability as much as possible.
I think the second thing is that to always remember to send at least one follow up email.
So the follow up email I like to say is like, hi, Sarah, I hope all's well.
I wanted to send a quick follow up.
I know you're really busy.
If you don't have the chance to respond, you know.
Cheers, Conrad.
And just a specific example, when we launched a reporter in residence program, I remember we got on, I think it was TechCrunch and Forbes.
And I'd emailed 15 publications after I forgot the exact number, but I think one of them had responded and I sent one follow up the next day and almost all of them responded to that follow up.
So it's just important to remember that for all these journalists who are getting 500 emails every day, they might really be interested in something.
But they just, you know, I'm sure you see what happens when you just get too many emails and things get lost.
But on the other hand, I like to say, general rule, at least one follow up, but don't take it too far because, you know, it's really Easy to send 10 follow ups and it, you know, I think it get on people's nerves.
Yeah.
Omer (36:38.200)
All right, cool.
All right, it's time for our lightning round.
I'm going to ask you a series of questions and I'd like you to ask them as quickly as you can.
You ready?
Conrad Egusa (36:46.500)
Yep.
Omer (36:47.140)
What's the best piece of business advice that you ever received?
Conrad Egusa (36:50.420)
I mean, so much advice.
I think one of Them was to not worry about scaling but to focus just on adding as much value as possible.
Because if you're able to solve, if you're able to add enough value, as much value as possible and solve a real problem, you will be able to find ways to scale it at a later time.
Omer (37:08.100)
What book would you recommend to our audience and why?
Conrad Egusa (37:11.060)
There's so many good ones.
I love Zero to one.
I love give and take as well.
I saw someone else had recommended the hard things about hard things there's so many.
But yeah, those three really stand out to me.
Omer (37:23.150)
What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful entrepreneur?
Conrad Egusa (37:28.510)
I'd say to me the most successful entrepreneurs seek negative feedback.
So it's really easy for founders to kind of ignore the negative feedback.
And I usually like I've kind of my on my team or my group of friends.
I usually when I talk about an idea, I don't even really listen to why they like the idea.
I just, I say like no, specifically what do you not like about the idea?
Because I think you're going to find a lot more insight into that.
Omer (37:54.470)
Yeah, yeah, I agree with that.
What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?
Conrad Egusa (37:59.670)
I would say habit.
It's just being really attuned to like some kind of my energy throughout the day because like I just find myself to be much more productive after like during certain times and other times as much as I try to force myself, I know I'm just not going to be very productive.
So I would say the biggest habit is just being kind of attuned to my own kind of personal energy.
Omer (38:22.470)
What's a new business idea or a crazy idea that you have in your head you'd love to pursue if you had the extra time.
Conrad Egusa (38:29.110)
I mean the more I get into publicize is the the more challenges there are in it to kind of solve.
So I really haven't thought about new startups that I want to do.
But it would have to be something that like specific problems.
There would have to be like a big founder market fit.
So like why am I the right person to solve this?
So it'd probably have to do with something like people who are traveling and working and kind of something in that kind of international market that I would be the right person to solve as opposed to someone else in Silicon Valley or New York.
Omer (39:02.740)
What's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?
Conrad Egusa (39:06.820)
Let me see.
I think one thing is I make a point to travel at least one weekend of the month so that could be to a new city or that could be to kind of international somewhere.
Omer (39:17.540)
One week every month.
Conrad Egusa (39:19.220)
One weekend.
Omer (39:20.340)
Oh, one weekend every month.
Conrad Egusa (39:21.780)
Yeah.
Omer (39:22.100)
Okay.
I was going to say, wow, life is good, man.
All right.
And finally, what is one of your most important passions outside of your work?
Conrad Egusa (39:30.590)
You see, every, I would say six months, I try something new.
So earlier it was salsa, now it's jiu jitsu.
And I think probably next will be probably something to do with like yoga.
I think that'll be the next.
Omer (39:44.750)
Very cool.
Conrad, it's been a pleasure chatting.
Thank you for sharing your experience and advice with us and helping us walk through the the process of doing cost effective pr.
I think that's going to be really valuable for people.
Now, if people want to get in touch with you or find out more about Publicize, what's the best way for them to do that?
Conrad Egusa (40:09.980)
I think our URL is Publicize Co Co.
I love connecting with people on LinkedIn and my email is just Conradublicize co.
Omer (40:18.700)
Awesome, Konrad, thanks again.
I wish you all the best.
Conrad Egusa (40:21.180)
Omar, thanks so much for having me.
Omer (40:22.660)
Take care.
