2 points by rams 1 day ago | link | parent But, the YC startups themselves seem to be the beneficiaries of excellent PR efforts, appearing in Time, Newsweek etc. Somebody who is equally smart, but not YC-funded will not get this kind of visibility. I just quit from a startup funded by VCs and led by a Harvard M.B.A. While working there, I realized that we were no smarter than our competitors, yet managed to hit the headlines every now and then, for reasons that I didn't quite understand. Since a lot of investors, and at times even enterprise customers display herd mentality, this does make a difference. For instance if on the strength of it's PR efforts a startup manages to make a sale to an enterprise customer, it's valuation does go up, No ?
1 point by JohnN 1 day ago | link It seems to me that two startups can have be roughly the same in terms of how good it is, but one gets much better PR. Maybe PR only matters all things being equal.
I am thinking of PR strategies for my startup, any ideas? BTW its an open source newspaper
1 point by rms 1 day ago | link How is your startup different from Wikinews?
Here is one PR idea that I've never actually tried, though I would be very curious to see if it worked. Write a press release about the problem your startup is solving in the style of a human-interest story. Try and put a human face on the story. Send it to every local newspaper in America and see what happens.
