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Jenny He is the Founder and General Partner at Position Ventures, an early-stage venture fund that backs startups with strategic communications from day one. Previously, Jenny led comms at Square and has since helped hundreds of founders land coverage in top outlets like TechCrunch and Forbes. With deep expertise in positioning, storytelling, and PR, she’s on a mission to help startups craft differentiated narratives that drive credibility, legitimacy, and growth.
Discussed in This Episode
- What PR actually is (and isn’t) for startups
- The difference between positioning, storytelling, and PR — and how they stack together
- When PR makes sense and when to hold back on announcements
- Step-by-step process for landing coverage in top outlets like TechCrunch or Forbes
- How to build authentic relationships with reporters before you pitch
- What makes something truly newsworthy: timeliness, impact, relevance
- Tactical advice for pitching, interviews, and amplifying coverage post-launch
- How PR fits into the broader go-to-market motion
Episode Highlights
00:00 — Positioning, storytelling, and PR defined
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28MGffS6YYI&t=0
02:23 — Jenny explains what PR really is and why startups misunderstand it
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28MGffS6YYI&t=143
06:39 — The first step before any PR push: setting clear goals
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28MGffS6YYI&t=399
11:37 — Example of a newsworthy founder story: building an AI radiologist from personal experience
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28MGffS6YYI&t=697
15:17 — The three elements of newsworthiness: timeliness, impact, and relevance
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28MGffS6YYI&t=917
17:42 — Why building warm relationships with reporters is crucial
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28MGffS6YYI&t=1062
20:36 — Preparing for the interview itself vs. outreach
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28MGffS6YYI&t=1236
22:47 — Amplifying coverage through your network post-publication
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28MGffS6YYI&t=1367
25:07 — What PR agencies cost (and why no one can guarantee coverage)
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28MGffS6YYI&t=1507
29:18 — Jenny’s #1 book recommendation on positioning
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28MGffS6YYI&t=1758
Key Takeaways
- Positioning is the North Star
Without a clear, differentiated positioning, founders end up chasing tactics that don’t stick. Nail your defensible “why us” before even thinking about pitching press. - PR is about credibility, not eyeballs
The goal is about the right story reaching the right people at the right time. One TechCrunch hit won’t save you if the positioning is weak. - Fundraising and hiring are PR’s sweet spot
Coverage in high-authority outlets makes investors and talent more confident you’re a company worth betting on. It’s less about customer acquisition, more about legitimacy. - Exclusives drive placement
Reporters want scoops. Offering exclusivity dramatically increases your odds of landing the story you want. - Reporter relationships compound
Like sales, cold outreach can work, but warm relationships make everything easier. Adding value ahead of time (through data, insights, or connections) pays dividends. - Newsworthiness has three pillars
Timeliness, impact, and audience relevance are the litmus tests for a PR-worthy story. If you’re missing one, wait until the story is stronger. - Your founder story is a differentiator
Reporters care about why you are uniquely suited to build this company. The most compelling stories weave founder motivation directly into product and market insight. - Define success before you start
If you don’t set goals up front, you’ll never know if PR “worked.” Judge success by the story told and sentiment created, not just by logos or clicks. - PR is top of funnel, not direct revenue
Think of it as long-term brand building, not pipeline acceleration. It works best when combined with content, GTM, and demand gen efforts. - Sometimes the best PR strategy is silenceNot every moment is a PR moment. Waiting until you can make a bigger splash often has more impact than a series of minor announcements.
Thanks to Our Sponsor – Clarify:
Clarify is the autonomous CRM built for founders and early-stage teams who want to build more pipeline, close more deals, and spend way less time on busywork.
Clarify automatically enriches your contacts, captures leads from anywhere (even one click from LinkedIn), and keeps your pipeline up to date on its own, so you can focus on winning deals, not updating fields.
If you’re looking to simplify your stack and help your team move faster, check out Clarify.
Recommended Books
- Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind by Al Ries & Jack Trout — Jenny’s #1 recommendation for founders learning positioning fundamentals.
Referenced
- Clarify (autonomous CRM): https://clarify.ai
- TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com
- Forbes: https://forbes.com
- New Lantern (portfolio company example): https://newlantern.ai
- Square: https://squareup.com
Guest Links
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennyhe
- X (Twitter): https://x.com/jennydhe
- Website: https://positionventures.com
Host Links
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/
- X (Twitter): https://x.com/sophiebuona
- Newsletter: https://thegtmnewsletter.substack.com/
- Website: https://gtmnow.com
Where to Find GTMnow
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gtmnow/
- X (Twitter): https://x.com/GTMnow_
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GTM_now
- The GTM Podcast: https://gtmnow.com/tag/podcast/
The GTMnow Podcast
The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that
GTM 160 Episode Transcript
Jenny He: 0:00
Positioning is really about what is your North Star, what is the why? Storytelling, how can we make that positioning really memorable and really sticky. The RP is really more about credibility, the most important thing about how can we get the right message to the right people at the right time, and this right time thing is really really critical.
Sophie Buonassisi: 0:41
Before we dive in, a quick shout out to a tool that recently announced their Series A and that we’ve been hearing a ton about from the GTM Fund community. It’s called Clarify, the autonomous CRM built for founders and early stage teams who want to build more pipeline, close more deals and spend way less time on busy work. If you’ve ever spent more time logging calls than actually selling, you’ll get why they built it. Clarify automatically enriches your contacts, captures leads from anywhere, even one click from LinkedIn, and keeps your pipeline up to date on its own, so you can focus on winning deals, not updating fields. The team at SIFT swapped Salesforce for Clarify and cut their CRM admin by 90%. Imagine what you could do with all that time back. If you’re looking to simplify your stack and help your team move faster, check out Clarify at clarify.ai. That’s C-L-A-R-I-F-Y dot AI.
Sophie Buonassisi: 1:30
This episode demystifies the black box of PR for startups, one of the most common areas we hear of startups ask about at GTM Fund. Jenny Hayes, the founder and general partner at Position Ventures, a VC firm that helps early stage startups craft strategic comms from day one. She has a rich background in PR, including leading comms at Square, and has helped hundreds of startups land press releases in their dream outlets. She breaks down step-by-step how to successfully get placed in top outlets like TechCrunch and Forbes. You’ll learn when PR makes sense and when it doesn’t, how to build relationships with reporters, how to craft newsworthy narratives and how to avoid the most common mistakes founders make around press releases. All right, let’s get into it, jenny. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you, how fun, super happy to have you here. And before we dive in to strategy and tactics, I want to clear something up. What is PR really and why is it such a black box for startups?
Jenny He: 2:23
Oh, that’s a really good question and I don’t know if everyone can answer this correctly, but PR is actually about managing the spread of information between you or your company, and the public or your audience. So notice, I didn’t say we’re a publicist or a growth hacker, like the goal isn’t to get as many eyeballs as possible, necessarily. It’s about getting the right eyeballs on the right message at the right time.
Sophie Buonassisi: 2:51
Great definition, super helpful and, yeah, really interesting to note it’s not actually about publicists and what should people do PR around? And I know these are simple questions, but they’re helpful. Just to even take a step back what is it good for? What is it not good for?
Jenny He: 3:04
but they’re helpful, just to even take a step back. What is it good for? What is it not good for? Pr is really good for someone who’s looking to build a brand, build legitimacy, build like trust with the customer. I think it’s really good for attracting great talent to want to come work here. It’s good for business development, partnerships, company morale, changing public perception. These are all things that PR is really good for because you have this almost third-party validation of all the things that you’re saying in your marketing. But in terms of what it’s not really good for, I would say it’s generally not a replacement for your sales team or anything like that and at the end of the day, we can bring all the eyeballs onto the product, but the product has to work for you to retain.
Sophie Buonassisi: 3:45
And how do you really differentiate between positioning, storytelling, pr, all the things that get tossed around at the same time, and how do they maybe stack up together if they do?
Jenny He: 3:59
Yeah, a lot of people kind of mush them together. Where people might mush positioning, communications, pr, branding, social media, content marketing altogether. But I would say that positioning is really about what is your North Star, what is the why? Who is this for? What is this problem and what problem does it solve? What is your unique and defensible position in the market?
Jenny He: 4:26
Whereas storytelling is more about how can we make that positioning really memorable and really sticky and almost figure out how can we tell these stories to evoke almost like an emotional or human element to it. What are the narrative arcs, how can we grab people’s attention, how can we help people remember you and your company and your positioning? And then, finally, I think the PR piece is really more about credibility, because the difference between like PR and like content marketing is like you can write your own blog post, which is great. We can talk about how great we are and how great our company is. But this third party, validation of a trusted source, kind of talking about you and telling your story for you, that’s PR. There’s a joke where if you’re at a party and someone else is saying, oh, this person is like the best person at this thing, that’s kind of PR, someone else trying to tell the story.
Jenny He: 5:23
There are a lot of AI companies. A lot of them are working in very similar spaces. A lot of the messaging might look similar, their websites might look similar, your sales materials might look similar. People start thinking about how do we stand out? How can we come to this? Really? A trusted third party talk about how you guys are the market leader or the best solution for this product. So if you’re selling an enterprise, for example, like maybe the enterprise wants to buy the product that they’ve read about from various news sources versus a company that you Google it and can’t really find anything outside of their own content, marketing and blog post.
Sophie Buonassisi: 6:07
For sure. Yeah, it gives it that authority and credibility to be able to make a conscious, confident decision. Okay, I want to get hypothetical here. Jenny, you advise a ton of startup companies on PR, naturally in your portfolio. Let’s say, startup just raised a seed or series A and they want to announce it TechCrunch, forbes, whichever outlet they’re prioritizing. What’s step one? Where do you get started?
Jenny He: 6:39
Yeah. So step one is always what are your goals? If folks want to go out there with, like, a big announcement, we really want to figure out what is the goal of that announcement, because people have really different goals. Sometimes we’ll work with the founder and their goal is we want to hire the very best ML engineers. Or maybe a founder already has a product with product market fit and their goal is to just get more people talking about their product because they’re trying to sell more product. Or maybe, like, the company is trying to figure out hey, we’re doing great, the product is selling itself, but like, we want to position ourselves in a place of, like strength and power and get people really excited about the company because we want to go out and do a really big fundraise. So all these things have different goals and there’s different communication strategies to help optimize for those goals, right? So if you’re trying to hire the very best engineering talent, maybe it’s more helpful to dive deeper into what makes your technology really exciting, and there’s certain publications that are better for that, whereas if your product is selling to, I don’t know, let’s say, dentists, maybe TechCrunch or Forbes, it’s not quite where your customer is spending a lot of time.
Jenny He: 7:56
So there’s a lot of different strategies that we can work with the founders on and prioritize depending on what their ultimate goals are.
Jenny He: 8:06
But I also think there’s an interesting there’s an interesting dichotomy where, like, a lot of people come to us and are really excited to do the PR, but you have to think about what do we need right now and what’s strategic right now, like once in a while, depending on the product and the company and their goals, the best strategy is actually we should probably say nothing for a little while until we have all these other things and we can like come out from like a position of strength. So there’s a lot of different ways to look at it. I think the most important thing about, like again, what we do, if with like strategic communications and PR, is how can we get the right message to the right people at the right time. And this right time thing is really really critical, where maybe we could sit on this news for a little while for to have it aligned with this other time. That makes more sense and could be a bigger splash align with this other time.
Sophie Buonassisi: 9:05
that makes more sense and could be a bigger splash Gotcha. So one of the most frequent things that we get asked and overall I’d say our network gets asked is around wanting to get placed for recruiting purposes and for future investor and fundraising purposes. And it’s your usual publications TechCrunch, forbes. I’d say those are the two most dominant, and then there’s some kind of secondary, more niche ones that are prioritized. But I’m curious your perspective around those two use cases for large publications like TechCrunch or Forbes.
Jenny He: 9:41
Yeah, I think those are like excellent reasons for people to want to have a communication strategy. I think for fundraising and hiring, they’re both use cases where it’s really important to have that third party validation. I think it’s one thing to claim that you’re the best company to work at. It’s quite another where people can read about their news, do their own homework, look into the actual company, do research, and I think people kind of underestimate how many people want to be able to read about a company, send it to their mom and feel really confident that this is a legitimate company with good runway that’s going to be successful, and I think that’s one way to stand out.
Sophie Buonassisi: 10:22
So let’s say they’ve raised, let’s say, a seed round. They want to announce it, want to come out of stealth, but predominantly to help with the hiring front and help with future fundraising front. They’ve set their goals. They know those are their goals. What’s the next step?
Jenny He: 10:40
So for hiring and fundraising. A lot of tech and business media in general is really helpful. A lot of tech and business media in general is really helpful, unless there’s in a specific field where it might make sense to go more niche into like specific trade publications that would be helpful for them. But in general, I think the very first step anyone should take before doing any sort of communications or like public relations is really figuring out their own North Star and their positioning. What makes you and your company really unique and defensible. So really understanding yourself, your product, your customer and the market to figure out where is there a white space for us to come in and really own this message is really helpful. A reporter and I’ve already seen like a hundred companies doing the same thing Like you have to be so differentiated for us to be really excited to be writing about you. I mean, I can give you an example. So one of our portfolio companies the company is called New Lantern.
Jenny He: 11:37
They are building an AI radiologist and when I met this founder and I heard his story it was really hitting like a bullseye. He was his mother was actually one of the best radiologists in America, according to all these like industry awards. And then during COVID, he literally was stuck in their basement working like at a desk right next to his mom and watching her do work and watching that workflow and realizing, hey, she’s like the number one radiologist in America and this is, these are the tools that you’re using. This is crazy. You could be using your time in much more productive ways. And he actually built a brand new platform and his mom was like the very first customer and they brought in like all these other radiologists on the platform and they have like a very, very I would say like I’m biased, but I think they have a very, very strong leading product now. But the story of why this founder is building this thing was very, very clear.
Sophie Buonassisi: 12:34
Yeah, cause that’s so unique to that particular founder situation.
Jenny He: 12:39
A lot of it is really understanding your customer. So first we need to really figure out how confident are you that this is your ICP customer? Sometimes people already have some sort of product market fit and we can work with the customers they already have. Sometimes they’re really early. They have a hypothesis. This is maybe the customer we’re trying to reach. We think this is the messaging that resonates with them. But, like, once you have your ICP customer ideally a lot of them we want to be able to figure out how can we communicate the positioning of your product in the words through the lens of your customer, right? So your customer probably knows you really well if they’re happy customers of exactly what pain points you’re solving for them and how can we position your business to explain that to other potential potential customers. That fits within your icp group got it once you have your north star in your positioning and you’re really confident. This is what makes us unique and differentiated like.
Jenny He: 13:39
The next step is figuring out what is the news, what is this news moment that we’re excited to share right now, because there could be a lot of different things going on, but what is this particular story you want to tell? And that could be a fundraising announcement, it could be a new hire, it could be a big customer, it could be a new partnership. But whatever is newsworthy is going to anchor the story and announcement, and there’s a couple things that makes things newsworthy, like the very. The most important thing is it has to be timely. What is happening right now? And why do we have to write about the story right now? Because sometimes we might have an announcement that isn’t nice to have, like maybe you could write it now or in two weeks from now and it wouldn’t really make a difference. But the more we could put behind the announcement, the better. So the timely minutes is really important.
Jenny He: 14:30
Impact is really important, right? So if it’s like impacting a lot of people, a lot of customers, if it’s impacting an entire space in a certain way because of this product, that’s important. The relevance to the audience is also really important. So this comes back to like first, we need to decide what audience we want to talk to, based on the goals, but is this really relevant to that audience? And how do we tailor the story to be relevant to this audience so they’re really excited about it? And then just thinking about what could make this prominent and newsworthy, right, whether it’s a really big name that we’re working with or like a big announcement, a big fundraise, like whatever we can to make this newsworthy, is going to help you be more successful in doing your PR.
Sophie Buonassisi: 15:17
So the core components of something being newsworthy primarily, it sounds like, would be timeliness, impact and relevance to audience. Yeah, yeah.
Jenny He: 15:26
Those are all really important.
Sophie Buonassisi: 15:28
Super tactical and helpful.
Jenny He: 15:29
I love it. You’ve identified that audience that you’re trying to reach and then it’s really figuring out. Okay, this is the audience, this is the story, how do we reach them? And, depending on your audience, your audience hangs out or reads different things, right, so they hang out in different places. They might be at certain conferences or listen to certain podcasts or read certain news outlets. So, based on that, trying to figure out how can we meet our customer where they are and from there, just trying to figure out, these are the best outlets that would make sense to tell these stories because it’s really relevant to their audience, it’s impactful, it’s timely, all the things line up. And then it’s really about going out there pitching your story. So you have your press release or blog post already, you’ve done your homework and just pitching the story and sharing, about sharing the news and why it’s relevant to that audience and is really impactful and timely.
Sophie Buonassisi: 16:24
Got it Okay. So figure out where your audience lives, and that sounds like wherever they live is where I want to pitch right. So if they’re really niche industrial, I want to pitch a unique industrial outlet.
Jenny He: 16:37
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it depends on your goal. If you’re trying to reach that customer, if you’re trying to fundraise, then maybe, like general tech and business outlets, would work for this fundraising goal.
Sophie Buonassisi: 16:46
Would a startup have to pitch an exclusive to those?
Jenny He: 16:49
outlets. I think it depends on the story and the reporters you want to work with. There are a lot of reporters who, like only want to do exclusives, right. So really knowing your audience, just like probably any other, like sales cycle, right, really knowing your audience, understanding what they want and giving them what they want, making their life really easy. So if you’ve done your research and they only want exclusive, that makes your life easy, whereas sometimes there’s like very large round that everyone’s excited about and they might want to be in several publications.
Sophie Buonassisi: 17:17
And then what does that actual outreach process?
Jenny He: 17:20
look like Kind of the reporters reporting in your space and hopefully have already been able to get to know them and offer value to them before. So a lot of people actually don’t think of this ahead of time. So the first time they pitch them that might be the first time, which not to say it’s not possible, but it’s always better to have a warm relationship, right.
Jenny He: 17:42
So if you’ve already followed their writing and you’re like, hey, I’m really excited and interested in what you’re doing. I can add a lot of value to in these different places. We have data, we have customers, we have whatever you can do to be a resource I think is really helpful. So in the ideal world you could already have built that relationship and have been really helpful. So when you have some news that you think is really relevant to their audience and would be of interest to them, they already have that warm relationship with you. We understand everyone’s busy building their company, so not everyone you know has done that, but if you can, that is better.
Sophie Buonassisi: 18:18
Yeah, always better to have a warm relationship for any kind of outreach. What kind of value could a startup provide to a reporter?
Jenny He: 18:25
So it depends. Some reporters are on X and social media and things like that and sometimes they’ll actually ask for certain things. So if they’re asking for a certain thing and you’re able to help connect them with whatever they’re looking for, that always helps. But I think it’s really about understanding their audience and understanding what they would be interested in, because we only want to offer value. Like you never want to be in a situation where you’re constantly offering not valuable things. Yeah, that’s probably a good way to burn a relationship right. So really doing your homework, understanding what people want and then trying to be helpful that takes work right. Like I’ll sit down with the founder and be like tell me everything from the day you were born until now and why you have to be building this particular company. We’re trying to figure out what the story is.
Sophie Buonassisi: 19:18
I love how it all boils down to story at the end of the day. Okay, so whether it’s warm or cold, we’re at the outreach stage. Any tips around that outreach? Any kind of tactical nuggets that a startup should know?
Jenny He: 19:34
It’s really about figuring out how can we make this newsworthy? How can I get someone excited to read it? Just like I want to be excited to click on a headline and read the story, your pitch has to be something that makes me excited to open this email right. So this comes back to what is the story? What makes it different and unique? How is it impactful? How is it prominent? How is it timely?
Sophie Buonassisi: 19:57
Yeah, Okay. And say someone responds whether it’s an exclusive, not an exclusive, what should a founder expect in that response?
Jenny He: 20:07
Yeah, I mean, if someone’s like interested in learning more about the story, you might hop on a call and they might ask you some questions to learn more, and that’s great because they want to learn more and write like a thorough, deep story about you and the company. So really figuring out what are the stories and talking points and things you want to hit when you have that conversation is also really important yes, very true, that’s a good call out because it’s super different than the actual outreach itself.
Sophie Buonassisi: 20:36
The outreach is one, it’s more of a condensed, shorter part. And then the interview prep is another area of its own right, and just because you get an interview yeah, you want to be prepared.
Jenny He: 20:47
Sorry.
Sophie Buonassisi: 20:48
No, go for it.
Jenny He: 20:49
To understand, like hear all the different anecdotes and stories and, um, maybe you could have like some third party experts kind of like weighing in to like make this like a really rich and compelling story.
Sophie Buonassisi: 21:04
No, that definitely makes sense. I’ve heard a lot of folks advising around, offering testimonials, offering external third parties to weigh in on quotes, whether it’s customers, investors so I know that for us, that’s always a strategy that we employ.
Jenny He: 21:20
Yeah, no for sure. I think the more meat on the bone we can get to the story, the better. So we want to do all that work up front and be able to offer this all in like a nice, neat package and just be like really prepared and thoughtful about why this is genuinely interesting to that audience and just because you get an interview does not mean that they will publish a piece, correct? Yeah, that’s right I, it’s like the story has to be there.
Sophie Buonassisi: 21:53
Yeah, Usually you get a feel on the interview itself from the actual interviewer and they’ll start using language that refers to when it’s published and you kind of get a sense. But I have heard that it’s not always the case and to be mentally prepared for that too. And so they’ve had the interview, the startups had the interview. Let’s say they nailed it. Hopefully they nail it. What’s the next stage look like after the interview itself and how do you help prepare?
Jenny He: 22:19
founders. Well, hopefully, hopefully they nailed it and it’s a story that the reporter is really excited about. Next is like trying to figure out if there’s any anything you can do to help follow up. If there’s any missing pieces that they might want and you’ll probably talk about this during the interview, right, they might be like, oh, can we connect with this person or get this data or see this report so they might ask for a couple things. So, being really timely on that and getting them what they need as fast as possible is good, and then just trying to figure out what timing works.
Jenny He: 22:47
Ideally, if you’re flexible, like you kind of work with the reporter and their timeline, be more flexible about when the story is going to go out. And I think another piece is like trying to figure out how can we amplify the story once it comes out, which is something like people maybe don’t think about. Like maybe we’ve agreed, this is the embargo date, the story is going to come out this day. How can we get as many people talking about it as possible? And that could be like you, the founder, reaching out to your network, your investors, the employees, like everyone being like, hey, this is something we’re excited about. We’d love if you could read it or share it.
Sophie Buonassisi: 23:20
Definitely activating that network. I was just chatting with a company yesterday and we’re planning a launch for them and they asked me about influencers and leveraging them for their launch. Do you have any thoughts and opinions around influencers specifically and folks that are less attuned with your product, especially if you’re coming out of stealth but have a great reach to your potential customers or whatever goal that you land on?
Jenny He: 23:44
Something really important is they have to be very educated about your product because you don’t want someone who’s not really sure what you’re doing talking about your product.
Sophie Buonassisi: 23:53
People see through it.
Jenny He: 23:55
Right. So we definitely want that to be an authentic relationship, if that’s what you decide to do. But yeah, we’ve worked with companies where we’ll do an announcement and maybe there’s a lot of very relevant technical AI influencers in the space that genuinely love your product and want to kind of talk about it and share it. I think that’s great, but it has to come from a genuine place.
Sophie Buonassisi: 24:18
Yeah, yeah, and that’s, I think, part of the issue when you’re coming into stealth is you’ve got your design partners, you’ve got your early companies and customers, but a lot of these influencers don’t know you. It would be a monetary exchange, a very transactional one.
Jenny He: 24:36
If you have a truly interesting technology that people are excited about, we’ve seen very notable influencers just proactively, from a pure interest perspective, just share it and that’s been very influential because that’s probably the most honest and genuine feedback. What about from a price?
Sophie Buonassisi: 24:54
point perspective, let’s say they don’t want to do it themselves. You know, company isn’t lucky enough to be working with a partner like yourself that’s super specialized in PR, so you might be looking to more of a contractor agency option.
Jenny He: 25:07
I’ve seen it across the board. I’ve worked with all sorts of consultants agencies and folks over the years. I’ve seen it across the board. I’ve worked with all sorts of consultants agencies and folks over the years. I would say it could be anywhere from depending on what you’re looking for and how many hours they want to commit and where you’re based. All these things factor into the price, but it could be anywhere from a couple thousand dollars to tens and thousands of dollars a month. To really clear right like you could pay tens of thousands of dollars a month for a retainer but no one can guarantee coverage, right. Everything like like a tech ranch or whatever is doing like it’s editorial what’s something that you wish?
Sophie Buonassisi: 25:44
more founders believed about going to press. Maybe they knew or believed about going to press.
Jenny He: 25:53
I think a lot of it is about storytelling. I think sometimes everyone’s so, I don’t know practical and focused on executing. But sometimes we have to take a step back and really figure out what is the story, what are the human elements to this and what makes this interesting.
Sophie Buonassisi: 26:15
And how should founders think about PR as part of their broader go-to-market motion?
Jenny He: 26:22
Oh, that’s a great question. So this is where everyone kind of sometimes will bucket PR and marketing, go-to-market like all in the same bucket, social media, all in the same bucket, and they don’t realize there’s actually a different agency for each of those things If you actually wanted to outsource those functions. So they’re so different and it depends on what you want to double down on in your business. So there are some founders who decide PR is like really important, we’re going to double down that. Some people want to double down on their go-to-market motion. Some people want to do social media. Some people want to do content. Like figuring out what works for your business and is the best bang for your buck. I think is like really important Cause, like, as you understand your customer, as you understand what’s working to reach them, you should probably invest more time and resources in that particular vertical.
Sophie Buonassisi: 27:10
You should probably invest more time and resources in that particular vertical. So let’s say we went through the whole process that you showed us. We’re now at the end, it’s launched. It was a huge success, or I guess. How do we?
Jenny He: 27:21
define that success. So I think success should be defined before you start, right? This goes back to our goal setting. Like you don’t want to be in a situation where you’re like we this, but was this successful? You should know these were the goals and a lot of it is around. This is the story we want to tell to this audience and this is the messaging, the story and the sentiment. Right? I think a miss is sometimes people are so focused on the publication that they forget about hey, what matters is like what story they’re telling. So I think if you have like very clear stories, soundbites, sentiments that you want come across in that story and you see those as the end result, then that’s success, brilliant.
Jenny He: 28:18
What’s one widely held PR belief that you think is bullshit or not really serving us anymore? You know everything going on with social media and being able to create content and going direct. I think there’s some merit to that. You’re like I think it’s great if you can create content and go direct and all these things, but there’s like third party validation of trusted long standing outlets and sources and reporters. I think it still matters, but again, I think it depends on how you want to reach your customer and what you want to embrace. I’ve seen startups very successfully decide they want to do everything on social media and it works for them. But it depends on your customer, who you’re selling to and if you’re able to reach your customer there.
Sophie Buonassisi: 29:04
Incredible. And, jenny, are there any books that you found particularly helpful throughout your career that you’d recommend to any founder or overall operator or investor listening?
Jenny He: 29:18
Oh, the number one book everyone should read I tell all my founders to read it is Positioning the Battle for your Mind. So this is. It’s an old book, it’s almost 20 years old but it’s like the you know, 101 in all things, positioning and probably your go-to book until I write my positioning book.
Sophie Buonassisi: 29:35
You heard it here first, everyone, and I think we’ll be one of the first to support it when you do go live. So let us know. If ever you are writing the book, oh, absolutely, I’ll send you a case, please do, please do. We’ll get it on the bookshelf. And overall, where can people find you, jenny?
Jenny He: 29:51
Please do, please do Get it on the bookshelf. And, overall, where can people find you, jenny? Yeah, so we’re at positionventurescom so you could learn more about us and the firm and what we’re investing in these days. And if we can be helpful, feel free to reach out, thank you.
Sophie Buonassisi: 30:00
Thank you, that’s great. We’ll drop it in the show notes and I know we did a little bit of a recap at the beginning, but would you mind just sharing for everyone a quick kind of note on Position Ventures. What are you focused on? What’s helpful?
Jenny He: 30:15
What kind of founders should be keeping an eye on position and how are you helping? Yeah, so Position Ventures is an early stage venture fund. We invest at pre-seed seed and our goal is to be really helpful collaborative partners. So we write small checks from $100,000 to $500,000. And our goal is to really be almost like a super angel on your cap table to help with all things positioning and communications.
Sophie Buonassisi: 30:35
Well, it’s something that we see all the time on our side at GPDM Fund is the importance of positioning, the importance of PR, so I can imagine that that is incredibly valuable strategic capital on the cap table. Love what you’re working on and thank you for sharing it here with the audience. To Capital on the cap table. Love what you’re working on and thank you for sharing it here with the audience.
Jenny He: 30:50
Thank you, sophie, this was fun you bet.
Sophie Buonassisi: 30:51
Thank you to all our listeners and we will catch you next week.
