Since getting Techcrunched last week, one of the most frequent questions I’ve received from other entrepreneurs is “how did you guys get covered?” For a lot of startups, getting on Techcrunch is a right of passage, and while we certainly appreciate the media attention and all the buzz that it has generated, I must point our readers to Josh Kopelman’s great post about the TC effect. He argues that getting on TC should not be considered an indicator of the long term success of a company. We couldn’t agree more, but at the same time, very few things in a startup’s life measure against he adrenaline rush and excitement of seeing that TC post.
There is no one thing that helped us get on TechCrunch. We didn’t use any PR people (can’t afford em!). Rather, it’s a lot of little things that we’ve done to build up the buzz and initial interest in NewsCred. If there’s one piece of advice to any entrepeneur, it would be to focus less on ‘getting on TC’ and concentrate efforts on ‘becoming part of the wider technology community.’ That means blogger, Twittering, leaving thoughtful comments (I really recommend this), and generally participating in the startup culture any way you can. Of course, building a killer product trumps all of that! Without further ado, here’s how it all happened:
April 12th: We open up our site to our first alpha users. The plan is to fix any major bugs and then send our pitch to TechCrunch within 2 weeks, so we set ourselves an April 26th deadline to get the site prepared for coverage. Although we are in Private Alpha, we feel like TechCrunch will provide a nice platform to announce our arrival on the scene. We ensured a complete press blackout so that we could give TC the exclusive. This was key.
April 12th – April 26th: We work frantically to fix bugs, add features, respond to user feedback, all while working on our one page pitch. Iraj and I meticulously go through it word by word, making it as straightforward as possible. We insist on taking out all gimmicks – there are no buzz words, no superfluous sentences, no mention of the word ‘revolutionary’ (Mike hates that)! We just kept it short and sweet.
April 26th: Remarkably, there are hardly any bugs and our couple hundred Alpha users are happy. However, we feel like there is ’something missing’ and we decide to push out one more fundamental feature before showing our product to the world. That feature is the NewsCred Analytics module. Our deadline of April 26th comes and goes, but no pitch sent to TechCrunch. A bit dissapointing, but we want to give ourselves the best chance of success.
April 26th – May 3rd: Iraj works furiously to push out the basic analytics module. He comes through and gets it done, but we have no data! We can’t send our pitch if the weekly trend graphs only have one data point. Thats not a trend, but just a dot! So we decide to wait one more week. We decide Thursday May 8th is the day we will send our pitch. We don’t want to send it Friday in case the weekend starts early – Friday’s are always dangerous!
May 8th: The day we’re supposed to email the pitch. I log on to Twitter and see that Mike is on the redeye flight travelling to NYC for the Time100 party. Do we send the pitch or will he be too busy and lose it in his mailbox? Last minute check with Iraj – we decide to wait until Friday, the day after the party. We just don’t want to keep pushing back the date. Hopefully Mike won’t be too hung over.
May 9th 7pm: I send the pitch email to Mike with screencast, screen shots, FAQ all attached to make things as simple as possible. I send directly to Mike since I’ve exchanged a couple of brief emails with him a few months ago. I’m hoping he’ll remember. I’ve registered NewsCred on CrunchBase the day before, so we’ve done everything we can to take care of logistics. Fingers crossed. I leave for dinner.
May 9th 8pm: Email received back from Mike while at dinner – it’s only been an hour! Adrenaline rushing, open it up to see he has forwarded it to Jason at TechCrunch asking him to follow up.
May 9th 10pm: Email from Jason asking for more details. I’m having drinks in town with friends, so immediately leave and rush home to answer. Send him details.
May 9th 11pm: Receive email back from Jason asking about press embargos. I say we would prefer that they post on Monday. Gives us time to ramp up servers over the weekend. He agrees. We’re feeling confident we’re in!
Weekend of May 10-11th: Iraj and I work feverishly to get the server ready. We buy a backup server, to share the load. Move some static files to Amazon S3. Sites working faster, but we’ve never really load tested!
Monday May 12: The waiting game begins. 6pm Geneva time is 9am in California. Jason posts about another topic on TC. He’s definately working, so we keep checking ever 15 mins. 8 hours goes by. Nothing. A sinking feeling sets in – what if they changed their mind? Is there more important news today? I decide not to email Jason and get prepared to sleep around 2am Geneva time. Dissapointing. Ask my US based friends to check and call if anything pops up.
4am Tuesday May 13th : Phone rings, I answer sleepily. The post is up! I run over to my PC, suddenly wide awake, blood pumping, adrenaline shooting up. Go to TechCrunch.com and the post is up right on the front page – it’s an amazing feeling. I quickly read the review – its good, not great. No time to analyze as I wake Iraj up and we start monitoring servers and database. So far so good.
6am Tuesday May 13th: Two hours later, the flood of new users continues. We’re adding users every few seconds, and we are all smiles. The site is doing fine, with no issues being reported. Initial feedback rolls in, and its all positive. The user’s love it. Things couldnt get much better.
7am Tuesday May 13th: In all the excitedment, I forget I have a flight for London in an hour, so I pack and run to the airport. Still on a high, I meet with VCs and feel great all day. Iraj and I but put up posts on the blog because we’re overcome with emotion – after working laboriously for months, its an overwhelming feeling seeing it launched to the world on TechCrunch – couldn’t ask for a better platform! The next week is spent talking to press, friends, families, and more importantly, we now suddently have a community of thousands of wonderful news readers to delight. The journey has just begun!
Update: I completely butchered the spelling of Josh Kopelman’s name. It’s now been corrected – apologies!
Wow! Sounds exciting… I was gettin physched just reading through the final moments!
Wow congrats man. Great post. I can’t wait to go through the same process soon!
Wow.
Quick question: Where did you send your pitch to?
Did you fill in their contact form with all your business details or is there an email address to send to, as the contact form has no area to attach screenshots. Thanks.
Great to read the TechCrunch moments. Do they really look for a story that’s not covered by any other blogs or do they look for the usefulness and the potential of the product? And how do you email them? Filling the form on their web site doesn’t seem to have any effect. Can you please share the email that you’ve sent your pitch? Thanks.
Thanks for the all the comments. While I don’t really want to share our actual pitch email in public here, drop me an email if you want to talk. I’d be happy to help out.
We sent the pitch directly to Mike. The reason being we had already exchanged a couple emails a month ago and he said to keep him posted. I would not suggest directly emailing him at his personal email address unless you’ve built some sort of rapport. How do you do that? Simple – use the editor at techcrunch dot com email address – this is his public email. And believe me, he does check it because that’s how we got in the door.
With regards to the exclusivity aspect, yes – its a big deal. With the blogging world getting more and more competitive, exclusives mean a lot. So definately try and give them the exclusive if you can. Its not going to break or seal the deal, but does help.
Finally – just doing become noise. If you’ve already tried everything, dont just keep bombarding him with emails. Build out the product further, build a really cool new feature, and then get back in touch. If you become background noise, the chances of catching his attention when you really have done something magical is slim.
Lastly, enjoy the experience of building a startup without losing sleep over TC. Getting on TC is fun, but that’s all it is. The hard work begins now.
Good luck all!