This is a wild oversimplification. Getting press is a good thing. Wasting time trying to get press without a plan that works is a bad thing. It's easy to fall into the trap of the latter, which is the entire point of this piece.

His jumping-off point would be a good example of the exception to the rule, "Treat PR like biz dev."

Exposure for exposure's sake, vanity pieces or just "noise," is probably a waste of time. This is particularly true when you have extremely limited resources, which is often the case in a startup, and product and users/customers are certainly the priority.

Business development goes hand-in-hand with product and customers and creating value is essential to any startup. The benefits of his perspective are probably worth not dismissing them.