How To Get an Article on TechCrunch, A Case Study | Hacker News Reader

How To Get an Article on TechCrunch, A Case Study

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77 pointsCmccann716 comments

If it takes 'pitching' TC to get an article there then I predict that sooner or later there will be party that goes out of their way to look for the news that will eclipse TC.

Sure, PR is part and parcel of running a tech company. But active journalism is the staple of a good media outlet and to rely on being pitched almost guarantees that you're going to miss out on a lot of important stuff.

Even more problematically, it seems to run a real risk that they're going to publish hype/fluff (well, more than currently). I mean, if you look at that Michael Arrington email that was quoted, he says that he liked the style of the pitch, and liked the problem they were addressing, but didn't care if they solved it or not--- kind of fast-forwarded through the video and wasn't really paying attention. Makes it pretty easy to hype a non-existent solution, so long as at least your problem space and your pitch are interesting.

The email was sent to a colleague, who was told to pursue it (and who published the article). Maybe if it was all fluff, then it wouldn't have gotten published.

That's not the point here. The case study was about a company that wasn't remotely news and had no shot at coverage based on who they were or what they were building.

PR is about taking something boring and making it interesting. Like an online shoe company (Zappos). Or a suite of project management tools (37 Signals). Or a bug tracking tool (FogBugz).

To your point though, if you talk to Arrington, you'll learn two things-- 1) The guy virtually never sleeps or relaxes and 2) He's always digging. TechCrunch breaks news a lot. I think they are a 15+ person company now-- plenty of room to cover inbound and outbound leads.

I predict that sooner or later there will be party that goes out of their way to look for the news that will eclipse TC.

HN could almost be that (it already is for me since I stopped reading TC) if we would stop linking to TC and instead go out and find these stories ourselves. I know that isn't as easy as it sounds, but I think we are close.

Well, in many ways the "rate my startup" posts are a smaller, more down-to-earth version of TechCrunch that actually allows you to interact with the founders of the startup and really get to know the product and the person(s) behind it. You also often get access to betas just by being part of HN.

I have a problem with the trailer video being completely void of content. Ok so this isn't a "review my startup" but if it was we'd all rip on the message not being digestable in 2 seconds. What do you do and why should I care?

Saying vague things about aesthetics and bashing the competition without citing how you are better does nothing for a to-be-convinced potential customer.

This brings up a good question. So which one is it? Do we market for clarity and conciseness, knowing that we have 2 seconds to capture a customer's interest. Or do we try to get on techcrunch by being overly dramatic, whisp our users into storyland and make a video that screams "me, me, me!"?

I guess you can do both =) Point is, I watched the video, its 100% about the company, but uhhh I don't care about the company, I care about what the hell you product does for me!

Another project management tool. Sigh.

Generally, I refuse to put my email down for an invite. But rule.fm looks BEAUTIFUL, I couldn't stop myself and submitted my email address. The YouTube video is very well done as well.

On their tour page, http://rule.fm/tour/, I like how selected section on the right changes as you scroll through the page.

What does that have to do with the price of tea in China ?

People comment about tangents in articles all of the time on here :) I have to agree though. It looks good. Sexy even. Producing financials seems bold, but the app appears capable of doing alot of bold things like calendaring and mail. Once they get imap enabled, that tool will be powerful.

"Producing financials seems bold, but the app appears capable of doing alot of bold things like calendaring and mail. Once they get imap enabled, that tool will be powerful."

Sorry - I couldn't help but chuckle. Saying the app appears capable of doing "calendaring and mail" is like saying that new Chevy Volt can drive like a car. There are a shit-ton of apps and systems that deliver mail and calendaring very well already, this is just another client. Enabling IMAP is like saying "and now the chevy volt can fill up from a regular gas station too if you're stuck somewhere" - yeah, just like a prius..."

As I read through the demo page - I was struck several times by how rule.fm seems like a cool app, but seems to be trying to boil the ocean.

Rule.fm Money for CFOs? Any company that has a CFO would likely not be able to run this as their CRM (which is basically what it seems like this system is).

This sounds like a salesforce.com-lite CRM system that is web 2.0 looking, but has no API (from what I can tell).

While a techcrunch article is nice and cool, and I applaud them for getting to a techcrunch article - the software seems to a solution in search of a problem that has already been solved before...

Each use case they present seems a bit simplistic and limited.

That's my $0.02, but I'm looking forward to checking it out in more detail to see if they have actually innovated in solving any of these business problems (Ticket tracking, financials, Contact management, etc.) rather than just simplifying it into something that works for a 2 person company - but needs to be dumped when you hit 5 people.

Having Basecamp walk the plank in the 'trailer' is engaging. But isn't Google Apps the real competition?

They really have the UX nailed (or they know how to make themselves look good).

Signed up, to see if they can back the appearance up with usability.

Basecamp may need to watch its back..

Deleted comment

TechCrunch already posts a lot to read in one day. This would just put the weight of editing on the already overwhelmed readers.

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