Jason Calacanis On How To Get PR For Your Startup: Fire Your PR Company | Hacker News Reader

Jason Calacanis On How To Get PR For Your Startup: Fire Your PR Company

alleyinsider.com

55 pointsdaviday16 comments

If there's one thing Calacanis knows how to do, its PR. I don't wanna be mean, but honestly, how else does something like Mahalo get that much funding and coverage?

It is not just PR, it is also the fact that those funding and promoting him like him, and he took the time, effort, and persistence to connect with them.

It pains me to admit this, but Mahalo is doing well by any quantitative measurement.

How are you measuring it?

AFAICT, Mahalo is Yahoo circa 1997. Perhaps the market has made this old business model relevant again, but I don't see how.

Mahalo never comes up in my Google results. Where is their traffic coming from?

I've had Mahalo pop up for several recent news topics.

I suppose its a bit hit and miss right now.

But that's stuff that people like Calacanis and Loic Lemeur HAVE TO DO.

They aren't engineers, or designers, so spreading the word on the product, and establishing contacts, it's pretty much the best they can do to help their startup instead of sitting around all day watching others work.

Nonetheless, social skills, or the simple ability to stand out fast, do play as much as big a factor in the success of an endeavour as engineering.

more importantly

He points out an easy way to get people to like you. Buy them food. It has worked for me (though I haven't tried it on the scale he speaks of.)

I don't normally agree with a lot of things Jason says, but I am 100% behind him on this one. From day one, I've tried to talk/walk/eat/sleep/breathe the way he describes a CEO should be. Not because of him, but because it seemed like the right thing to do if you're passionate about something.

They say the proof is in the pudding? When we started 8 months ago, I didn't know a single person in this industry or any journalists or anything about how startups worked. When we launched last week, we were on every bigtech blog, BBC, Reuters etc. How? Perserverance and creativity. That's really all it takes, and I'll gladly share all my tips/trials/failures on my blog. Or e-mail me if you have questions.

Whatever you do, don't hire a PR agency.

Congrats! I have read your blog post on http://blog.newscred.com/ , but if you have more tips they would certainly be welcome.

Thanks man. Will certainly post more details. Drop me a note if you have any specific questions.

I have to say, this seems like really good advice, it's in line with most of what I have experienced, except for John Markoff responded to my first email.

It's great advice.

Calacanis gives good advice. However, many technically-focused founders may find it hard or distracting/distasteful to pursue the hyper-social, big-swagger style he advocates.

So take solace in PG's ViaWeb experience: "Our startup spent its entire marketing budget on PR: at a time when we were assembling our own computers to save money, we were paying a PR firm $16,000 a month. And they were worth it." [1]

Times have changed with blogs and other incremental, low-cash-outlay ways to build buzz. But you can always hire talent to help where you're weak.

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

Does the 10/120 rule apply to this as well?

Times haven't changed that much for people whose startup is not aimed at the tech-savvy crowd. Ours being primarily sports-related, blogs are simply not where our potential userbase are reading.

Anyone heard of Nathan Barley?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com