You think a lot about your company as a founder. It probably consumes more of your brain space than your loved ones. Your would-be-audience is a lot like Don Draper. They do not think about you at all.

The gap is the job.

Congratulations, you posted.

The Real Problem: Attention, Not Messaging

This isn't enterprise PR, where the goal is to drive preference, shift a narrative, or defend a position you already have. For a startup, the hard part is getting the right people to even register that you exist and remember you when it matters.

The shift to remember: An announcement isn't a document. It's a distribution system.

Most founders default to “write something and ship it.” The winners engineer a moment: a coordinated set of assets, aimed at one audience, designed to create one action.

Three Way Founders Get It Wrong

Before the playbook, it's worth naming the common traps

The Old Way: Corporate-Sounding Press Release + Safe Tech Blog There are situations where this still works well for your desired audience, but they are increasingly rare. Yet, many founders come in asking for this approach. Why? They’re not paying attention. The world has moved on to a new paradigm.

The Slop Way: AI Slop Video + Thirsty Hype Post The founders who are paying attention often underconsider the difficulty of executing great marketing. So many of the “go direct” approaches are low on nutrition and high on calories. Launch videos are starting to feel formulaic in approach with a bunch of rapid fire retro tech imagery followed by a rocket and a vague promise of a better way. The same people promote it on X and it doesn’t do anything except put your AI startup in the same vast and non-descript bucket as everyone who did it first.

The "Inside Baseball" Way: Product dump + Feature list You lead with architecture diagrams, benchmarks, and a tour of the feature set because it’s the thing you’re proudest of. But unless you’re selling a developer product (and even then, only sometimes), it’s a mismatch for how attention works. People can’t care about your solution until they understand the change you’re making—and why it matters to them.

The Better Way: Engineer the Moment

What is our recommended approach? We’ve built some guidelines but these assume you already have a pretty good idea of your ICP, your company narrative and initial wedge. Assuming we’re set there, let’s proceed…

The Four-Part Announcement Framework

Step 1: Who are we talking to?

There are usually at least three audiences a founder cares about early on. The common ones are customers, talent and investors.

You cannot put out an effective announcement that caters to all three with the limited ammunition you have as a startup. You must rank these in order of importance. What matters to each of these groups is wildly different, as is how to reach them.

If you choose “customers” (at least 75% of founders we work with agree!) you need to be incredibly specific about what that means. CSOs, perhaps, but what size company? What are the characteristics of the types of CSOs who you think are likeliest to become early adopters of your product? What motivates them to try something new?

Help your team get inside your customer’s head.

The same is true but to a slightly lesser degree for any audience. If your goal is to use this announcement to drive recruiting, who are you looking for? Chances are they’re engineers, but can we be more specific?

Pick one audience. Write the announcement for that person.

Step 2: What is our message and why should anyone care

Most announcements fail because they start at the bottom. They try to explain the technical solution or list the feature set right out of the gate.

Start at the top: what changes because you exist?

Here are the deliverables you need, in order:

• One-line headline that grabs attention: A single sentence that’s provocative enough to interrupt indifference. Not clever. Clear. Ideally it implies stakes.
• One-paragraph narrative: What future are you building—and what is the first wedge that makes it real now? This is where you answer: why you, why this, why now.
• Three proof points with real evidence: Vision alone won’t cut it. Startups get flamed for overpromising and being vague. You can’t just say “agentic” and call it a day.

Pick evidence that makes the reader think: okay, maybe this is real.

Examples: logos, early adopter stories if you can’t name customers, momentum signals like waitlist or early usage, performance vs existing solutions, demo.

Step 3: How do we get this message in front of them?

There are a thousand ways to get in front of people. With great planning, you can go through the press, announce at a conference, and publish your own content.

But distribution works best when it’s coordinated and focused, not maximal.

A simple rule of thumb for most announcements:

Pick 1 owned asset, 1 earned amplifier, and 1 native social post, and synchronize them inside a tight window of a few hours. Everything should ladder up to the same headline and the same proof points. Video is a very powerful asset if you have the time and budget.

How do you choose which earned media to work with?

Stack rank your list of reporters and feel free to aim high at first, knowing even if they pass on the news, at least they’re now familiar with you. The rankings are more complicated than just “prestige” of outlet though.

Reach

• How large is the audience for this outlet / reporter / newsletter / podcaster?
• Is my desired audience overlapping with theirs?
• Is their news easy to access for my audience (no paywall vs. medium paywall vs. high paywall)?

Depth

• How long is their usual piece?
• Does it tell a story or is it “just the facts”?
• How much education can I rely on them to do about my product?
• Am I comfortable with a more “balanced” story that shares more but also raises some questions?

For example, some financial publications can put your funding in front of a massive audience—but in five sentences. That can be perfect if your audience is broad and the “fact of funding” is the point.

On the other end, a great trade outlet or Substack might write 18 thoughtful paragraphs and reach 1/100th the audience. If the right people read it religiously, that depth can outperform broad reach every time.

One more practical point: if you’re using earned media, get help. A good comms partner doesn’t “guarantee coverage,” but they can increase your odds of getting a response and guide you to reporters who actually write the kind of story you’re pitching. Most reporters have a type: funding rounds, de-stealths, investigations, product launches. Pitch the right type.

Step 4: Execute!

You’ve made your decision and now it’s time to move. Here is a typical timeline & checklist…

Week 1: Align on audience, message and approach

• Also consider who will be doing the talking – founders? Investors? Any customers?

Week 2: Write Owned Content

• This is the message that will align all of your owned and earned media. Spend time on it to get it right. Pressure test it with investors and colleagues.

Week 3-7: Video Process

• A launch video will take time to do right. Build in time for a day of filming and at least 2-3 revisions.

Week 8: Outreach + Prep

• Media relations process starts here. It often takes a couple of weeks for coverage to run. In some cases this takes longer! Some reporters are booking 4 weeks out.
• Prepare for likely questions with your communications help. Do a mock interview.

Week 9: Interviews + Amplification Strategy

• Conduct interviews
• Reach out to friends and family, plus investors to amplify your news next week on social. Be specific about what you’d like them to cover in their post, and timing. Those first couple of hours really matter.

Week 10: Launch!

• Don’t forget to build in a celebration moment with your team

Build a System, Not a Post

A successful announcement should have real business impact. Define success before you launch, tied to the audience you chose:

• Customers: demo requests, pilots, pipeline created, inbound from ICP accounts
• Talent: qualified inbound, conversion rates, hires attributable to launch week
• Investors: inbound intros, meetings, high-signal follow-ups

We’ve worked with companies that attribute a majority of their first six months of sales to a great launch, or hired several key early engineers from the inbound that came in the first week.

Doing it right takes thought and time. But if you build an announcement as a distribution system, you don’t need everyone to think about you. You just need the right people to hear the right message.