PR for Fundraising: How to Attract Investors & Announce a Round

today we have Jordan bantia on the Pod a startup public relations expert I've hosted a few of his clients on the Pod before and decided to bring him on to share his Secrets navigating the pr landscape for startup Founders we discussed how to get investor attention through a PR prior to your Capital raise when and how to announce your Capital raise and when it's appropriate for the founder to new PR themselves versus hiring a pro let's get started welcome back everyone thank you so much for joining us today we have Jordan bantia joining us a PR expert who knows the fundraising game when it comes to public relations and getting the word out about your fundraise so Jordan welcome to the show today thanks for having me Jason I'm excited to have you be able to share your insights and expertise when it comes to you know making sure not only PCS and investors know about your existence through your public relations but also that they very well know your existence after you raise Capital um so Jordan it' be great if you just can give the audience a little bit of background on who you are and kind of what led you to running your own PR firm today yeah sure so I'm Jordan bantia I'm the founder of my own consultancy called Jordan bantia PR um I helped startups get impactful press coverage especially around funding announcements so prior to this I was in House at a number of Billion Dollar Plus startups like Yelp uh row which is the tell Health company behind Roman um as well as article the online uh modern furniture company so worked nearly a decade in PR I've done every type of PR under their Sun I've always worked uh in tech tech startups always been attracted to the entrepreneurial spirit so um I went started my own shop in April of 2022 I don't know that there was ever like an aha moment um but I had the opportunity to do some freelance PR work on the side while I was in house and just was really attracted to it um I think I again I'm attracted to that entrepreneurial Spirit uh companies who really want to go out there make a ton of noise Make Buzz um and just be really loud and I found that when I was in house sometimes it moved a little bit more slowly um and I also found alternatively that the agency model just really wasn't for me uh right it was like a ton of work um not as much pay as like I told her that just like wasn't as attractive so um again not an aha moment but I started to think you know ironically I've worked with Founders entrepreneurs um who have always thought and done things differently and um I don't know I just kind of had a moment where I was like yeah actually why don't I try out just doing some freelance stuff on my own um that eventually just turned into okay I have to do this full-time I can't juggle both so yeah I decided to roll out my own shop um April 2022 I've been working with early and growth stage startups um everything from funding announcements to thought leadership um to in-person uh speaking events again everything under the Sun so kind of tell us a little bit about some of your clients that you've worked with you know what kind of capital raises did you support them on and and kind of what are the results uh of the pr efforts you put out there so a couple clients that I've worked with recently one is forag um Jack hamr is the CEO it's the marketplace for uh wild and Specialty Foods so had a $2.7 million seed round that was um led by bester Venture partners with some participation from Angels like the CEOs of Yelp uh Shopify ety uh and the like um they also had some prior investment from gry co-founder gry Tavern co-founder Tom clicko so some pretty impressive uh uh Angels so um Jack approached me to see he can get some Buzz around this announcement um we got them into like the tech crunches of the world some of the big business Publications as well as some food trades so whenever I have a client who comes to me and says hey I have funding announcements I always kind of just stop and say okay what exactly is this announcement um how much is it who's involved what's the industry here um and who are who's the audience you know who exactly are we trying to reach um is this an announcement we're trying to make to show current investors that you're making traction um that you're making noise is this to attract new investors assist to attract Talent um and I think always people are looking to get customers right so I always take a second and just say okay what exactly is the primary goal here um and who can we reach how do we do that so with any client that I have whether it be something like a Marketplace for wild and Specialty Foods to Marketplace for luxury watches I say okay what are the outlets that are going to help us reach that primary audience and then we back the strategy up and say maybe it's Tech crunch maybe it's a trade um that actually would do better than Tech runch um so every strategy is a little bit different and I guess from a PR perspective what's the importance of it like why should Founders care about it why should they be strategic about fundraising announcements and and what should be some of the things that they take into consideration when looking at uh announcing a fundraise or or planning to announce a fundraise I think most people think of PR just as kind of like this amorphous thing right they think about PR as like what are people saying about me on Twitter but there's much more we can be much more thoughtful than that right I think you should care about PR because it helps you tell your personal story um whether you're the founder whether the story of the company um it helps you differentiate yourself from your competitors and who else is in the industry um and then it also just keeps you top of mind for media opportunities to continue that flywheel um so I think if you're thinking about PR this is something that you know is important you know you need to do if you have the budget I always think it's best to consult a professional whether that be someone in house whether that be a consultant whether that be an agency but I know that's not always realistic for everyone especially if you're in those early stages um so I usually just say if that's not available do your research um see who's writing about your industry who's writing about your competitors um and I'm kind of reluctant to say this as someone who like job is to have companies hire them to do this job but reporters do love hearing from Founders directly um it helps them build kind of an authentic relationship um when you're the one reaching out to them directly as opposed to someone from an agency right so I think if you do have budget talk to someone say hey this is what I have I need some help figuring out what to do here if this is newsworthy whether it's a funding announcement a new product launch uh a new SE Suite appointment and if that's not within your purview if that's not available to you um there are ways for you to get out there and get in front of reporters let's get tactical a little bit and talk about you know in particular Jack from Forge we had him on the show thanks to you um and they delayed their fundraising announcement extensively you know for for quite some time they didn't want to go straight to Market with you know after raising the round to go and announce it why should Founders delay their fundraising announcements so I think there are a number of things that go into what the timing of your fundraising announcement candidly I don't think it's the best approach to delay your Announcement by six months to a year because with reporters they're looking for everything that's new right they want fresh news they want to know who's doing the latest thing who's raising the money um and what that means for this industry so I don't know that you necessarily need to delay and in fact you know I usually recommend getting in touch with someone from PR whether it be a consultant agency or if you're in-house person as early as you can right because this is going to help you build a strategy from the very beginning that's going to be able to integrate PR and just have a more seamless process than you would if you're six months down the line after your raise a year after your raise and saying okay maybe we should get into Tech crunch it makes things just not impossible but like a little bit more tricky so with Jack and that example Le um we had to do a little bit more work because it was some significant time after and you do have to think about okay so what happens if a reporter asks you you've delayed your announcement why are you doing that you know what's the reason and if the candid reason is well we just didn't delay you know we didn't announce this because it wasn't a priority um that doesn't really read really well into that Tech runch article right so whenever I'm working with somebody um whenever I'm talking to a Founder I always recommend get get in touch with somebody from PR as soon as possible not even you know doesn't matter if you are starting with them right then but just to say like is this the right plan are we on the right track when should we get in touch um if this is someone with experience and who's done this before they'll be able to tell you this is the right place to do it this is the right timing if you're too early they'll say no you know wait six weeks wait till after the fund is closed and then get in touch um so there are a couple options to you delaying a funding announcement isn't the end of the world and doesn't mean you won't get coverage but I always recommend getting in touch as early as possible it's true but in the the case of foraged uh and actually one of my past companies you know there are a reason which they delayed was their product wasn't really ready you know they they if they had the big press release they wouldn't have been able to capitalize on the the audience that came with it because the product and the public facing aspect of the the company wasn't necessarily ready for prime time and an example for another company that I helped raise a series a for um back in 2021 we knew that coming out and saying hey we just raised million when we were in the edtech space and our number one customer and user are teachers they don't like necessarily seeing like oh here's this big Tech startup making all this money and it was a negative narrative for for that particular audience but what we realized is we had a kind of find a way to make that announcement work and get in the right Publications to establish credibility for recruiting you we wanted to be able to recruit talent and there was no public information from a recruiting perspective to attract talents like recruiting was a big reason for us some it's customer acquisition some it's credibility but the one we haven't talked about is pref fundraising success you know to basically get yourself on the radar of investors what are some of the strategies that you've seen that Founders can look at uh considering or using to kind of get the word out uh about their company before they go into a capital raise yeah if you're in that situation where it's before a capital raise you're trying to get on the radar of folks I mean one of the easiest ways to do that is just to do some general media relations some relationship building tactics whether you have it's yourself or you have someone who does PR just reaching out to some reporters in your industry and their beat and saying hey this is a new company that's should be on your radar they're going to have some really cool things coming up in the future like if you'd love to have connect with the founder the CEO just chat about what they're doing what they're building I'd love to set that up um again reporters love hearing from Founders directly especially ones who are building in the space and so if you're reaching out to them before you have that round close and you're just trying to get on some Radars in the very beginning it's always an option for you um there's also thought leadership there's also in-person events speaking opportunities these are just some of the the many things that you can do but I would say if you're pretty strapped for time again just going back to those basics of seeing if you can get on the radar of some reporters just Reach Out say hey this is what I'm doing uh this is what I've done in the past I'd love for you to talk you know know about my company um do you want to get a coffee do you want to do a zoom date something like that um I think is always worth it does that kind of strategy work or is it you know do you kind of have to come out with newsworthy announcements to kind of start that relationship or reporters jumping on the more they get to know you or they jumping on like something just happened I want to cover it first I think it's a little bit of both um I think that reporters will do this like pre raise get to know you depending context is important right um if you're coming from a big company um you've got an impressive background you're a person that they want to know yeah they're going to but sometimes and even if you are that profile you're that you feel like you're the perfect person for them to know sometimes reporters just don't have the time um and this is when it's advantageous to have a PR person to kind of keep on them over time constantly reminding them like hey this is a new company that you should know this is what they're building they're going to have something coming up just so that they're aware of what you're doing in space and from like a measuring perspective like measurable results from PR that's always been one of like the big caveats and difficult for people in your position and PR foros I've hired in the past like you know show me the results like how do you go about measuring the impact of the work performed in public relations and whether it be getting people into podcast public you publishing Tech grun whatever it might be like what do you what do you do to measure performance so there are a couple different ways you can do that and I think you do raise a really good question like this has always been kind of the fundamental question of how is this successful and I think if I think about it in kind of two different buckets like corporate PR that's thought leadership that's funding announcements that's big business features uh consumer PR if you're a consumer product you know makeup um food and beverage that sort of thing you're selling a physical product um they're kind of in two different separate buckets so for me um specializing in funding announcements corporate Communications um I work with my clients on leads per month so I say I can't really control the editorial pipeline you know I kind of think of myself as either like a translator or a realtor between the client and the reporter I'm kind of leasing between the two I can't force an editor or a podcast host to post when I want them to but I can get that interest from them get things going and get the process started so that we can see those results over time um and then some people on this more consumer side if you're um investing in something like affiliate marketing you can set up Google analytics you can track links you can actually see who's clicking on those links and the stories and if these uh Publications are actually driving traffic to your site so I think whatever it is um it's always a conversation again with your PR professional of what exactly are you going to do for me um what can I expect at the end of this you have to be super super clear on what your expectations are and also ask them super clear questions about what they think they can get for you let's unpack down a little bit more like when it comes to choosing an agency like last PR firm I worked with was I was in the gaming space I needed someone that knew the gaming Publications knew the gaming world had those connections already and you know interviewed probably half a dozen PRS before settling with one who you know had for years and you know still I believe is the provider for the company I left a couple years ago um like what kind of questions or attributes do you look for or Founders should look for in a PR for so great question I think about 10 years ago people used to say you know what relationships with reporters do you have who do you know who have you worked with and I think oftentimes I hear that these days but um that's just really not the reality of where PR is today there are fewer reporters and more publicists than ever I think Muk Rock which is um like a a database of uh reporter information put out a study that there for every one reporter there are six publicists trying to get their attention so the reality of the situation is is that whether you're talking to five different agencies they're probably pitching the same people what I usually recommend to people if they're talking to an agency is say can you give me an example of a situation where you did cold Outreach to a new reporter that you've never worked with and what the success looked like um I think that's going to demonstrate their ability to go out and not really rest on laurels but really show you that they have an ability to go out and make results happen um and then I also ask for case studies if there is a company that they've worked with that's in similar space um can you show me the coverage that you've gotten for them in the past you can also ask for references if they have clients that they've worked with in the past that they no longer work with um can you connect them can they recommend you can they say why they liked working with you that's all available to you and I think another thing that comes in mind is something that Founders you often don't think about when it comes to PR strategy as a whole is like are you newsworthy you know are are are is what you're building or what you're doing newsworthy and is there a way to make it newsworthy and I think that's a good challenge to a PR firm of a Founder basically you know doing a mind dump their brain dump on everything that they're doing and allowing that PR professional to kind of cherry-pick these are the points that are newsworthy like these are the ones that we could probably schedule out over a series of you know Publications over the next however long the engagement is uh with this you know type of objective so that's something I think would be an interesting way to to vet out uh PR professionals and add that value whereas it's one thing to kind of just go out and pitch a story that the founder did all the work for but you know for PR professional would kind of articulate the right message or the right story is something that a Founder I think should be looking for a PR for yeah I I would say the the danger with that is or a red flag maybe to look out for is when you're talking to an agency and they tell you yes everything that you have is newsworthy this is 100% the media will love this I always say like you know are the if this is truly someone who's good at strategy find out what they're telling you that is not newsworthy that will say no because in all of my experience a lot of times our internal news wasn't actually newsworthy so whenever I work with someone I always have to have a really honest conversation and say hey this is just not something that the media is going to cover right now this is a constantly changing landscape you know maybe five years ago they would have covered a $500,000 preed that's just not going to happen today not when there are Mega seed rounds that are 20 to $50 million um so I always recommend you know when you're talking to someone an agency consultant whoever it might be pay attention to the strategy what they're recommending if they're telling you everything they're going to be a yes man for you because that can often lead to pitfalls later on down the line and like we've been talking a lot about fundraising announcements that's obviously the topic of our podcast is how do you go to market and announce your your fund rays and and what Publications make the most sense for whatever goal we might have but what are some other strategies that Founders or you know companies themselves can benefit from when it comes to PR yeah I mean fundraising is just one tool and the greater tool belt I think having worked in House at different companies um you just get like a really well-rounded look at what PR Communications marketing can be so funding is one thing and one way you can Kickstart this but there's also thought leadership can we get the CEO out there on a by line and a publication that matters um can we get them on a podcast that is really impactful that's getting them in front of an audience um are there events in the local city if there's like if they're in New York City San Francisco Los Angeles are there local events um on top of that like this should be part of your greater marketing strategy it should be 360 Degrees PR works really well and hand inand with growth marketing um SEO paid so I would say get really tuned in with this larger strategy thinking funding announcements are great but that should just be the first step or just one step in your greater strategy gotcha um what are some of the mistakes that Founders make when they want to do PR you know get published in in whatever Publications podcast media what are some of the mistakes that they have yeah good great great question um I would say number one is just blasting hundreds of reporters putting a mail merge in and just sending out the same pitch to 500 people um I don't think there's anything reporters hate more than knowing that they were part of just Mass Outreach um another one is is focusing only on one publication like Tech crunch again going back to that what I said earlier sometimes Tech crunch may not be the right fit maybe there are other Publications um that would be just as good if not better than that um and then something too is is not delegating this role if it's not an option there's a reason that that entire companies have big teams dedicated to this one channel just like any other type of marketing channel um so if this is something that is important to you and you have the budget or you just have you know it's important enough to hire a professional just consult with someone see you know the worst that can happen is that it's not a fit for you and you can end up doing yourself and then you also can learn some nice tips to do Outreach yourself and see some success so how does a founder or a PR you know specialist get the attention of a reporter to cover their story yeah so if you're a Founder doing this yourself again there are there's one reporter for every six publicists trying to get their attention so you have competition there are hundreds of emails being sent every single day so I usually recommend or say You have about 10 seconds to get a reporter's attention so couple tips that I have for you if you're just doing this yourself um a understand the audience again Tech crunch Bloomberg Forbes they they are great names and they'll do wonderful things for your business but sometimes they're not always the right fit for the announcement that you have again Consulting a PR professional will be able to tell you okay maybe this isn't the right Avenue for me maybe we should go to a trade or go to a podcast with this type of story so understanding where your audience is is Paramount to getting success and whatever story you're trying to tell the second one is tailoring each pitch uh again reporters hate knowing that they're part of a mass blast they hate knowing that you did not do your research so whenever I'm reaching out to a publication I'm reading out reaching out to a reporter I always say in the pitch why I'm pitching them hey Jason I saw you covered competitor in my industry so I thought you'd be interested in what we were doing from there you got about 10 seconds to keep their attention before they move on to the next email so I always say keep it really short and simple if you can I've seen tweets from reporters who say if you cannot explain to me in five sentences what your pitch is what your company is then I'm deleting your email so you're seeing the severity of the situation here um I joke around with some of my clients and say like if if you're pitching uh you know a reporter yourself um imagine that the reporter is your mom on the other side like are they going to understand the jargon that you're using the terms that you're using are they going to be able to read these huge blocks of text probably not so keep it really simple cut out any industry terms and be super specific on what this actually is and why you're pitching them um on top of that why right now why is this timely why is your company building AI timely right now in 2023 um these are the things that reporters really care about and will really help increase your chances of them actually covering your company I would say that advice is similar to to outreach to investors in terms of get to the get to the point as quickly as possible make it personal make it relevant H and don't send blocks of text I think that's a pretty much it's pretty much a deal killer on anyone anytime I just see was never send blocks of text to anyone uh investors reporters me like we got to keep prospects anything I get like probably 10 of those a day where it's just like you know giant 10c paragraphs of why we're special but it's like it's never it's just I just nope Blaze over yeah exactly not even GNA give it a shot um so when it comes to the overall like conceptualization of new stories what are some Frameworks or ideas that Founders should reflect on because it's kind of hard to like do something newsworthy every month and you know typically working with an agency there is some kind of expectation of monthly output or weekly output whatever it might be like what are some Frameworks or ideas that Founders can consider use for themselves or use with an agcy they might be working with to drum up and create newsworthy content so I think it's uh helpful to think about this in a way that reporters are not writing stories to feature your comp company solely they're not marketing promo this is not advertisements they're writing for their audiences um and one of the most important things to remember is what's the larger story you got a funding announcement a new SE Suite appointment whatever the the the news is think about what the larger trend is here um again reporters are always looking for the new and noteworthy thing so thinking about how does my announcement how does my news relate to a larger Trend how does it play into that what does this say for the industry and especially if this is uh a capital raise this is money that's they're looking to follow the money so this is a significant thing for for the industry what does this say about where the industry is heading that investors are pouring money into this startup that's doing XYZ um so I would say probably the most important thing is pay attention to these larger Trends what's happening in the industry what are reporters talking about what are they writing about what are investors talking about um and see how can you slot yourself into that over time you'll have much more success getting more consistent coverage than you would just pitching yourself to be featured on Tech runch yeah no that uh that really works I know because yeah I desperately tried in my first couple businesses and they never responded you know yeah um but uh you know the pr can be you know it's just like raising Capital it's lots of rejection if you don't know what you're doing and you know it takes a long long time to figure it out and they should bring in experts to to help and support the process yeah and those experts like myself were super used to being rejected to being ignored we know how to keep on top of this we know how to keep iterating changing things so that you do end up seeing that success so it's always worth just having a conversation with someone to see how they do that and you know kind of changing gears like what are some non-traditional PR strategies to get attention yeah so I think a good example for um my past experience I would say influencer marketing and and this bear with me um so when I was at um teleah Health company row we did a little bit of I guess you could call influencer marketing um and that this was before the pandemic this was 2018 2019 so tell Health really wasn't as big of a conversation as it is now um so there was a lot of skepticism around is this a legitimate business is this a real service am I actually talking to a doctor so that we had built this Advisory Board of influencers who were notable doctors anything from a former US Surgeon General to heads of Urology at universities like NYU and Cornell legitimate doctors who knew what their doing who informing uh what our treatments were for our patients um so I think about what does that look like for you um this is not like influencer marketing for a tell Health company is not just like paying someone on Tik Tok to talk about erectile dysfunction that's not how this works but thinking about what is our weakness or what's a pain point that we have right now and then how can we finagle ourselves to best that um and in that instance for us we were trying to work against The credibility aspect of this like is this a legitimate telea Health business um so we surrounded ourselves and in involved ourselves with some of the best doctors in the country so that patients would feel that this was legitimate and that they felt comfortable coming to our platform to get treatment what are some other examples in your background that can highlight some of these non-traditional uh PR strategies I mean I think going back to what I said before just the three 60 marketing strategy PR is just one step of a larger strategy if if you're only investing in PR you may not see the result or you may not feel that you're everywhere that everyone's talking about you at once um advertising SEO um events we had Community Management going on when I was at row at Yelp um you have to incorporate this into a larger marketing strategy um otherwise you may not see your results maximized um you got that really nice like Forbes Brand Story now you want to go and put that paid behind that so that you can put it on Facebook ads Instagram ads you can put it on subway ads the logo we've been featured in x y and z um that helps create that halo effect of your company is everywhere people are talking about you this is buzzing makes sense well you Jord it's been great having you on the show but before we wrap up what's some like parting advice to Founders that you know are looking at PR as a potential channel for them PR isn't as scary as it's made out to be um I think again just going back it's this amorphous kind of like Twitter like um anxiety that I think a lot of people have um if you can ask around your network for recommendations for folks for agencies Consultants whoever it might be just to have a conversation confirm what you may know or maybe get some ideas about what you can do to maximize what you're already doing um if you do have to go It Alone Again do your research tailor your Outreach to these reporters um it's can keep it simple like these are the things it's not as complicated as it has to be these are the things that your PR professional is going to do already but if you don't have that option to go with somebody else you can do them yourself and find that you're going to have success appreciate that and I'd also like to add one thing for our listeners you know from my background when it comes to doing PR you especially pre- Capital race there is a ton of value in having your company be publicly known in some degree in some Niche or category before you go out for uh Capital Rays because it just gives VC some signal and it also might put you on their radar where otherwise if their only interaction with you is a cold email and they've never seen you anything anywhere else you know no applications they just might not think you're very legit or if they don't have you a lot of fe's will have scraping engines or tools or resources to kind of pull in any kind of press releases related to the industry that they invest in and it's a great way to just kind of get top of mind or get exposure to VCS and it's not unusual for Founders to get hit up by VCS when they do something interesting in the media so um can be very complimentary to your Capital raise in addition to just overall awareness of your business to your customer 100% so Jordan give us an example of a client that you worked with in terms of what were you trying to accomplish what did you do to accomplish it and what was the results so I work with bezel which is a Marketplace for authenticated luxury watches um and when I started working with them one of their goals um was to get their CEO Quaid Walker into more thought leadership opportunities and this was important because they were in rounds they wanted to make their investors their current investors feel good about their investment get excited about their investment and also Court these new investors um so when I started working with them um I started tracking a bunch of founders of other marketplaces in space not necessarily watches just to see where they've been uh what podcasts uh what by lines they had um and then I started basically just doing Outreach for quid with this similar strategy to get him out there get those links um get those articles for him so so that he could show his investors hey we're making Buzz here and and they did um he actually got feedback that his investors his current investors felt like bezel was everywhere that they were seeing Quaid um with a bunch of activity and that they were really excited about what bezel was doing so it was super important for them as they're thinking about their next round um to continue this momentum into it makes sense and you obviously very relatable given that way he was on our show not too long ago it was great having him uh you know be on the show so I appreciate you sharing those insights so Jordan with that said uh you know where can our listeners uh learn more about you you can go to my website uh Jordan bantia outcom or you can hit me up on LinkedIn just Jordan bantia perfect and uh anything else you like to share before we wrap up no I thanks for having me on this was great love talking about PR whenever I can um I really appreciate it well perfect well me sh to keep those links in the show notes down below and uh you know thanks for being on the show Jordan thanks for sharing your insights and hopefully Founders can get inspired whether it's doing it themselves or you know bringing on an expert like yourself yeah thanks Jason all right have a good one you too thanks for listening to today's podcast we hope you learned something valuable and if you did be sure to let us know in the comments or by hitting that like button if you're a Founder looking to raise Capital be sure to check out our platform thunder. VC to use REI to identify which investors are most qualified to invest in your business it's free to join just go to thunder. VC again that is thunder. VC and if you're new we release new episodes every week and if you or someone you know recently raised around and want to share your story be sure to email me at Jason thunder. BC that's our show and we hope to see you next week