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2 days ago
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I once spent nine months with Wired on a story about Square’s new San Francisco office.
I took the reporter on multiple tours of the construction site. He sat in on meetings, where we debated names of conference rooms. And then after many, many months, he toured the completed office and interviewed execs about the renovated space.
I prepped spokespeople on messaging around the office design—how it was designed to function similar to a city—and in that, reflect the merchants selling in cities across the US.
This was a design story at its core—not a story capturing how the growth of a startup represented something bigger happening in the world.
It was 2013, and we only had 600 employees. (Roughly 4x smaller than Rippling and Gusto today.) This was not a pitch from a public company, like Apple, that every reporter wanted—and still wants—insight into. We were just a hot, up-and-coming tech startup.
Today, this story would be nearly impossible to land. It’s a non-story.
I bring this up to show you a personal example of how much the media industry has changed since I started my comms career in 2010.
As founders, you need to understand today’s media landscape to know how to work within it.
You can still reach your audience through traditional media outlets—but what constitutes as news and coverage-worthy has changed drastically. (If I weren’t trying to keep this concise, I’d dive into the mass layoffs, collapse of the traditional business model, and the crisis in public trust…)
Meanwhile, your target audience is scattered across platforms. But fortunately, you have more paths to reach them because of new media, like:
Reporters are leaving traditional media in droves to launch their own newsletters. One big reason to work with these creators: loyal audiences.
Today, readers are no longer only loyal to the publication; they’re loyal to the writer—and they’re getting the writer’s work delivered straight to their inbox. People are paying for newly-launched newsletters with no brand because they trust the writer.
This is correlated, so stay with me: When people have a closer connection to an Instagram influencer, they are significantly more likely to act on a product being marketed. Founders tell me they see higher conversion rates working with niche influencers (<100k followers) than with mega-celebs like Selena Gomez.
I haven’t found research on this—this is just my hypothesis—but I expect the readers of a trusted newsletter likely transfer that trust to the startups featured there. They believe the writer curates for a reason.
In my opinion, readers may view your early-stage startup more favorably in a respected journalist’s newsletter (say, Alex Konrad’s) than in the publication they left (say, Forbes).
Which brings me to Keycard, agent security that uses cryptography (via SDKs) to verify an agent’s human/company affiliation and credentials. I discovered Keycard through UpStarts, the newsletter founded by Alex Konrad, formerly of Forbes.
When I was at Y Combinator (and Alex was at Forbes), I pitched him on several stories. Every story landed except for one—which fell apart because of the pandemic, naturally.
While it’s easier to land stories when you’re a world-renowned firm, I still had to bring Alex a newsworthy story.
I had to prove there was energy in the ecosystem around the news hook. I’m not just talking about data, like applications increasing, but chatter in the startup community.
Huge changes brought upon by YC’s new president, the secretive Growth Program, the biotech push and the new partner hired to support it—people were talking about it all on Twitter, speculating in articles, and gossiping at events where Alex was in attendance.
Then, access. I expect it was much easier for Alex to say yes to a story when I told him he could attend a batch event or sit in on a Growth Program session. (Alex is actually one of the few reporters who has attended a batch event; the behind-the-scenes of the Growth Program never panned out given COVID.)
From recent interviews and coverage, this still holds. If you want Alex to say yes, give him the sense that your story is already moving through the community.
What that looks like:
Warm intros. Can an investor or founder talk you up to Alex and make an intro?
Social proof. Can you link to tweets by respected founders and investors talking about your product?
Virality. Can you share viral videos created by users?
Access. Can you demo your product to Alex?
A reminder of the questions to find your angle:
What’s the news hook?
What cultural shift does this reflect?
What trending story can you plug into?
What about your founder story or background is unique?
Do you have a partnership with a recognizable company?
Do you have surprising growth or customer data that gives a new perspective on the market?
Do you have investors with strong name recognition?
Here’s what likely made the story coverage-worthy to Upstarts:
News hooks: Exclusive on $38 million in combined seed and Series A funding & coming out of stealth.
Cultural shift: AI agents are changing our workforce, social media, shopping experience... Anecdote from the article: “When one [AI agent] goes to, say, order you a pair of blue jeans on a shopping site, a bunch of security risks pop up.” (...and so you need Keycard).
Trending story: To quote Alex: “[...] agentic security looks like the next cybersecurity gold rush, and it’s worth paying attention as a host of new startups and big players move in fast.” There’s tons of chatter about agentic security.
Founder background: The company was cofounded by Ian Livingstone, whose last startup was acquired by security company Snyk. (Strong founder credentials here.) Alex’s article also mentions that when Ian was building Snyk, hackers stole encryption keys involving CircleCI products. They had to manually map out and retrace every key and password—resulting in a giant spreadsheet of more than 10,000 credentials. That is a beautiful anecdote as to why Keycard needs to exist.
Partnerships: This is a cool way to give a reporter access to an early customer’s validation of your product—but allow them to stay anonymous: “Keycard’s worked with a handful of design partners so far, but cannot name them; one spoke with Upstarts on condition of anonymity, as they were not authorized to speak on behalf of their company, and attested that their team got Keycard up and running within a few hours.”
Data: None disclosed publicly (and that’s ok if the rest of your story is strong).
Investors: a16z, boldstart ventures, Acrew Capital.
Two details worth calling out because they beautifully tie together points I made prior:
On warm intros:
“No one is really too far ahead in having a product in-market,” says Modern Technical Fund founder Amanda Robson, whose fund launch we covered in June – how we first met Livingstone, then operating in stealth.
Alex first met Ian while covering Amanda Robson’s fund. He likely asked to speak with founders in her portfolio, and Amanda introduced a small, curated set—including Ian. That warm intro led to a story months later.
Amanda could have introduced Alex to anyone in her portfolio. But she chose a select few. I expect Alex clocked that: Keycard is worth following.
Leverage your investors’ relationships with the media.
On new media:
“Robson says she became a fan of Livingstone’s through his podcast influential in infrastructure circles, The Infra Pod.”
New media at work right there.
I’ll draft a pitch for you to reference. But, my guess is Ian never formally pitched Alex.
Because of that warm intro, I expect Alex and Ian had several casual conversations leading to the moment Ian and his cofounders were ready to announce their funding.
The “pitch” could’ve been as simple as a text:
Alex, we’re finally ready to announce our funding. Interested in the exclusive? Can demo + intro you to design partner.
If Ian had written an email, it might look like this:
Hi Alex,
Great speaking last month about Robby’s new fund—thanks again. She’s since connected me to 25 directors who’ve deployed Keycard (agent security that verifies an agent’s human/company affiliation and credentials).
We’re ready to announce $38M in combined Seed + Series A (a16z, boldstart ventures, and Acrew Capital), and I’d love to offer you the exclusive.
On our call you noted that agentic security looks like the next cybersecurity gold rush. Teams need a clean way to govern agent identities and credentials. That’s exactly why we built Keycard—shaped by the 2023 CircleCI incident, when my previous team at Snyk (acquired by Invariant Labs) had to manually retrace 10,000+ credentials across systems.
Happy to give you a demo, and put you in touch with design partners and investors.
Let me know, thanks!
Ian
TL;DR: News coverage has changed drastically. Don’t ignore new media. Warm intros + social proof + access = coverage where loyal audiences read.
