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Ask HN: How long to wait after initial pitch to TechCrunch?

12 points by askar ↗ HN
After your initial pitch to TechCrunch and no response from them for couple of days what would be the best course of a followup action? Do they normally acknowledge the receipt of these pitch emails? How do we make sure if they have read the email or for some reason it directly went to their spam folders? Do you think pitching to them again would be a good idea?

10 comments

[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 54.3 ms ] thread
benologist
If you don't hear back within an hour or two assume they're writing another riveting non-piece on Quora. Eg,

Question On Quora More Important Than Other Startups

askar
At least acknowledging if they've got the email or not would go a long way from the one who sent that email and eagerly waiting for a response (positive or negative). But...
benologist
No argument from me mate, I've emailed them a few times without anything heh. I just assume after a few hours they have 100+ new emails and won't get to yours.
WillyF
Would you rather have them spend hours replying to thousands of e-mails from companies they don't want to cover? Or spend the time covering more companies? I know it sucks not to get a response, but that's the way they operate.

My company will never get covered by any of the major tech blogs even though it gets way more traffic than any other startup in the entry level jobs/internships space and is profitable. They don't like writing about content plays, so I've moved on and sought out publicity from other places.

veb
Do your pitch here instead! :)
askar
Will do it very soon. I know Show HN is very effective and gets a lot more contextual feedback than just visitors.
kloncks
TechCrunch's audience isn't all-encompassing.

If they didn't respond and you have a stellar product, just contact their chief competitors. I'm sure they'd love to profile you.

GigaOM, TheNextWeb, Mashable, ReadWriteWeb, etc. Tech news isn't all about TechCrunch.

That said, I think the best feedback loop is just a simple "Show HN: Here's my project." I'd say that not only are we super friendly, but we'll actually give you back feedback, suggestions, complaints, and advise like no other.

ig1
Not to mention the writers of Techcrunch, etc. read HN and frequently source stories from here.
askar
I'm aware of it but since it looks like they don't even acknowledge the receipt of the email pitches it kind of confuses us to wait and see or just completely forget about it and move on. That's when I thought of asking how long to wait till I move on to HN (since I don't want to piss them off if they really intend to write about it later and it's just a matter of time).
alexaleesf
I would wait no more than 48 hours. Closely re-examine your pitch and headline, etc. How can you improve it, before your next step.

ASK: What is different about you're doing? What is the "hook" in the story you are proposing? Is there something different about your founding team? You might also survey the news over that period of time. If there was a big story then naturally, your story got buried. That's a good reason to try again. If it was a slow news day and you still got passed, it will be a hard second sell. Definitely try the other outlets - and I'm not just talking about the blog media. Self-publish. Publish here on news.yc or anywhere. Don't be discouraged. It adds all up, somehow. The lazy way to do PR is to think that TechCrunch -- and you’re done.

You must be very proactive and very aggressive. But most of all - you must be adding value with your news. Why should people be interested in this “news?” If you can’t answer that, then think again or try again when the product is ready for that.

One trend that I have seen a lot of success with - having a well thought out supplementary content. Videos are great. How about an infographic or slideshow? Sometimes that’s better than a video. These things are more work and resources, but the supplementary content is usually welcomed and almost always posted.

Contact me ( through my profile) if you are really stuck. Probably can’t help for a few days, but I feel for you people on these things. I was a reporter and the line of thinking for me is basically instinctive. Happy to help when I can.

My experience: http://scr.bi/gN9Xvk http://www.linkedin.com/in/alexalee