Overall this post has some helpful advice, but the advice regarding embargoes is entirely wrong.
Before a reporter has explicitly agreed to an embargo, he or she is under no obligation to keep a story under wraps. So, in the example email from this post with EMBARGO at the top of it, the journalist could immediately publish your funding amount, investors, etc. without breaking any of the established norms around embargoes.
The correct way to do this is: write an email with very little information ("we just raised a round from a top VC") and ask for explicit agreement ("if you can agree to an embargo of date_time, we'll send over all the details")
edit: I've used Upbeat and think the product is really cool – so while I find this post to be lacking I don't mean to diminish the team that worked on it.
I used to write for Wired and fielded thousands of pitches. A lot of the advice in this post is good, especially giving reporters a week or more to work on the story, but the embargo advice is not great.
It's not a problem with the honor code, it's the overhead. Don't make writers interact with you. You'd be surprised by how little TechCrunch writes about early-stage startups anymore. In a given week of 250-300 stories, there might be 10-20 that are early-stage companies who have raised <$10M and don't have a truly novel hook (our co-founder used to be in prison!).
Send over the entire press kit, full description, etc. in the first email. Generally, if you tell the reporter you're announcing on X date, they'll not publish before that. Especially if you're launching a new product or something, they don't want to link to your site when the newsworthy bit isn't live.
My advice for most startups is to reach out to TechCrunch, the best publication in your vertical (e.g. Skift for travel), and a local tech paper/site. For something as routine as a small fundraise or YC announcement, try to get three good clips. In a given YC class there are literally dozens of companies with the same basic story so don't try to position yourself as you've got inside info on the new iPhone.
If your company is legitimately novel, so novel that your grandparents would get the pitch and be interested, by all means go wide, but for the average "We help people find cheaper airfare" or some SaaS thing just choose a few high-value targets and get back to work.
This is good advice, although I would also caution that every journalist has different habits. Some journalists will only publish news that's under embargo, others will only publish news that's happening that day. Some want assets included right in the email, some won't open it if they see there are attachments. After working on hundreds of campaigns, we believe that this embargo strategy is the most effective. Per your advice, this is why we also recommend reaching back out right when the the embargo lifts with the full media kit.
The insight here into TechCrunch is too true unfortunately. It's every startup's dream to be in TechCrunch, but we see publications like VentureBeat have much better engagement.
This is true, and we provide that advice in the blog post we link to under the Embargo Strategy section:
"Can journalists break embargoes? Yes, some journalists notoriously will not honor embargoes. There’s an easy solution though — only include information in the pitch email that you would be ok with a journalist publishing. Once they agree to the embargo, you can share the rest of the story."
However, we've worked on hundreds of campaigns under embargo, and a journalist has never broken one. With early-stage startups, you can't really afford to be cagey with your news, as response rate will be so low anyway. You have to provide the lede upfront to get journalists interested in the first place.
> we've worked on hundreds of campaigns under embargo, and a journalist has never broken one
My point is that they are not breaking the embargo by publishing the contents of your initial email.
Whatever you send in the initial email is decidedly not embargoed. Totally get that the risk can be worth it, but you're implying in this post that the information is actually under embargo when sent before explicit agreement.
I can see that point, although I would argue that if you include the language "We’re asking for an embargo on any stories" in the email, the vast majority of journalists will treat the contents of the email as under embargo. It's an unenforceable honor code, and most people don't want to get into semantic debates about what exactly is under embargo. But yes, the embargo does not go into effect until the journalists explicitly agrees to it, and that includes the contents of the email. Again, we believe this is the right advice for early-stage startups in order to garner journalist attention.
Before a reporter has explicitly agreed to an embargo, he or she is under no obligation to keep a story under wraps. So, in the example email from this post with EMBARGO at the top of it, the journalist could immediately publish your funding amount, investors, etc. without breaking any of the established norms around embargoes.
The correct way to do this is: write an email with very little information ("we just raised a round from a top VC") and ask for explicit agreement ("if you can agree to an embargo of date_time, we'll send over all the details")
edit: I've used Upbeat and think the product is really cool – so while I find this post to be lacking I don't mean to diminish the team that worked on it.