The Techcrunch Embargo
There are numerous different ways media companies generate news. Some focus to cover the bigger picture of events. A good example of this is The Economist. They dig deep into the story backgrounds and go beyond the obvious. Another more common way to cover stories online is the one of breaking news.
Breaking news type of stories are hard to catch and usually require the media organisation to be on alert at all times. Another way to go about it is talking to lots of startups and simply getting news first. Third way to go about breaking news is to try and get an exclusive story from the startup. The startup can then decide if they want to give exclusivity to only one company. In our experience, most startups try to get the news out to as many companies out there that would want to cover them. After all - it doesn't make sense to artificially limit coverage.
Why am I writing about exclusive stories then? Well, we've heard a rather disturbing way Techcrunch handles some exclusives these days and feel its in the interest of the startups in our readers to know more about the practice.
Techcrunch has made their impact in the world of technology and startup news with mostly breaking news. They've been so good at it that they've actually stayed on top of the Techmeme leaderboard since its inception, I believe.
The tail that wags the dog
However, I feel as if their reputation as a company breaking news has forced them to go an extra step, too far, in how they treat startups.
We've heard that Techcrunch now, in some cases, require new startups to give them the right to determine when the startup can go talk to other journalists (and naturally if you don't want to abide - don't expect coverage anytime soon). In other words, they set an embargo towards the startup itself.
To us, this sounds like very bad business practice and borderline blackmail for future coverage.
In a recent case, a startup (accidentally) revealed to us that they'd have some interesting news and they could talk after the Techcrunch embargo ended. I had to double check with the entrepreneur that I had understood correctly. Unfortunately I had.
In their case, Techcrunch had taken almost couple of weeks longer before covering the story from the originally agreed date.
For many startups, this is hugely harmful. We don't suggest any startup go this far in agreeing to get coverage, but naturally - everyone's able to enter into the agreements they want to.
To be honest, I'm not that surprised by all this. When Jyri Engeström was launching Ditto, Techcrunch was one of the recipients on the e-mail about the final details regarding the launch of the service. We were also one of them. All the recipients agreed to publish the story, Engeström had given everyone the chance to write up in advance, at the same time. About 30 minutes before the embargo ended - Techcrunch broke it and published it before everyone else. There's even a blog post about all this.
Why am I writing about this?
Simple. I find the practice extremely harmful for startups for two reasons. First, you're giving control of your product/company launch to outsiders and secondly, you're basically telling all other news sites off with treating them differently. And no, I don't have anything against Techcrunch personally - they do what they do, but I want startups to have better chances of success by working wisely with regards to their PR.
You'll keep many more journalists happy by treating everyone the same and in doing so, you'll also have better chances at getting more visibility.
And since it's in our interest to get more startups further from the Northern European region, we'd like to announce our fight against bad business practices by stating that we'll be breaking any embargo set forth by Techcrunch themselves. I'm sure this rings a bell or two.
ps. We still agree to embargoes at large.
Update: Techcrunch has responded to our statements.
Thanks for covering this Antti. I've always found it disturbing that TC has this "we'll break all embargoes" policy and they blame PR companies for it. They say they prefer to hear directly from companies and hate it when PR agents approach them, but in fact I've found the truth to be completely the opposite.
With a PR company we've always had TC cover our story, 100% of the time, with no demands whatsoever. They've done it with 2 hour notice when needed (ie. when Mashable decided to not run the story after all, we wanted to get it on TC instead).
Working with them directly has always been a pain and reading this story makes me happy we've never spent too much effort trying to do so.
All my various startup ventures have been covered by TC multiple times. Sadly being covered by TC, even very positively, has never had any real impact on anything. I suppose it adds a little credibility for a new startup, but the traffic it brings is pretty zero value. You may get a few early adopter if you're really hip new service that has no business model, but if you are actually doing a business, the TC clientele doesn't seem to add much.
Congrats on the Hacker News top spot, 500 and the response from TC! Nice write-up!
I've always wondered the level of subjectivity and strategy in TC news. This enlightened me.
Jani, your comment on the real value of TC is great, because I think sometimes startups/entrepreneurs forget to advertise to their real customers instead of other startup entrepreneurs.
TC might help you get references for funding, but probably doesn't bring much clients, except if you are selling services to other entrepreneurs.
@Ykä: the funny thing is we've never claimed that you need to be on TC to sell more or get hundred of thousands of users. Others have.
Most startups get a lot of value out of being on TC, some don't. Which goes for pretty much any means of communication, whether it'd be press coverage or advertising.
I think it's foolish to hold TC up to standards like 'getting you real customers'. That's your job, not ours.
@Jani Penttinen: We cover stuff that's interesting, whether PR people approach us first or not. We try to contact the entrepreneur before we post, but it's not always warranted or possible.
Maybe you haven't had much luck contacting us directly, but I can only tell you how we work from our side of the spectrum (you will find that ArcticStartup, or anyone else for that matter, will not be able to tell you how we work better than we can, and we're pretty transparent about everything).
I will say that there are certain entrepreneurs who have a lot of trouble communicating what it is they do, particularly European companies. I understand why these people engage PR agencies, but that shouldn't stop them from trying to get better at pitching it themselves.
As a startup founder, I think it's important that you can get covered by media on your own, but you have to know what you're talking about, that is undoubtedly true. It's most certainly not about being hip, it's about being passionate and articulate.
@Robin Wauters. That's my point exactly. Most startups dream of getting into TC or other sites, but they should first focus on getting customers and traction. Media traction comes when you got something to report about.
I think the value of being covered in tech news is when you have your business verified and you want to get press to push forward and get media coverage.
@Robin Wauters, thanks for the response! We seem to have no problem communicating our case with VCs, or winning startup contests, etc., so perhaps it's just about not being sexy from your point of view.
It is, of course, your right to write about whoever you want. I've just found it easier to get coverage in TC using US based PR company. I don't see this as a major problem really, perhaps it's just because we don't really hang out in the same forums or see face to face that much. However I am bothered by this "war" against the PR industry and the "we will break all embargoes" stance.
I agree with you that the real business and the real traffic needs to come from somewhere else than TC or other blogs, and that was the other point I was trying to make. It's great to be covered, but it doesn't make or break the business.
@Robin Waulters said "We cover stuff that's interesting".
But Robyn forgot to mention a few caveats such as 'unless their website doesn't load fast enough for my liking when using the Google Chrome browser' or 'unless I know who you are' whatever the hell THAT means.
So what exactly DOES Robyn find interesting?
Certainly not a not-for-profit start-up building a new FOS distributed browser-based OS for personal web servers in order to give users a privacy-aware way to access the internet. Clearly that is NOT interesting to a tech blogger like Robyn, but he DOES seem to like covering Facebook, Blackberry, Apple, Nokia etc whenever they shove a press-release under his nose. Hmmm.
Maybe Robyn is in the mood explain the blanket coverage of Facebook EVERY WEEK (often every day and sometimes not even every day, but up to FIVE time in a single day) on TC, or the obsessive/relentless Quora, Apple, Twitter, Google and Chrome coverage etc whilst deliberately ignoring alternatives and segment leaders such as stack-overflow when Arrington ruled the roost?
My bet is he won't because he can't censor the comments here like they do over at TC to keep the echo-chamber playing to their tune. Things might actually get messy over here when some real dirt gets spilled.
Fact is, we just called Robyn out over on the TC blog for spouting this nonsense and have had John Biggs reach-out to us to get more details. Robyn was too gutless to reply other than to ask 'who are you?'. Classy!
It will be interesting to see if TC bothers to actually respond or is just playing along to ride out the critics.
In the meanwhile, thanks to Robyn you have a new reader so keep up the good work!
I'll tell Robyn he sucks!
@Robin Waulters Here is the problem. You are so arrogant that you think that a 'hipster' response like that is somehow cool.
Wrong.
It is completely unprofessional and exposes your fear of actually responding to the (valid) issues I raised. Are you really that ignorant as to not realize that 'Robyn Wauters' very honesty and credibility is at stake here in the wider community?
YOU may not know me and may have repeately chosen to ignore our projects (as you are now), but many of the readers of blogs you publish in certainly do and are fascinated by your ignorance of a disruptive 'visualization' project gaining steam in your own back-yard that you are apparently clueless about.
Were you aware that Iconic OS is currently the only viable candidate in our space for the UE TAS3 project?
Are you even aware of the TAS3 project Robyn?
Trust a fool to pick-up on an auto-type error and respond to that rather than give an intelligent answer.
Robin has however chosen to respond to me personally with an hysterical rant full of personal insults, whilst at the same time threatening to publish our correspondence to silence me.
Is this man completely devoid of integrity or does he just like pushing his weight around on the wrong people?