Press Outreach

Pitching your launch to tech journalists and publications — TechCrunch, InfoQ, The Verge — for a backlink and credibility that no other channel provides.

Why

A TechCrunch mention is a DA-95 backlink (the highest you can get), a credibility signal (being on TechCrunch means you're a 'real' startup), and 5,000-50,000 referral visits in 48 hours. No other channel provides all three: Product Hunt gives traffic but not credibility, a guest post gives a backlink but not the TechCrunch authority, social gives neither. Press also reaches an audience that doesn't follow Product Hunt or HN: CTOs, investors, and enterprise buyers read TechCrunch but don't vote on PH. The tradeoff is low hit rate (5-10% of pitches get coverage) and high effort (each pitch needs research and personalization), but one TechCrunch article is worth 50 guest posts in backlink value. Press is also the channel most likely to bring investors (who read TechCrunch for deal flow) and enterprise inbound (CTOs read it for new tools).

When

Build a press list 4 weeks before launch; pitch 2 weeks before (journalists need lead time); embargo until launch day; follow up 2 days after if no response.

How

1. Build a press list of 10-20 journalists who cover your space: search TechCrunch/InfoQ/The Verge for 'developer tool launch' and 'saas launch', note the journalist's name, email, and last 3 articles; use Muck Rack or Hunter.io to find emails
2. For each journalist, read their last 5 articles to understand their angle: do they cover funding? product launches? technical deep-dives? match your pitch to their beat
3. Write a personalized pitch email (not a press release): subject "EZ4Code v2.0 — from 47 cheatsheets to a full dev lifecycle platform", body: 1-sentence why this matters to their readers, 2-sentence what's new, link to a private demo and a press kit (screenshots, founding story, founder bio)
4. Offer an embargo: 'I can give you an exclusive look at the product before launch on Oct 6, under embargo until 9am PST' — journalists prefer embargoes because it gives them time to write a thorough article
5. Send the pitch 2 weeks before launch; follow up once after 3 days if no response ('just bumping this up — happy to do a 15-min demo if you're interested')
6. If a journalist agrees to the embargo, give them a private demo link, a 30-minute interview with the founder, and the press kit; confirm the embargo time (launch day 9am PST)
7. On launch day, the embargo lifts and the article publishes; share it on social ('thrilled to be covered in TechCrunch!'), add it to your press page, and email the journalist a thank-you
8. Track the article's impact: referral traffic (UTM ?utm_source=techcrunch), backlink (Ahrefs), signups, and any inbound from investors or enterprises that read the article

Example

# Press Outreach — ez4code v2.0

## Press list (12 journalists)
| Journalist        | Publication  | Beat              | Last article                |
|-------------------|--------------|-------------------|----------------------------|
| Sarah Perez       | TechCrunch   | Dev tools, SaaS   | "Vercel raises $150M"       |
| Frederic Lardinois| TechCrunch   | Enterprise        | "Notion adds AI"            |
| Ron Miller        | TechCrunch   | Cloud, dev        | "Cloudflare Workers update" |
| Heather Joslyn    | InfoQ        | Dev tools         | "Astro 4.0 launch"          |
| Chris Stokel-Walker| The Verge   | Tech culture      | "AI coding tools"           |

## Pitch email (to Sarah Perez)
Subject: EZ4Code v2.0 — from 47 cheatsheets to a full dev lifecycle

Hi Sarah,

I saw your piece on Vercel's $150M raise and thought you
might be interested in a different angle: a bootstrapped
dev tool that went from a single cheatsheet site to a full
lifecycle platform (learn → build → launch → grow) in 2 years.

EZ4Code v2.0 launches Oct 6. What's new:
- 47 cheatsheets in 9 locales (en, zh, ja, ko, es, fr, de, pt, ru)
- AI coding assistant (review, refactor, generate)
- /launch hub with 30 launch guides

Happy to give you an exclusive demo under embargo until
Oct 6, 9am PST. Press kit: [link]

— Tap, founder

## Result
Sarah Perez: agreed to embargo, published Oct 6 9:01am
Article: "EZ4Code launches v2.0 with AI coding and 9-locale support"
Backlink: DA-95 (TechCrunch)
Referral: 8,900 visits in 48h → 423 signups
Investor inbound: 3 VCs reached out after reading the article

Common Problems

⚠Sending a press release to a blast list — journalists get 50 press releases a day and ignore them all; a personalized pitch ('I read your article on X and thought you'd like Y') gets 10x the response rate of a press release.
⚠Pitching journalists who don't cover your space — pitching a dev tool to a journalist who covers fintech wastes both your time; read their last 5 articles and only pitch those who cover dev tools, SaaS, or AI.
⚠No embargo offer — journalists prefer embargoes because it gives them time to write a thorough article instead of a rushed 'X launched today' post; offering an embargo increases your coverage rate from 5% to 15%.
⚠Following up too aggressively — one follow-up after 3 days is fine; a second follow-up after 5 days is pushy; a third gets you marked as spam; respect the journalist's inbox.

Best Practices

✓Personalize each pitch with a reference to the journalist's recent article — 'I saw your piece on Vercel's raise and thought you'd like a bootstrapped angle' gets a 15% response rate; 'Dear journalist' gets 1%.
✓Offer an embargo (exclusive access before launch in exchange for holding the article until launch time) — embargoes give journalists time to write a thorough article and increase your coverage rate 3x.
✓Prepare a press kit (screenshots, founding story, founder bio, demo video, logo) and host it on a /press page — this saves the journalist 30 minutes of gathering assets and makes it easy to say yes.
✓Pitch 10-20 journalists, not 2 — the hit rate is 5-15%, so pitching 2 gives you a 10-30% chance of coverage; pitching 15 gives you a 70-90% chance; the marginal effort of each additional pitch is 10 minutes.