We had the pleasure of meeting Paula Gould. It was clear that Bala shows big respect for her and he is very grateful for having had her to assist him in starting "Startup Iceland".
She's been in involved in PR-related subjects for almost 20 years. When I think back I remember her looking like she was around 30 year old so she must have started quite early :).
In her mind one of the most crucial thing's to "know your story". She told us that the first thing people think of when they see you or your company is "you are like X".... and because of that reason you really need to emphasise on the importance of knowing your story. What was the passion for starting the company? You need to know how you differentiate from your competitors, what your competitors are doing, know your market fit ... because when you meet someone and tell him about your company, you don't want to leave that person with the impression that your company is a copy of something else. You want leave that person with how you wanted your product to fit better the customers needs and how that product is going to impact certain people. I completely agree.
Now that we agreed on what I explained above she menioned next the question if we afforded a PR? Well if you want people to know your story then yes... if you want people to know that your product is not just a copycat of something else then yes... if you want people to know why they should need your product then yes.
But that left us with the question... but hey, PR-advice is not cheap, I probably don't afford it... But her answer to that was... well you don't afford not afford PR. Then if I can't not afford a PR then how? ........ You need to find a way, what ever it takes. You don't necessary need to a hire a PR specialist. You might just book your self for a PR practice with yourself, or trying to hire people who may be PR-savy. There's endless ways to do PR but it's so important to get through all that noise out there so people notist you. You might even know about a certain person that might help you get others to know your product... and there's nothing wrong about sending that person a message once and then... as long as you are only stalking that person professionally she said :).
And if you keep your mind to doing at least the best you can in PR you will hopefully (eventually) afford a PR person to help you... And then I thought, can everybody do PR? The answer is clearly yes but a profession PR will help you sending more valuable longterm signals about you out there.
Bala then took over with some nice things to think of regarding "how to get started".
He talked about the challenge of getting noticed which Paula had been talking about as well.. He's simple advice was find a way to make people care! Build a landpage so that people know you exist. Get 5 to 15 people to like your side. Try getting more to like your page. Ask them for their email so that you can contact them when you are closer to making your product ready. And of course... don't do things that will cause you trouble like hiring people when you don't afford it. And just do these things that need to be done even though they are not scalable such as having a talk with people about your product. Every founder had to do then also.
But what about raising money? Why not just raise money immediately? The answer is No, no no... do not raise money until you really need to and you hopefully know there's alot of investors who's gonna be waiting in lines to give you their money... because if you go soon you'll end up getting nothing, wasting all your energy on nothing or even worse giving that investor too much equity in your company because you were talking to that person to early.
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