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Four tips to become a DIY PR Pro

SmartCompany - Four PR Tips - Liam Fitzpatrick - Commswork - B2B tech PR agency Brisbane Sydney Melbourne.

This article was originally published on Smart Company.

The results are in. And startups across Australia have spoken. Media coverage is the number one need for founders in the next six months according to the latest Startup Muster report.

So you’ve got a great product, what do you do next?

Well at the very early stages you probably don’t need an agency. The time to think about external support is when you have a working product with a pipeline of regular news and the need for customers, staff, partners or investment I’d say as a rough guide.

These steps should help with taking what you want to say and turning it into something the media will care about.

      1. Finding your angle

As a founder you’ll be used to giving your elevator speech at networking events. Which is great. However you’re not always going to use the same pitch for securing media coverage. And only telling people what you do won’t be enough. Unfortunately you’re not the only one spruiking your wares. And sadly not everyone will care about your startup or the product you’ve just launched. So maybe hold off on the press release for the beta launch of version 4.1.

You need to give a journalist a reason to write about your story. A hook.

– Do you have a product/service which is genuinely new and different?
– Or has a tech giant like Facebook, just bought a company that operates in your space?
– Or has the government allocated more funds for R&D in your industry?

2. What makes a story?

    Tying yourself to the news agenda will give the journalist a better chance of getting a story greenlit from their editor – because not only is it topical, but it’s part of a wider trend which is in itself newsworthy. Give them what they need.

    Firsts – has your startup created a world-first or global breakthrough in research?
    A familiar product/service with a new twist – are you the Uber…for gardeners?
    An interesting backstory (profile interview) – did you meet your co-founder while dancing naked round a fire at Burning Man?
    New research or data – particularly if it backs up or disproves assumptions
    Opinions – there is space, for articles like this one, from those with advice or opinions targeted for the audience of that media outlet
    Reaction to big news – if a journalist is going to be writing a story anyway, why not send your thoughts for what it means for your industry as they’ll require sources to stand up their story – e.g. comment on what Instagram’s latest update means for retailers.

    Look at what the journalist you’re contacting has written before and suggest something similar or a well argued follow-up. Don’t add to the 100’s of irrelevant emails a journalist receives on a daily basis.

    Key Takeaway – create a ‘why now’ moment for a journo, focus on how you differ from competitors and tailor your approach by taking it to someone who will care.

    3. Know your audience

      You wouldn’t try to sell an industry-leading-proprietary-turnkey-SaaS-tech-stack-solution to a market greengrocer. So don’t try and convince a journalist who focuses on entertainment that your marketplace for pigeon fanciers is the hottest ticket in bird-tech right now.

      While we’re at it, keep your writing simplified. Jargon, like the paragraph above, seeks to exclude others. Buzzwords indicate a lack of understanding. And cliches demonstrate a limited diction.

      PR needs to be targeted, just as your startup needs to be appropriately positioned in market. If you’re speaking with a startup journalist, there’s a good chance they’re going to be interested in funds you’ve raised or the new way you’re targeting the market.

      If you’re speaking to a writer with a retail beat (subject they cover), why not focus on the impact or behaviour change your product is having on customers.

      Journalists are consumers too. They don’t understand your internal corporate-speak. A quick litmus test is if your parents can’t understand how you’ve explained it, you haven’t simplified it enough. And remember personality and even humour is allowed in pitching.

      Key Takeaway – research what has worked previously with a journalist and add your own unique stamp on it.

      4. Be available

    Journalists have deadlines which are increasingly short. By reading what they write about, you’ll get a sense for what might be coming up and when you can pre-empt with an authoritative viewpoint. Through providing value to them, you can start to become relied on and even have the journalist coming to you for comment. So make yourself available and deliver on any promises. There are enough people that don’t to make you stand-out.

    Key Takeaway – It’s all about showupability.

    Liam Fitzpatrick is founder of Commswork and host of ‘Cut the Cliches’ podcast

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Research, lack of commercialisation and Australia’s $315bn opportunity

This article was first published on StartupSoda.

We must choose door A.

The advice of CSIRO’s Data61 chief exec Adrian Turner, presenting a new report during his keynote at D61Live yesterday in Brisbane.

He explained that Australia is at a crossroads. A very important choice will fork our future one way or the other. Door A involves us creating our own digital exports – the stark reality is that we currently lag at just 20% of the rate of our OECD peers in this area.

Australian industry lags behind in data competitiveness

Door B results in lagging further behind, and that’s just the start of the problems that would begin.

It’s an argument which Matt Barrie has been making for a few years. Few of the top 10 most valuable companies in Australia make their own digital products. The youngest of our big four was established in 1911! Scaling and exporting in the digital world becomes harder when this is not the case.

Dr Andrew Charlton from AlphaBeta, one of the authors of the report, added that many of the constraints which Australia previously suffered reduce in a digital economy. Challenges of smaller local market, greater distance between population densities and higher wages matter less when competing on the global stage, so “we need to think differently about comparative advantage”.

Adrian made the point that many of the algorithms we use today, have been around since the 70’s – but “we don’t have the tech talent”, we’re already behind and every day “that delta is only going to grow” added Dr Charlton.

From idea to market

The question across the whole day was how to turn the great research which Australia is responsible for, e.g. Wifi, into a product we can commercialise? How can we bridge the gap between breakthrough and branding, taking the product all the way to market? Why is R&D going down comparatively with other OECD countries?

Aussie public investment in R&D is largely indirect

Brisbane’s Chief Digital Officer, Cat Matson, was keen to emphasise that there’s no one party responsible for Australia succeeding as a country. “It’s about how do we still get everyone together” she added, focusing both on celebrating what we can do fast, while still painstakingly and rigorously testing efficiency and market-fit in the background.

However some of the timeframes imposed by academia for collaboration are too slow. AI specialist from Queensland’s Office of the Chief Entrepreneur, Dr Natalie Rens, spoke of experiences with academia, where it can take a year to form partnerships because of administration. “It’s difficult in Australia as research is tied to universities who typically demand extensive IP agreements and take a 30% equity stake in the end product…we need to be more like the States where it’s a one page agreement, maybe 5% equity and let’s go.”

One solution is to focus on specific problems, entrepreneur Bevan Slattery offered. We need more imagineering and problems with a social license which can be approached from a state and national level, life the Reef. We need to ‘reshot’ and find our solutions through science and innovation – which is what the Data 61 Challenge program is doing with its first mission Food Provenance (managing transparency in supply chain) – it’s about “grabbing great thinking, capital and solutions through partner networks” says Data61’s Ben Sorensen.

Mega Trending

When is a trend not a trend? When it’s a megatrend – typically a large cluster of smaller trends.

Six interconnecting, venn-diagram-piecing trends the latest CSIRO report on the issues focuses on include:

– Intelligent machines
– Digital dividends (improving productivity)
– Data driven
– Burning platforms
– Online burnout
– Reality bites

Six digital megatrends

Discussion around Industry 4.0 and the future of automation, brings a unwarranted amount of scaremongering. The megatrend of ‘intelligent machines’ comes with the harbinger of a stat that 47% of jobs will be taken by automation within a couple of decades. In reality though, jobs redefine and augment with technology rather replace. A lot of the repetitive roles may go, but hopefully this will free up time for humans to be more human and add value through creative thinking and applying the technology in additive manner.

The benefits are clear, Dr Wen Wu explained the Case Crunch (2017) experiment which pitted 100 commercial London lawyers against AI when it came to predicting the outcomes of cases, given all of the facts. Needless to say the robots outperformed their human counterparts 87% accuracy compared with 62%. There are benefits of standardising elements of decision making.

But there are issues around bias both in the way we think about cases, but also those coding the algorithms responsible for coming to these conclusions. Ethics was a bigger issue which Day 2 panels were looking to address. What happens when all of the coders are white men?

It can’t just be in isolation

The final thought should go to Adrian Turner who warned attendees of the danger of having conversations in an echo chamber alone.

We don’t have the answers but data can certainly help and Australia must become more targeted in its approach to claw back its position on the global stage. All of our futures depend on it.

“Part of challenge is in communications, how do we get public to understand that the things that got 27 us years of economic growth aren’t going to get us through the next period.

“I’m more optimistic than ever that we’ll get through. Because we have to. But also because there’s already been a shift in the last three years” since coming back says Turner.

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Cut the Cliches – Episode Four – Jalaluddin Shaik

When we’re not reading about new technology, it’s fair to say that our head of communications is probably watching sport. And while the AFL/NRL seasons are heading towards their entertaining conclusions, our weekends will soon be revived with the NFL and a summer of cricket. Oh and of course the EPL, sorry, Premier League is also back.

But behind the soap opera-like twists every week, are the coaching teams developing tactics to counter their latest opponents. Studying the game footage takes hours and days of dedication, but there are machine learning technologies which are looking to identify trends across vast data sets (or game film).

Sydney-based GameFace.AI is one of those businesses. Created by sports nut Jalaluddin Shaik, the startup has pivoted from movie analytics and is pioneering a new genre of sports assistance. His background is in AV technologies, having already designed and built large-scale audio and video platforms. Shaik also led engineering teams at Fortune500 companies, such as Intel, Apple, Denon, and Spotify. Now with an entrepreneurial focus, Shaik’s interest lies in applying artificial intelligence to analyse videos.

We caught up with him, prior to the rebrand from FlixSense, at Hub William St in Sydney to hear more about:

– the difference between AI and machine learning
– how FlixSense started what the rebrand means for the direction of the business
– what types of sporting codes is he working with
– how technology is changing the sports we see on TV
– and what effect it’s having at the lower levels of sport
– what’s next for GameFace and sports analytics in general

Next week we speak with Ben Beath, MD at Loud & Clear about the role of digital agencies.

See you then.

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Cut the Cliches – Episode Two – Elaine Pofeldt

We’re coming right back with another episode. Weekly now every Sunday.

Something for the morning commute.

And for this edition we speak with award winning journalist and author of The Million-Dollar One-Person Business, Elaine Pofeldt.

During the episode we cover:

– patterns of successful one person businesses
– achieving global reach through digital marketing
– how to find your niche
– maintaining balance in work/life
– importance of multiple revenue streams
– trends in freelancing

A massive thanks for Elaine’s patience in getting this one together.

Elaine Pofeldt, author of ‘The Million-Dollar One-Person Business’
Elaine Pofeldt is an independent journalist who specialises in small business, entrepreneurship and careers. She is the author of The Million-Dollar, One-Person Business, a look at how entrepreneurs are hitting seven-figure revenue in businesses where they are the only employees (Random House, Jan. 2, 2018).

Her work has appeared in FORTUNE, Money, CNBC, Inc., Forbes, Crain’s New York Business and many other business publications and she is a contributor to the Economist Intelligence Unit. She is also a ghostwriter.

As a senior editor at FORTUNE Small Business, where she worked for eight years, Elaine was twice nominated for the National Magazine Award for her features and ran the magazine’s annual business plan completion. Elaine graduated from Yale University with a BA in English. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and their four children and in her free time enjoys taekwondo, yoga and running.

Keep an eye out for next week’s edition with AADL’s Steve Sinha.

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Commswork presents – Cut the Cliches Podcast – Episode One

It’s all happening.

That’s right, Commswork is launching a new podcast.

We look to get behind the jargon and buzzwords of an industry and every week we invite a guest to guide us through their field.

Kicking us off is Mark Gustowski. We headed to the Brisbane offices of QUT’s Creative Enterprise Australia CEO for episode one. We discuss Mark’s two decades of startup experience, including his time in the Melbourne scene during the Dot Com boom and London after the 2012 Olympics announcement.

Startup expert Mark Gustowski

In his own words, Mark is the CEO at QUT Creative Enterprise Australia, a startup factory based in Brisbane supporting startup founders in the creative tech verticals. With experience in building and supporting startups and growth companies across Australia, the US, Asia and Europe Mark has designed and run accelerator, incubator and investment programs nationally and internationally.

Having worked extensively across the public and private sectors, Mark has led the development of government policy and programs that support industry development and has also co-founded a number of startups in the tech, investment and FMCG sectors. Mark has invested in a number of Australian tech startups and sits on the board of organisations in the startup, renewable and investment sectors.

Having built national and international relationship that support Australian industry development Mark is passionate supporter of the Australian industry and tech space.

And we can confirm, he’s a thoroughly nice chap!

Enjoy.

Oh and look out for our next episode with author of The Million Dollar One Person Business and experienced journalist Elaine Pofeldt.

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ICOs overtake venture capital funds bit by bit

bitcoin, ICO,

This article was originally published in The Australian

Their credit cards were maxed out. They owed tens of thousands of dollars and needed publicity.

So Brian Chesky and co-founders spent their last dollars on making political-themed cereal boxes around the Obama/McCain election.

This PR stunt catapulted Airbnb into the mainstream. Silicon Valley is littered with serendipitous stories of investment — yet now the process is being democratised through technology. Blockchain is shifting access to capital.

At its simplest, blockchain is a record of who owns what. It’s a digital ledger that underpins cryptocurrencies, like bitcoin, and is now being used by entrepreneurs to raise funds.

In the first half of the year, Goldman Sachs found the pace of investments in initial coin offerings (ICOs) has for the first time overtaken traditional venture capital (VC) funding for early and seed stage.

But why would an entrepreneur today choose this type of funding?

There’s less rigorous pitching required. No Shark Tank style grillings from potential investors. Instead a more serene crowd-funding Kickstarter approach with tokens offered for those investing. The value of the token is dependent on its scarcity but also the demand for that currency, the more businesses that are built using the same blockchain, the higher the demand.

And it’s quick too. Having an idea, taking it to market and letting the crowd decide, can be much faster than waiting for an Andreessen Horowitz to sign on the dotted line. However, traditional VC/accelerator routes do give access to networking, and mentors.

So how do you successfully go about it? First, you need a good idea. You then have to plan how you’re going to get people interested. If you’re in infrastructure you’ll have some competition as 35 per cent of the 234 ICOs this year have been in that sector according to CoinSchedule.

Will your coin be used as currency, only aiming to store value like bitcoin, litecoin or dash? Or will it become a platform, like Ethereum or NEO, where it will not only store value but also be a programmable currency that powers a blockchain’s unique function? Or even a subcategory of platform know as “product coins” like Golem and Sia, where the coins are used to access one thing that blockchain specifically offers.

Once that’s decided, you’ll need to set up the back-end for your denominated coins to be distributed to investors and managed on exchanges where they can be freely traded. Smart Contracts cut out the middlemen. They allow all of the ­financial aspects of an investment, to be coded and run automatically. Ethereum has lowered the barrier to entry by providing a platform that enables anyone to develop their own coin without having to implement their own blockchain.

Often you don’t need a minimum viable product or prototype, with founders opting for a white paper to outline their vision and what investors can expect. Many point to the lack of regulation and protection for would-be investors — no formal “equity” is given, leading to commentators referring to it as the “wild west” of investment. Scams are commonplace.

But stricter regulation is coming. China’s recent ban for start-ups choosing this route will ultimately pave the way for a more robust industry. To ensure both you and your investors are protected, it’s worth seeking legal counsel on the technical set-up of your ICO.