What's New: A tech reporter's guide to media coverage for founders

(from the latest issue of the Indie Hackers newsletter)

Start with local media coverage and work your way up:

• Tech reporter Bobby Burch created a guide for founders on getting media coverage for their startups. Top tip? Build relationships that create a steady, consistent drip of coverage instead of just one splash.
• College loans are going crypto as education financing startup Student Coin snags $21M in funding. There are over 5K colleges in the US alone, and all of them will need products that help them navigate this new world.
• Former Andreesen Horowitz partner Li Jin recently launched her new VC firm, Atelier Ventures. She shares her philosophy with Indie Hackers on how passion economy platforms can help provide meaningful work to everyone on the planet.

Want to share something with over 70,000 indie hackers? Submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter. —Channing

📺 A Tech Reporter's Guide to Gaining Media Coverage for Founders

from the Indie Economy newsletter by Bobby Burch

Press coverage can elevate startups, create new opportunities, and generate growth. Bobby Burch, tech reporter and indie hacker, has been in the journalism game for eight years.

Here's a guide to Bobby's top tips and insights, curated specifically for indie hackers looking to garner press coverage. Techstars cofounder Brad Feld also included Bobby's lessons in his new book on entrepreneurial ecosystems, if you'd like to read further!

Keep it simple

Journalists aren’t (typically) developers or founders. They’ll rarely have your technical expertise or depth of knowledge on your market. If they can’t understand what your company is building, they’re unlikely to write about it.

Keep your pitch simple. Focus only on the most important and interesting information. Offer concrete examples of what you’re doing, and provide details on your product’s impact. If your business is complex, try to find an analogy to help it make more sense.

Local, local, local

You may think your company is worthy of a New Yorker cover from the get-go, and maybe it is. But local news offers many benefits to early-stage companies.

Local news coverage is typically easier to land, and it also serves as an important validator to larger media. When a journalist vets your pitch, they'll almost certainly start with a Google search. Local news coverage lends credibility and improves your odds of landing more widespread coverage. Local coverage can also create opportunities in your own backyard, including sales, audience growth, and new relationships.

Defining “local” can be challenging for founders who are digital nomads or manage distributed teams. In those cases, consider pitching to local news in your hometown. Local news LOVES covering its hometown heroes that have gone on to build interesting things.

Consider timing

If your product is particularly relevant during a season or holiday, consider pitching a story leading up to that window. For example, pitch your new dating app a week before Valentine’s Day, or that body-building app before New Year's Eve.

Also, consider what’s trending in the news. If there’s a big event consuming media attention (i.e. the Superbowl), consider holding onto your pitch until things have cooled off.

Build relationships

Try creating a relationship with a journalist via video chat, a phone call, or over coffee, before you make an announcement. That’ll make you a familiar face when you’ve got something to share.

If your pitch fails to garner press, stay in touch with the journalist or editor. Offer yourself as a sounding board, thought expert, or a source for unrelated tech and business news stories. It’s common practice for journalists to have a list of “usual suspects," or experts in fields that they seek out for insights and alternative points of view.

Your own story

Founders' paths to success are often compelling stories. People connect with the human journey of how founders got where they are, their struggles, why they’re building something, etc.

Think about your personal journey and how that might be a human interest story. This approach works particularly well for local and regional publications, but nearly every news organization runs profiles on people.

Control what you can

If you’re making an announcement, or proactively seeking press, you can help control some aspects of how a story will appear. For example, you can provide new logos or quality photos instead of forcing a journalist to pull a thumbnail from your LinkedIn.

Founders can also request to speak off-the-record to provide useful insights. Make sure that the journalist agrees to go off-the-record before you spill your guts.

Play to competition

If you’re confident in your ability to generate press on something, you can leverage a competitive media market to your advantage.

For example, my former hometown of Kansas City loves news on entrepreneurs, and the local media competes for opportunities to report the juiciest startup news. That competitive environment makes it easier for companies seeking coverage to identify what publication might best connect them to the audience they want.

The journalists know that a competitor will pick up the story if they don’t, which puts extra FOMO pressure on newsrooms. You can further entice your top targets by offering exclusive interviews or access that might generate more in-depth coverage.

Hope this was helpful! Will you be trying any of these tips to garner press for your business?

Subscribe to Indie Economy for more.

📰 In the News

🤖 This ‘software robot’ startup became the third largest US software IPO in history this week.

🏛 Apple was blasted by Spotify, Tile, Match Group in a US Senate antitrust hearing.

📉 Crypto prices continue to fall, dipping below $50K for the first time since early March.

🤩 Meet Disney Imagineering's new free-walking robot version of Groot.

💳 India has restricted American Express from adding new customers.

🎓 Student Coin Raises $21M in Funding

from the Trends Newsletter by Ethan Brooks

Student Coin is a blockchain framework designed with the goal of teaching college students how cryptocurrency works. The company recently raised $21M in new funding, and represents a new wave of fintech ed startups that could create new opportunities for founders.

Student Coin

Student Coin is a startup that allows students and colleges to create their own tokens, trade crypto, and even issue loans via cryptocurrency. The company was created in 2018 when a group of students and advisers from various universities created the framework.

After languishing in obscurity, their subreddit saw a spike of new membership during their initial coin offering (ICO), landing student Coin on the list of the 50 fastest-growing communities this month, according to Subreddit Stats.

Opportunities for founders

Now, Student Coin aims to be the future of education financing, and with support from players like Harvard University and the London School of Economics, as well as $21m in new funding, this team may just pull it off.

This points to opportunities in a few key areas:

• Student-oriented businesses that accept crypto (i.e. university swag stores, book rentals, and the like).

• Crypto consulting services for schools: Student Coin currently supports 500 universities worldwide, but there are 5K+ colleges in the US alone, and each will need to understand how to navigate this brave new world.

• Loan comparison sites like NerdWallet make millions of dollars each month in affiliate income by helping people compare loan options. Reboot that model with free/paid content educating parents and students on crypto, Student Coin, and other emerging DeFi loan options.

One request: If we're going to rebuild the student loan industry, can we PLEASE do a better job educating students on what it really means to borrow?

Viridian

The deep forest-green color known as "viridian" is the latest craze to explode on Pinterest.

Searches for "viridian aesthetic" sprouted back in February, and are growing like a weed on Google too, according to Keywords Everywhere.

Source: Keywords Everywhere

Source: Pinterest

You can also make some green of your own by combining this insight with one of our past Signals to help people bring this look into their own space:

• Online Interior Design: It ain't easy being green. Help clients figure out how to pull off this look in their own homes without going overboard.

• Collage Decor: The term "wall collage pictures" still gets 18K searches per month on Google, and this set of framed botanical prints does $11K/mo. on Amazon, according to Jungle Scout.

• TikTok Lights: This term is still getting 49.5K searches per month on Google, according to Keywords Everywhere.

There's also an opportunity to capitalize on these aesthetic trends by making wallpapers for computers or smartphones. You could sell them (NFTs, anyone?), but the bigger play might be to use them as marketing for another product you sell.

Bananatex

Demand for waterproof gear is stronger than ever. Source: Google Trends

The Swiss design firm QWSTION has designed a new performance fabric called Bananatex, made from abaca plants, a cousin of the banana tree.

The beauty of Bananatex is that it's super strong and waterproof, making it perfect for clothes, shoes, and outdoor gear. It's also completely biodegradable, and requires no pesticides or fertilizers to produce.

While Bananatex hasn't hit the mainstream yet, we see lots of opportunity for forward-thinking sustainable brands to create products using the fabric (similar to the fashion opportunities in our Mushroom Signal). According to Keywords Everywhere, people already search for:

• Sustainable clothing (18.1K/mo)
• Sustainable shoes (5.4K/mo)
• Sustainable backpacks (2.4K/mo)

The last major development in waterproof fabrics, Gore-Tex, was invented in 1976 and has enjoyed a strong market position ever since. But Gore-Tex is made from DuPont's Teflon, which is bad news for the environment.

With consumer demand for sustainable goods skyrocketing, it may not be long before Gore-Tex is Gore-Toast.
H&M just did one of the first major collaborations with Bananatex, paving the way for that banana breaddd. Who's next?

What are the pros and cons of college loans going crypto? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Subscribe to the Trends Newsletter for more.

🌐 Best Around the Web: Links Posted to Indie Hackers This Week

😱 This mistake cost me over 600 users. Posted by Joshua Fonseca.

⛽️ What fuel materials motivate you to build projects? Posted by Channing Allen.

🆓 30 resources I used to build my products for free. Posted by Xavier Coiffard.

📈 How to drive SaaS conversions from TOFU content. Posted by Tyler Hakes.

📹 How I launched a Netflix recommendation app. Posted by Bootstrapper's Tales.

🚦 Details of my SEO strategy that 10x'd traffic. Posted by Karthik Sridharan.

Want a shout-out in next week's Best Around the Web? Submit a link post on Indie Hackers whenever you come across an article you think other indie hackers will enjoy.

💪 Li Jin on the Power of the Passion Economy

from the Listen Up! IH newsletter by Ayush Chaturvedi

Li Jin, former Andreesen Horowitz partner, recently launched an early-stage VC firm, Atelier Ventures. She recently sat down with Indie Hackers to share her top lessons on how passion is her biggest motivater.

Living her mission

Li's mission statement is:

I just want to rebuild the middle class and help people live better lives.

She is living her mission with the launch of Atelier Ventures, an early-stage VC firm that invests in passion economy businesses. The company's current portfolio already includes Substack, Patreon, and Contra.

She also has a new project: Side Hustle Stack is a platform for creators to find passion economy services and monetize their creations.

A palpable shift

At a certain point, Li realized that the conventional marketplace company was modeled around Uber. Founders pitched their companies as "the Uber for ___." For example, "the Uber for pet care," "the Uber for doorstep delivery," etc. This model created supply and demand around a specific niche, then paid gig workers to complete the task.

Soon enough, Li noticed palpable shift towards platforms that enabled people to monetize skills that they actually enjoyed doing. She realized that this was the emergence of the passion economy.

She wrote about her findings in a blog post, The Passion Economy & the Future of Work, and it went viral. This post also officially coined the term "passion economy."

Gig economy vs. passion economy

Gig economy platforms: These offer highly commoditized services where every provider is essentially interchangeable with the other. DoorDash and Uber are top examples of gig economy platforms.

It doesn't really matter who your Uber driver is, as long as they can get you from point A to point B.

Passion economy platforms: These offer highly differentiated services that enable creators to leverage their uniqueness and earn a living.

These are non-commoditized services and products that help creators monetize their passions, from pottery or writing to design.

Etsy is a great example of a passion economy platform. What you can get from one creator on Etsy, you can't get from another.

This useful chart from Li's blog further differentiates the two kinds of economies.

Li believes that the biggest problem in the world right now involves lack of economic empowerment. Providing meaningful work to everyone on the planet should be the goal, and she argues that passion economy platforms are the best way to achieve that.

Lessons for indie hackers

• Start below your capabilities

Start one level below your current skill level.

Free up your energy and resources to actually gather feedback and gain some momentum. If you start at your peak level, you will stretch yourself too thin.

• Build something people are motivated to use

People are extremely motivated to make money, and companies are extremely motivated to find their first users.

Side Hustle Stack perfectly matches the creators need to make money, and the creator-centered companies' need to find new users.

• Take chances with your marketing

Don't shy away from different marketing methods. Find out where your audience hangs out, and go there. This is especially true right in the beginning, when you need to get eyeballs and validate the idea:

I think we're all on this personal goal of product market fit, where we are the product and there is a market out there. Whatever we pursue and have a passion about, either we have to be sure that there is a market for this, or we have to create the market.

Maybe if there is no market, you can first create it, which is a much bigger task, obviously, but it involves educating people for why they should even be interested in what the thing is that you're passionate about.

You can check out the entire Indie Hackers Podcast episode here.

What do you think of Li's philosophy on the power of the passion economy? Share in the comments.

Discuss this story, or subscribe to Listen Up IH! for more.

🐦 The Tweetmaster's Pick

by Tweetmaster Flex

I post the tweets indie hackers share the most. Here's today's pick:

🏁 Enjoy This Newsletter?

Forward it to a friend, and let them know they can subscribe here.

Also, you can submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter.

Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Nathalie Zwimpfer for the illustrations, and to Bobby Burch, Ethan Brooks, and Ayush Chaturvedi for contributing posts. —Channing