Annie Pace Scranton
Founder & CEO
Most founders I talk to say the same thing when PR comes up. “We’re not ready yet.” And I get it. You want to have something solid before you start putting yourself out there, something you can actually stand behind. That instinct makes total sense.
But the window doesn’t care if you’re ready.
Every category has a moment where journalists are actively looking for stories like yours. There’s genuine curiosity, real editorial appetite, editors asking their reporters to find the interesting people working on this problem. That moment opens whether you’re prepared or not, and when it closes, it tends to close for a while. The founders who were already in conversation when it opened get the coverage, build the relationships, and establish themselves as the people who define what the space is about. Everyone else spends the next two years trying to close a gap that keeps widening.
I’ve watched founders with better products and stronger metrics lose the narrative to a competitor who just showed up earlier, started conversations before they had all the answers, and was willing to put themselves out there before everything felt perfectly buttoned up. And by the time they realized what had happened, the competitor wasn’t just ahead in the press. They were ahead in recruiting, partnerships, and how customers talked about the category. A few early articles had compounded into something much bigger.
So what actually happens when you miss it?
The journalist who covers your space already has a handful of founders they call when they need a quote, and you’re not one of them. The podcast that reaches your exact customer has already had your competitor on twice. The trade publication your best prospects read every morning already wrote the “ones to watch” list without you on it.
And none of that happened quickly or by accident. PR looks like press hits and announcements from the outside, but underneath it’s just relationships. Slow ones. Built over months of being genuinely useful to people who are trying to understand your world. You can’t manufacture that in six weeks because you finally decided it’s time.
Media relationships work a lot like any other kind. You can’t show up after two years of silence and expect the same warmth you’d get from someone you’d actually stayed in touch with.
Journalists remember who was helpful when they were getting up to speed on a topic, who gave them a good quote on deadline, who sent them somewhere useful just because it seemed helpful. That’s the currency, and you build it slowly, or you don’t build it at all.
What You’re Sitting On
You probably already have something worth talking about, by the way. A customer who finally cracked a problem they’d been carrying around for years. A perspective on your industry that most people haven’t really sat with yet. A reason you started this whole thing is that it makes people put their phones down when you tell them. That’s enough. You don’t need a perfect company or a chart that only goes up and to the right. You just need a real point of view and the willingness to share it before it feels completely comfortable.
The founders who own the narrative in their categories got there by showing up before anyone was paying much attention and taking the coffee chats. Replying to journalist questions even when there was nothing in it for them right then. Putting their thinking out into the world before they were sure it was ready. They treated every small interaction like a deposit into something that would eventually matter. And by the time their window opened wide, they were already standing in it because they’d been standing nearby for months.
Where to Start
So if any of this is landing, do one thing this week. Reach out to one journalist who covers your space. Not with a pitch, just a short note saying you’re a fan of their work and you’re happy to be a resource if they ever need someone who thinks about your corner of the world. No agenda, no ask. Just an open door.
That’s genuinely how it starts. It’s less scary than it sounds once you actually sit down and write the thing. Your window is probably already cracking open somewhere. You have to decide if you’re going to be there when it does.