How to get your startup featured
Written for the founder nobody has heard of yet: what editors actually decide on, why obscurity is not the obstacle it feels like, and how to put a story somewhere it will be read.
Why unknown founders struggle
It is rarely the company. A journalist covering startups gets more pitches in a morning than they can read before lunch, so they skim for one thing: did something happen that a reader would want to know. Most pitches never answer that. They describe a company instead of reporting an event, and the reader in the editor’s head has no reason to keep going.
Well-known companies clear that bar cheaply, because their name is itself a reason to read. An unknown company has to supply the reason another way — with a fact. That is the whole of the disadvantage, and it is a solvable one.
What editors are actually deciding
- Did something happen? A launch, a number crossed, a rule that changed what you can do. Not a plan, not a vision.
- Can it be checked? A figure with somewhere to verify it is worth more than a bigger figure without.
- Would a reader be glad it ran? Would another founder learn something, copy something, or avoid a mistake because of it.
- Is this a rewrite? If the story is already in three other outlets, the fourth adds nothing.
Nothing on that list is about how big you are. A company with 40 customers and a strange, specific story about how it got them will beat a company with 40,000 and a rebrand.
How to put it in front of someone
Write the first sentence as a news sentence: who did what, with a number in it. If your first sentence needs a second sentence to make sense, it is not the first sentence yet. Then say where the number can be checked, and stop. A pitch that is three sentences long and specific gets read; the same facts in six paragraphs do not.
Send it to publications that actually read submissions, not just to the biggest ones. Coverage in a paper that founders read is worth more than silence from a paper that everybody reads.
Where the Gazette fits
The Founder Gazette publishes every day and takes submissions through one form. Every submission is read by a person. Acceptance is free and editorial: no payment influences it, and the standards page commits the paper to that in public.
A featured story gets a permanent number in the archive, an article link, a share image, and a Featured badge you can put on your own site. Accepted stories may pay £99 to take the next available slot rather than wait; that buys the date and nothing else, and it is labelled where readers can see it.
Questions
How do I get my startup featured if nobody has heard of us?
Lead with the fact, not the company. Editors decide on whether something happened that a reader would want to know, not on how well known the company is. A specific number and a specific decision will get further than a description of the mission.
Are there publications for unknown founders?
Yes, though they are quieter than the big titles: local and regional business press, sector trade publications, founder newsletters, and papers built to take submissions directly. The Founder Gazette is one of the last kind — it reads every submission and covers small companies deliberately.
Do I need a PR agency to get featured?
No. An agency buys attention and craft, not entitlement. What an editor needs is a checkable fact, a clear sentence and a reason a reader would care, and a founder can supply all three without paying anyone.
Does paying get my startup featured?
Not at The Founder Gazette. Acceptance is editorial and free. Money can move a publication date, and a story that takes that option carries a visible Sponsored label — same story, same standards, the label just says who chose the date.
Send your story
Next: what the desk takes and declines, what makes a founder story publishable, and where else a UK founder can take a story.