Founders think the press wants numbers.
Big raises. Explosive growth. Fancy investors.
They think what matters is traction. TAM. Tech.
And to be fair—it helps.
But here’s the truth:
The media doesn’t care about what your company does.
They care about what it means to someone.
Think of a movie like Terminator.
Yes, it's about a robot. But the story isn't really about the machine.
It’s about a boy. A mother. The future of humanity.
It’s a human story that happens to feature a robot.
Same goes for your company.
If you're building AI, or robotics, or defense tech, or even software for insurance—
the story isn’t the product. It's the impact.
And until you learn to frame it that way, the world won’t care.
There's a Sequoia-backed company.
Fastest-growing in their category.
Tens of millions raised.
Game-changing AI product.
Serious rocket ship. Unicorn path locked.
We had everything:
Growth. Funding. Proof.
And no one cared.
It was post election chaos. The news cycle was jammed with noise.
We pitched the story. The embargo. The Sequoia angle.
And it landed with a thud.
Crickets.
We were throwing darts into a black hole.
We stepped back.
We looked for something human. Real. Emotional. Specific.
And it was there all along.
The founder had built the product—not for a market or a pitch deck or a vision statement—
but for his wife.
She’d been burned out. Overworked. Miserable.
She barely laughed anymore.
He built an AI tool to automate the stuff that was crushing her.
And it worked.
They got their lives back. They had dinner again. They smiled. They laughed.
So we did something kind of insane.
We stopped pitching the funding.
We emailed the reporter who had already passed.
And we sent a photo.
Just… a picture of the founder and his wife laughing.
No embargo.
No headline.
Just: This isn’t a funding story. It’s a love story.
It became the #1 trending story on CNBC.
The story wasn’t just about funding.
Or Sequoia.
Or even about AI.
It was about a husband who built something to save his wife from burnout—
and accidentally created one of the most important startups in the space.
The founder came off as visionary.
The company came off as essential.
Not because we pushed the metrics—
but because we found the story that made people care.
You can chase press with your deck, your KPIs, your roadmap.
But until you give people a reason to feel something, no one’s listening.
The best press doesn’t brag.
It explains. It resonates. It connects.
It doesn’t ask: “Aren’t we impressive?”
It says: “Here’s why this matters—to someone real.”
So if your story isn’t landing, ask yourself:
Where’s the human?
Where’s the tension?
Where’s the joy, pain, love, fear, ambition, anger, conflict?
That’s the story.
Find that—and everything else becomes undeniable.
