Should Early-Stage Tech Startups Hire a PR Firm?

I’ve watched this play out more times than I can count:

A smart seed-stage founder gets tired of explaining their company.

Not to prospects — to strangers.

Investors start asking, “Who else is talking about you?”

Peers are posting press logos.

A competitor lands a feature and suddenly “feels bigger.”

So the founder buys certainty.

They sign a PR retainer.

Three months later:

A couple mentions. Some likes. A few congratulatory texts.

And… basically no change in pipeline.

Because PR is not ignition.

PR is amplification.

It turns momentum into more momentum.

It rarely creates momentum from zero.

When PR can be valuable (but usually not early)

PR can be the right move when you’re amplifying a real moment:

✅ You’re announcing meaningful funding

Not “we raised.” More like “this round signals category leadership.”

✅ Your market rewards attention

Consumer, crowded categories, or markets where perception heavily influences buying.

✅ Your founder team can carry the story

PR creates interview opportunities. If the execs won’t show up, PR can’t work.

✅ You already have traction and need to amplify a moment — not manufacture one

Also: journalists are flooded. In Muck Rack’s State of Journalism research, nearly half of journalists said they seldom or never respond to PR pitches.

So without a sharp “why now?” hook, you’re pushing uphill.

The pitfalls of hiring PR too early

1) You pay for effort, not outcomes

PR doesn’t sell guarantees. It sells activity: outreach, follow-ups, positioning.

That’s not a criticism — it’s the reality of earned media.

But early-stage companies can’t afford fuzzy feedback loops.

2) Cost-to-learning can be brutal

Digital PR retainers vary, but from my experience, founders are looking at $10K-$15K for most firms. Naturally, independents may charge less, however.

Even at five thousand per month, the real question is:

What did you learn? What changed? What improved?

3) PR optimizes for coverage — not revenue

PR firms measure mentions, reach, share of voice.

Founders need: qualified conversations, conversion rates, CAC payback.

Those scoreboards overlap later.

They often don’t overlap early.

A simple “PR readiness” test

If you can’t confidently say “yes” to most of these, PR is likely premature:

•  Do we have a clear why now story?

•  Do we have traction proof (wins, outcomes, growth trend)?

•  Do we have a repeatable pitch that lands in thirty seconds?

•  Can the founder do interviews weekly if needed?

•  If PR landed coverage tomorrow… do we have a system to convert attention into leads?

That last one is the killer.

Attention without conversion is just… attention.

Smarter ways to spend early-stage budget

If you’re pre-seed or seed, your job is simple (not easy):

Find signal. Prove signal. Scale signal.

That usually comes from channels with tight loops:

•  Founder-led thought leadership (LinkedIn)

•  Paid tests (small, controlled experiments)

•  Long-tail SEO (high intent)

•  Email nurture + automation

•  Webinars + partnerships

•  Community where your ICP already gathers

These give you attribution and learning.

And content marketing has repeatedly been shown to be more cost-efficient than traditional outbound approaches in industry research.

“Can we do PR in-house?” Yes — if you do it like a founder

The best early PR I’ve seen was scrappy:

1.   Publish owned narratives consistently

2.   Build a tight media list (ten to twenty niche reporters)

3.   Pitch only when you have real news (funding, outcomes, original data, partnerships)

A founder can often beat an agency early because you’ll be sharper, more specific, and more authentic.

My rule of thumb

Don’t ask: “Should we hire PR?”

Ask:

“If TechCrunch mentioned us tomorrow… would it change our sales motion?”

If the honest answer is “not really,” PR is probably a distraction — for now.

Build the story. Prove demand. Build conversion.

Then PR becomes rocket fuel, not expensive hope.

If you’ve hired PR early (and it worked or didn’t), I’d love to hear what happened — the real stories are the most useful.

#Startups #B2BMarketing #GoToMarket #Founder #PR #StartupMarketing #GrowthMarketing #SaaS #ProductMarketFit #DemandGeneration #BrandStrategy #MarketingStrategy #Entrepreneurship #EarlyStageStartups