The French Man says “PR Secrets?? It’s Bullshit”

Posted on May 25, 2008
Filed Under Advice, Entrepreneurship, Foundation, Startup, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

I gotta say I completely agree with Loic! I have disagreed with Loic in the past on his post: The idea does not count only execution matters: 10 rules to launch a startup today because I think Loic was overlooking all the work he had done (over many years) in order to be able to properly execute.

What I like about his new post: PR Secrets?? It’s Bullshit is that he acknowledges the amount of ground work he has done to establish his community in order to be able to launch his company without the help of PR folks and he points out that anyone can do this.

I wrote a blog post back last August called Who is Your Front man?? The blog post was something I was beginning to realize as an extremely important thing to identify and establish, as I was developing myself as WhyGoSolo’s front man.

What I wrote about back then and what Loic is writing about now is a topic I have been wanting to get into on this blog at some point, but looks like sooner is more an appropriate time than later. And that topic is Establishing Your Foundation: Building Your Personal Brand

I’ll write more about that in the next few days but here is some food for thought…since it is highly probable your first company will fail; wouldn’t time be well spent developing your own personal brand in order to increase your odds for your second attempt???

Back to Loic’s Post and a Comment that helps prove the Point which came from Jeremy Toeman

Loic, I think your assessment is fairly biased to your personal experience. The truth is most companies and individuals aren’t nearly as well connected as you are, and to just dismiss PR by saying “just go build a community” is frankly, naive. Even your business needs *significantly* more users than you have today, and at some point, if you truly want to accomplish your goals, PR will probably come into play.

Furthermore, many startup CEOs are heavily engaged in building their products/services, and don’t have the time to do the outbound marketing work.

There’s more to this than you make it seem. A lot more.

If you are a first time startup CEO let me dissect this comment for you and how you can’t listen to it:

1- It is your job to become extremely well connected. This goes back to other blog posts I’ve written on whether or not you are even qualified to start the startup you’re thinking of starting. If you aren’t well connected – GET THERE.

2- Building a community is a must. Again, your responsibility to excite people about what you are doing and finding your evangelists.

3- Seesmic will indeed continue to need more users, but anyone who is following what Loic is doing knows that he is continuing to grow his community. The main way he is doing this is through PARTNERSHIPS that come from his connections. Loic is bringing big names to Seesmic and those big names he brings to Seesmic have their own following…see how that works. PR is not required. Loic is a very smart business man. Not saying he might never require PR, but what he does is leverage his community, his product, his service and he adds value to grow on top of what he’s established.

4- All CEOs are equally heavily engaged in building their products – it’s not a reason to not build your foundation. Your team is going to turn to you and they’re going to rely on your connections and the foundation you’ve built to take the product to the next level. Which is why it’s best to establish your personal brand BEFORE launch or even better before you start your startup. You need to know what you’re getting yourself into.

5- Jeremy is right. There is more to this…it took Loic a few years to get to where he is and we’ll cover all the steps you need to start taking for you to be able to do the same.

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