by Elad Gil
I think sometimes founders aren’t as involved with the hiring of PR people. It’s left up to marketing or to some other function of the company to make the decision. But I’ve been the most successful working with founders or leadership teams when they are on the same page about what PR can and cannot do and when there’s really respect for PR as a discipline.
Honestly, not every company needs PR. There are some instances where maybe the company’s goal is really user acquisition, full stop. That’s something PR can certainly help with, but that’s really more a direct function of marketing. There’s more that marketing can do than PR can do. PR is really about, again, helping a company communicate their purpose, generating awareness, helping build profiles of the company, the product, the leadership.
The most successful founder/CEO and PR team relationships that I’ve seen are based in trust. Shannon Stubo Brayton is an excellent example. Jeff Weiner and Shannon are completely on the same page, and he fully respects and trusts her. And she has a seat at the table—that is critical. She’s built this huge team, and everything they’ve done is incredible. And she’s grown so much, too. I mean, she started out as a PR person, and she’s now the CMO of LinkedIn, which is extraordinary. The leadership team at LinkedIn fully respects her, and that starts with Jeff.
Elad: Say you’re trying to bring on a Shannon-style person. What do you think are the signals that somebody’s a great PR person? Is it prior work that they’ve done, is it the organization that they come out of, is it references? How can somebody who’s never hired for the role hire somebody great?
Erin: It’s experience for sure to some extent, but given what we do I’d also put a lot of weight on references and people skills. And I think it’s back-channel references frankly. I don’t put a ton of weight in the interviewing process. At Cutline, we’re very particular about who we hire, and we’ll always back-channel. The Silicon Valley network, in particular the PR world, is kind of small. And relationships in the PR industry are key.
Founders should ask their board and advisors. They should ask any reporter connections they know. Start with the people that PR people generally engage with. What are the names that rise to the surface? You can even ask agency people and other PR people. Who do they respect? There’s a very small list of people that I would rattle off.
Elad: How should founders think about hiring on the agency side?
Erin: If we’re talking about hypergrowth companies, it’s a little different. We have a lot of conversations with early-stage startups, and I think they’re often just told to hire an agency or to hire PR. And I don’t know that they really know what goes into that.
For us, we look at it in different stages. So early-stage startups, they don’t actually even need a person in house. They really need a freelancer or a consultant who can help guide them, and who can easily scale up and down to support different moments in time such as funding announcements or product launches. You don’t need PR all the time. We work with many companies that don’t have in-house PR people yet, because of where they are as a company.
“PR gives the company a way to communicate their purpose. It also helps humanize the company.”
—Erin Fors
But the approach is somewhat the same here as it is for hiring an in-house person. I would ask reporters for the list of PR people they respect and/or admire and look at their agencies. I would ask VCs and advisors for recommendations on agencies. And then I think that it’s really important for the founder or somebody from the leadership team to be part of that discussion, too. It comes down to understanding the business and being passionate about the company and/or the product. Do they use the product, if they can? Are they excited about it? How do they talk about it?
If you’re interviewing someone—whether someone for an in-house role or an agency—you can also look at how they share on social and how they talk about things publicly. What is their brand voice? You can easily determine that through Twitter, social, their website, blogs. And just see if the cultures align.
When an agency and a client really align on culture and have a shared sense of purpose, it’s like magic. The results just kind of roll in. When you have an agency and a client that aren’t really partners and whose cultures clash, it is virtually impossible to get results. And that’s not good for the client or the agency team.
I think making sure that there is a shared sense of purpose is crucial. This probably should go without saying, but it’s also critical that when a company is hiring an agency they meet, as part of the process, the actual team they’ll be working with. Be explicit about that requirement. Because a lot of agencies have new-business teams, where they send in the best of the best to win the business. It’s like bait-and-switch. They’ll change up the team after. Make sure that the team is smart and that they’re all engaged in the meeting, and that they’re asking questions about the business, about the personalities of the team, about the industry.
Elad: I know common process is to also ask for some written proposal or some pitch in terms of what the agency would try to do in a given scenario. If you were on the other side of the table and you were choosing who to work with, do you think that work product is valuable?
Erin: I do. When the ask is too specific, I think it’s kind of hard for agencies and it’s unfair to some degree. We should have some understanding of the industry that the client is in, and it’s our job to go really deep once we land the business. But I think, as part of the RFP process, clients should stick to broad asks: “We want to reach consumers in the tech space. How would you engage women between the age of 18 and 34?” Keep the exercise to something that’s not too specific but not too broad.
And then the other thing that I would evaluate on if I was on the other side—and I actually was once and had to pick an agency—is whether agencies challenge you. I think that an agency that questions and pushes back instead of just delivering what you’ve asked them for should be weighted higher, even if the ideas don’t align. That shows someone who’s really looking out for the best interests of the company and what’s right for you. That’s someone who isn’t afraid to stand up and say, “You know what, you asked for X but from a PR perspective we have some other ideas there. Based on where you are and what we know, there’s more value to do it a different way.”
I just think challenging—and discussion and debate—is a lost art. But it’s so important.
Elad: Do you think there are circumstances where the CEO or founders spend too much time on communications and PR?
Erin: Yes, I do. I don’t think a founder or CEO should be—and I’ve seen this before—hyper-focused on how much coverage they get, how many pieces of coverage. The focus really should be on quality. Especially now, because reporters change jobs and their beats change quickly. There’s a constant change and shuffling in the media industry as it figures out how to adapt to content consumption and figure out what the right mix is between writing, video, print, online, and more. My advice would be to focus on quality and really understand what PR can and cannot do.
I also think that there’s this tendency to ask, “Why aren’t we in TechCrunch?” or “Why aren’t we in X blog?” or whatever. That kind of nit-picky stuff can really be demoralizing, because it’s actually hard. It’s hard sometimes to get into TechCrunch. And this is where trust comes into play, and making sure that your internal person, or agency, is someone who you really trust and respect.
I have seen founders who go off the deep end worrying about, “Why am I not in TechCrunch? How many stories am I going to get?” And yes, those things are important to a certain extent. But to me, founders should spend their time on making better products and scaling the business in other areas, especially if they have a PR person they can trust.
Elad: I’ve found also sometimes people get a little bit caught up in the attention they get for appearing in press. They have a strong positive reinforcement loop from their peers or from family or other people pinging them ab
out it, and so they think they should do more.
Erin: That’s true. I think if the founder has something good to say and can contribute to trend conversations in a meaningful way, then yes, they should be out there talking. But not everyone has something to say. And reporters are only going to call on you every so often.
This also goes back to relationships. Some of the most successful founders I’ve worked with have strong relationships with reporters who call them directly. And that’s good. That isn’t a bad thing. Sometimes founders get this idea in their head, like, “Well, if this reporter is calling me, or you’re asking me to talk to this reporter, then why am I paying you? What is your value?” But that’s just not the right way to look at it. Reporters do want to have personal connections with founders and sometimes circumvent the PR person. But then it’s our job to help prep, whether it’s background on the reporter or figuring out what the right story angles are. So there’s value on both sides.
Elad: I think the other big mistake I’ve seen people make is they do a launch, they get a big spike in traffic due to the PR and acquire a bunch of users, and then that goes away. They have to do the hard work of developing a channel. But they think that PR could be a way to keep that going, but that doesn’t work for most companies.
Erin: That’s exactly right. And that is a challenge all the time. It’s also a pretty big investment for smaller companies. We work with a lot of clients to come up with those evergreen story ideas that we can pitch between big news moments. The key here is patience: It takes time to develop those angles and then to land them. Reporters are crunched for time and there are only so many stories they’ll write on any given day. That’s where marketing and other disciplines within the broader advertising/PR/marketing umbrella come into play. There’s also social media. For companies who don’t have a lot of news to work with, there are a lot of storytelling opportunities you can create—but you can also use those moments in between larger press cycles to engage with your customers where they are: on Facebook, Snap, Instagram, Twitter.
I really do think that if companies would just embrace when things break or have to change, they would be much better off. It’s true across industries.”
—Erin Fors
Elad: Are there any final lessons you would impart to a founder approaching PR for the first time?
Erin: I do think the biggest thing is to understand and to be clear about what your goals are for PR. To understand what PR can and can’t do. PR cannot come in and fix a bad business decision. And in order to do our jobs, there has to be a story, there has to be a product or company culture or something to work with.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
CHAPTER 7
Product management
Product management overview
Great product management organizations help a company set product vision and road maps, establish goals and strategy, and drive execution on each product throughout its lifecycle.52
Bad product management organizations, in contrast, largely function as project management groups, running schedules and tidying up documents for engineers.
To build a great product organization you need to first understand the role of the product manager. Secondly, you need to hire individuals with the right skill sets, including a strong VP of product. Finally, establish a simple set of processes to enable the product organization and help the company scale its product development.
What do product managers do?
At a high level, a product manager (PM) is the single cross-functional owner directly responsible for the success of a product. Some pundits call PMs the “general manager of the product” or “CEO of the product.” In reality, a product manager is the directly responsible individual for a product—they have all the responsibility for the product’s success but often lack the direct line reporting of the other functions.
Product managers are responsible for:
1. Product strategy and vision. What is the goal of the product? Who is the customer? What are the primary features and use cases? How do we define success and what metrics can we use to track the product? What are the competitive dynamics and how should we position the product against competitors? How will the product differentiate? What are some key distribution channels? What is the business model for the product? How should we price the product? The product manager will work with many other functions (design, marketing, sales, engineering, data science, etc.) to answer the questions above, but should ultimately be in charge of asking and answering these questions.
The product strategy and vision should also reflect the voice of the customer. The product manager should be on top of incorporating user input and feedback into the product lifecycle.
2. Product prioritization & problem solving. Product managers “own” the product road map and are responsible for ensuring it has the right set of trade-offs. Tactical aspects of this include: writing and receiving feedback on PRDs (product requirement documents), organizing/directing product road mapping sessions, working with all the functions mentioned above, and making trade-offs on features versus impact and work needed. Crisp product requirement documents can make a world of difference in driving concise agreement on, and execution of, the product. PRDs should clearly articulate primary features and product needs.
These responsibilities require a PM to be data- and customer-driven. Defining the right metrics, getting agreement on them, and then tracking them enables more alignment on product priorities. The more technical the product manager, the more likely they are able to analyze the data needed to make crucial trade-offs. In parallel, the product manager should strive to understand customer needs and then make trade-offs versus relative to engineering cost or business impact.
Product managers will also spend time problem-solving aspects of the product or its development. For example, how could the product be tweaked or changed to avoid a legal or regulatory issue? How could features be modified to address a competitive or pricing concern from sales?
Note: product managers will not work on this alone. Building a product, and solving related problems is a team effort. PMs will coordinate with engineering (technical constraints and feature ideas), design, data science, marketing, sales, support, legal (regulatory issues), and other functions. However, the ultimate role of product management is making or suggesting trade-offs between the pristine, platonic ideal of beauty that the design team wants, the technical pizzazz engineering desires, the “just give me some shit I can sell” of sales, and the “this may be risky” of legal (these examples are all purposefully exaggerated).
3. Execution: timelines, resources, and removal of obstacles. As part of driving the success of a product, product managers should work closely with engineering to set and hit goals on time. Often the biggest ways a product manager can help the team hit goals includes (a) lobbying for resources or attention from engineering, design, and other functions, (b) removing or prioritizing features and providing a clear road map for execution, (c) asking “stupid” questions to see if it is possible for each function to reduce timelines or remove unneeded features or work, and (d) pushing back on extraneous requests, whether those are internal (design, sales, etc.) or external (customers, partners).
Many people associate product execution as something that ends when you launch a product. In reality there is ongoing product maintenance, feature iteration, and eventually the sunsetting or killing of a product. Deprecating a product can be an art in its own right as you transition customers off, deal with pricing changes, or other issues that may cause customer backlash.
It is important to note that product managers are not project managers—i.e. a PM’s primary job is not just running a schedule.
4. Communication and coordination (overlays all of the above). Product managers should organize and communicate team status, progress, obstacles, and functional sequencing to the rest of the organization. This may include driving (or co-driving with engineering) weekly
team status meetings, product reviews with the leadership team, and communicating launch or other timelines across the organization.
Often the hardest part of the communication is communicating the “why” behind the product road map, prioritization, and sequencing. Part of this will be creating a framework that establishes why some things are prioritized higher than others—and it’s important that all other functions buy into this framework.
Ultimately, product management will collaborate closely with, and at times have a natural (collaborative) tension with, engineering, design, and sales. Engineering will feel that since they are building everything, they should have the power to make product decisions. Design will think product management is redundant with design (these are very different functions,) and sales will wonder why product can’t ship faster and why the PM is always trying to keep sales people away from engineers (it is so engineers can focus on building the product without spending all their time on one-off sales requests).
Product managers should also function as the “buffer” or shield that protects engineers and designers from other internal and external parties. Sales and marketing people will always want to meet engineers directly to lobby for their favorite features, while customers will want to have a conversation directly with engineering. Product management should be a smart buffer for these interactions and consolidate all input and questions into a weekly internal team meeting, or the PM can act as the primary point of contact for sales. This will prevent sales, marketing, and other organizations from draining too much engineering and design time. That said, sometimes the best way to convince an engineer of a customer need is to put her in front of a customer. Hearing customer feedback first-hand can often change minds or shape a great brainstorm or problem-solving session.