For many startups, PR for founders is a vital focus area in those early stages of gaining visibility with external audiences, like media outlets. With challenges including fundraising and raising a profile with potential customers, as well as validating ideas, founder PR can help reach the people who matter, making that next fundraising round more achievable.
We’re an agency that provides PR for founders services that can help startups flourish and build in their most critical growth phases.
The founder of a company should be its most compelling storyteller and should also be relied upon as a key asset in any communications campaign. Any strategy must account for the fact that each founder is different, meaning the approach must be customized, as some will prefer written content to be published, while others are happiest when being interviewed for a podcast.
From kick-off, we will work hand-in-hand with you to carve out a distinctive campaign that is founder-fit and takes into account what communications tactics and outputs best suit your most important brand advocate. Approaches include building foundational business anecdotes that morph into content pillars that are then crafted into content for earned and owned channels. Tactically, this then transforms into creating a content calendar for LinkedIn posts, media pitching for profiling opportunities, broadcast interviews, as well as podcasts.
Putting founders and their thoughts out across earned and owned channels just to gain exposure shouldn’t be the goal of any founder-led PR push. Securing or placing a busy executive on media opportunities that are untargeted or even unaligned with the core business is simply a waste of their precious time and will yield little to no tangible results.
Instead, we define at the kick-off stage what the right types of opportunities are for your founder and your company, ensuring time and resources are used most efficiently. We see each media interview and commentary chance as an opportunity to drive a founder’s credibility and lead to impact for a business.
We also create clear points of view (POV) that are rooted in a founder’s actual view and this is done through conducting extensive founder-focused interviews to unearth nuggets of insight. This matters because the best POVs are rooted in reality and authenticity in order to resonate with media or LinkedIn followers.
No company stands still and nor does a founder’s reputation. The early-stage founder speaking to media in their first interviews is very different from the founder who is at Series D and eyeing up M&As or a possible IPO listing.
Communications objectives evolve, messaging adapts to a changing business, anecdotes get added to and refined further for content pillars, and media opportunities are assessed through a different lens than from the earliest days of founder-led PR.
We provide a senior-only PR team of former journalists, who will support you and your founder throughout all the phases of your growth and have built a reputation as a long-term partner to our clients.
Our team delivers impactful PR programs across a host of channels and has the skills to assist with any communications challenge.
Explore our PR case studies to find out how we've delivered results and business impact for our clients.
“The team understands how to navigate media on a global scale, and they secured top-tier media coverage that propelled our South Korean-based brand onto the world stage. This coverage drove significant inbound sales inquiries, while their expertise with running awards programs helped us gain industry recognition that set us apart from competitors. Working together proved the real business impact PR can have.”
“We really view Wise Up PR’s team as an extension of our own. From the beginning, their team has provided a great mix of strategic PR counsel, supported by the delivery of consistently high visibility media coverage around all the great research Attest is producing. The quality of the media relations results speaks volumes of their work.”
“We’ve found a long-term trusted partner in Wise Up PR. The agency is highly skilled in corporate communication for defense brands and has delivered great results for Echodyne.”
“Orbbec’s brand awareness in the US and Europe has been transformed thanks to working with Wise Up PR. They provided exceptional media and influencer relations results during a crucial time for us, including a collaboration with Microsoft and a product launch at CES. They are a team of sensor and deep tech experts who can be trusted to not only get your brand and industry but also get the job done.”
“The team at Wise Up didn’t just get us media coverage, they got us the right press in top-tier outlets that Modern Hydrogen needed. They delivered a clear strategy, excellent execution and real outcomes.”
“Wise Up PR has been a great partner to LevelTen Energy for our Pan-European press office. We really value the team’s in-depth media relations expertise, responsiveness working across time zones and ability to deliver excellent results.”
“Wise Up PR has clearly demonstrated the value that strategic media relations deliver beyond just one announcement. What has stood out from day one was that the team really understands deep tech, can create a clear PR strategy and, ultimately, get results from its targeted media outreach. By working together, earned media is now an integral part of how Emesent builds awareness, as well as communicates our most important milestones.”
“The team at Wise Up PR has helped us at a key time for TransactPay. It has provided everything we could need - high-quality content, skilled media relations strategy and execution and also assistance with our social media. They've been the perfect partner to TransactPay and helped boost our brand recognition amongst our key audiences. I can't recommend Wise Up PR enough.”
“What was clear from the get-go working with Wise Up PR was that they are true experts in media relations. The team can do everything a listed company needs from PR strategy, storytelling and content creation, to tactical media relations execution. The results from working together? Top-tier, global media coverage secured on an ongoing basis. The team is nothing short of outstanding.”
“My past experiences with PR agencies haven’t always been positive, but Wise Up PR completely changed that. They’re incredibly knowledgeable about the defense industry and move quickly to the pace we need. For AimLock, the team drove high-impact media coverage, as well as running an incredibly effective organic LinkedIn strategy that generated interest and engagement from hard-to-reach defense sector buyers and partners. This work has forged authentic connections for AimLock across channels and with our key audiences.”
“We wanted a PR agency that could elevate BVNK into the biggest media publications in the world, a key aim at a time of accelerated growth for our company. Wise Up PR delivered what we needed and also provided ongoing and outstanding expert media relations counsel and strategy that helped achieve our PR campaign goal.”
“The Wise Up PR team has been a great partner for us across high-quality content creation and media relations support. Their expertise in supporting emerging technology companies aligns perfectly with our goal of shining a light on the Pacific Northwest's technology ecosystem on the world stage.”
“Wise Up PR has really delivered for IronVest. It nailed our brief by building a highly successful strategy that took our brand into some of the biggest media outlets in the world. The team is also filled with PR experts and offers its clients an excellent level of care and support.”
“Wise Up PR worked as a true extension of our marketing team. They're sharp, organised and easy to work with and helped to deliver important company announcements and secure great podcast interviews for Triple-A. What I valued most was their understanding of the digital assets space and how quickly it evolves. When our priorities shifted, they adapted just as quickly, without missing a beat and continued to bring fresh media opportunities to the table.”
“Wise Up PR clearly understood our brief and brand from day one and crafted editorial-led, engaging content, instead of forgettable promotional material. The quality of the content from their team of former journalists has delivered genuine, tangible value for Runa, opening doors with prospects in new and exciting industries for us.”
Founder PR is a PR program or activities focused on the CEO or founder of a company. The idea is to use this individual as the “face” and main public spokesperson for a business when engaging with audiences across both earned and owned channels. Typically, such an approach creates a narrative or story that leans into the founder’s background and motivations for starting a company, to gain the interest of not just prospects or customers, but wider stakeholders like media, influencers, or policymakers.
Founder profiling is important for B2B companies because it delivers benefits not just for the founder but for the organization as a whole. By using high-impact PR for founders, it can boost awareness of the overall company and help build a reputation. Founder profiling states the vision for the overall business publicly and explains why the organization and what it does matter. This can be hugely valuable for B2B companies, particularly at an early stage, helping to make everything from hiring staff to being a credibility builder when seeking investment.
The processes used by PR agencies for campaigns focused on a company’s CEO start with a deep dive, a journalistic interview of the CEO. By taking the approach of a ‘listening tour’ to help define the key founder experience, and unearth anecdotes and information (for example, around a key ‘founder’s story’ which might go on to define the brand). By unearthing the right nuggets of information, PR agencies can craft the information that will define the entire campaign. With a senior-only PR team formed of former journalists, we can deliver this for your founder and your organization.
Founder PR can focus either on media (such as earned interviews with specialist journalists) or social media or both, depending on the needs of that specific organization. Every organization is different, and social media and media also have different importance in every sector. The correct approach is to assess what resources you have, and factor in time for the founder to engage with the agency and impart their knowledge and personality – not doing so is a critical error.
It’s perfectly possible for technical or deep tech founders to be just as successful in CEO-focused PR campaigns as founders from any other sector. In fact, in these sectors, founder-driven PR can be one of the most important factors in landing media coverage, as when it’s harder to communicate what a company does and what its purpose is, a more personality-driven approach can yield results. By turning the founder’s background into a narrative, it makes media interested in a company, regardless of how difficult it is to understand its technology.
Founder PR is very different from corporate communications, both in the results hoped for and the methods used to achieve them. Founder PR is focused on the individual (although the benefits will be felt by the whole organization), while corporate communications focuses on building awareness and reputation for the overall organization. Depending on the needs of your specific organization, you may wish to engage in founder PR and corporate communications at different times.
Programs focused on founders can be enormously powerful when it comes to dealing with investors and securing funding for your organization. For investors, a public profile is enormously important and can mark the difference between an organization that is set to succeed and one that is set to fizzle out. Having little or no media profile can sow doubts in the minds of investors and funders, and PR for founders has a key role to play in ensuring that investors and funders have plenty of material to read about your company before making their decisions.
There are several different ways to measure success in a PR campaign focused on a founder, and these vary in relative importance based on the needs of that company and other factors such as the sector the organization is in. Firstly, engagement levels are a good metric of success for a PR campaign focused on a founder, as are inbound media queries, a clear sign that the campaign is working to drive awareness of the founder. Finally, clipping numbers (such as the number of pieces of earned coverage) can help to measure the success of a PR campaign for founders.
If your founder has no time for PR, it’s best to persuade them that the time investment could be one of the smartest decisions they ever make. The more time you invest, the more effective PR can be, not just for the founder, but for the company as a whole. Having a ‘face’ is powerful, and an unknown founder is a competitive disadvantage – people like to buy from people, and a ‘known’ founder will help you sell.
There are a huge number of benefits beyond simply raising awareness through media coverage when doing founder-focused communication programs. By having a clear and known ‘face’ for your organization, you can find it easier to hire staff (which can also be crucial at the early stages of a firm). Having a well-known founder can also help source partnerships with other companies in your industry. With a well-known spokesperson, it also tends to attract inbound media inquiries (i.e. journalists come to your company for commentary). This means that over the long haul, you do not have to work as hard to land media coverage.
