INSIGHTS

Something changed in how your company gets evaluated, and most founders haven't adjusted their communications strategy to account for it. AI search has become the first stop for investors, buyers, and candidates researching your market — and it doesn't trust your website. It trusts the publications that covered you.

A funding round is a story the market tells about you. Everything after that is a story you have to build yourself. Most companies never make that transition, and the coverage gap that follows isn't a media problem. It's a narrative infrastructure problem.

Founders pitch what happened. Journalists evaluate whether they can write something their readers need to read. Those are different questions with different answers, and the gap between them is why most startup pitches get ignored.

Most PR firms get placements without building category position. The gap is brand fidelity—the discipline that makes coverage compound instead of contradict. Here's why they're interdependent.

TechCrunch called you one thing. VentureBeat called you another. The trade publication quoted a third positioning. Coverage that contradicts itself doesn't build a record—it creates confusion.