Solutions • Announce Funding • Build Brand Awareness • Generate More Leads • Reduce Cost per Lead • Launch a New Product • Be Found Online • Services • Public Relations • Growth Marketing • PPC • GEO • SEO • ABM • Content Marketing • Email Marketing • Sales Enablement • Thought Leadership Content • Brand Awareness Content • Multiplier Marketing • Audits • Content Marketing • Paid Media • SEO • Martech Configuration • Clients • Clients • Case Studies • Client Testimonials • Resources • Resource Center • Blog • Podcast • Deep Dives • Store • Newsletter • About • About Us • Why Firebrand • Team • Join • Values • Our Pledge • Contact
How to Handle a Startup Funding Announcement - Firebrand
Deciding which strategy to take is one of the things that changes from week to week. When you handle many funding announcements, you get a feel for which is best, what might warrant the risk of a broad strategy, and who to pitch an exclusive to for the best coverage.
As a little history, before the pandemic (2008-2020), it was very common to have a go-wide strategy that would frequently secure 10-15 pieces of coverage. There was little incentive to go for an exclusive unless you wanted to break into a really top-tier outlet, or were concerned about the news leaking or an embargo breaking. While the tech trade press was in decline before the pandemic, there were still plenty of options for funding news.
During ZIRP (zero-interest rate period), funding news changed. On the one hand, a lot more funding was happening (remember the zero-day close?), so competition was high. At the same time, many outlets folded as advertising dollars moved to social networks and alternate revenue sources from events dried up. So, we saw a lot more exclusives to increase the value of the news to the reporter and at least get “something.” At the same time, you often saw Seed-stage companies hold their funding news and combining it with their A-round, since Seeds were just too common and too small.
As soon as interest rates started to rise and funding levels dropped off in Q3 2022, competition was lower, but there were fewer rounds to cover. Reporters moved to analysis of the trends. There were fewer reporters covering routine funding news, but it became somewhat easier to get the attention of those who were. We are just coming to the end of, let’s call it, the Higher Interest Rate Period (HIRP). If the investment levels tick back up again, there’s going to be more competition — and we’re likely to see exclusives stay the default.
How far in advance should you pitch funding news?
Let’s talk about how far in advance you need to pitch your exclusive or embargoed funding announcement, because it’s longer than you might think. During ZIRP, with so much funding, reporters at TechCrunch were booked up three or even four weeks in advance. It’s a little less now in 2024, but you should still factor in time for a reporter to get to your news since there are others in front of you.
If you are pitching an exclusive, you need to pitch reporters in series (one at a time), and you need to give them 24-48 hours to respond. People are busy; they get sick; they miss your email; they get distracted. So working back, you need to allow at least three weeks to pitch your exclusive to give you time to move through a few options and for the reporter to be able to cover it. The more time, the better for many of them (though top-tier business publications tend to work on shorter deadlines since they don’t want to be scooped and are set up to work at pace). Startups are often surprised that there are three weeks of pitching and want that to be done faster — it can, but it’s not ideal. Set yourself up for success here by starting the whole process early.
On the day of the announcement, the press release will cross the newswire (we recommend 8:00 am ET/5:00 am PT) and you’ll start pitching all the other press on the list. The exclusive story will be published (not always at the same time as the embargo lifts), and you should share it on social media, post it to the newsroom, and put it in your email blast. Amplify that article as much as you can — it’s the main one, so get it in front of your audience.
Several outlets, such as Fortune Term Sheet and Axios Pro Rata, will cover the fundamentals of the transaction, so make sure you include those on your day-of list.
Photography
You should offer reporters ahead of time professional headshots of the management team and, ideally, group shots of the founders. If you prefer to have a photo of the entire team, that’s fine too. Reporters may not use these, but you can have them for the website, and give them to your investors for their blog posts.
While on this topic, produce some good screenshots that showcase key features of your product. A “marchitecture” diagram might be appropriate to convey the workflow, where your tool fits into the ecosystem, or how it replaces other products in a workflow.
Blog post and social media assets
If you are wondering how to announce funding on social media, you are not alone. On announcement day, it is a good idea to publish a blog post from the CEO giving the backstory about the company, thanking the team, welcoming the new investors, and laying out what will come ahead. This adds more color to the details of the transaction and is a chance for the CEO to show their vision and personality. Some startups produce video assets such as an interview, a hype video, as well as social media posts to give the team some materials to share. You might also want to line up an email blast with the news release, coverage and blog post to directly tell your customers, partners and prospects.
Website and Conversion event
The funding announcement should drive more traffic to your site. If you are coming out of stealth with a new website, it is fine to publish it 24 hours before the announcement for testing and propagation. Often at this stage, developing the website is actually the deliverable that dictates the timing since it can take eight weeks to create even a simple site.
You will want to be ready to convert the increased traffic — we’ve seen 3-5x more traffic on the day for some startups. This means you might want a new guide, ebook or other lead magnet with full conversion tracking ready for visitors who are higher up in the funnel and not ready for a demo request.
On the day, make sure the press release is available, add new VCs to the investor section, publish the blog post and make any other changes linked to the funding news (sometimes board directors, perhaps a new product offering goes live). An announcement bar or some callout on the homepage is common.
Funding follow up
In the days after the funding announcement, there are other opportunities to talk in more general terms about the funding environment, round-ups and related stories. You’ll want to gather up the coverage to report to your board, specifically the VCs, and update directories like Crunchbase. In short, the funding announcement doesn’t finish on the day, so now is the time to wrap up those activities.
Most importantly, having got the attention of new stakeholders, what is the next story you are going to put out there? Have one or two follow-up announcements ready so you use the funding as the start of the next big PR push, and not just a blip of awareness followed by silence. At the very least, you can do more rapid response to media inquiries, thought leadership, award entries and increase the organic posting cadence to show the company is following through on its intent.
How long does it take to announce funding?
It takes 5-7 weeks for the complete process surrounding startup funding announcements. Of course, it can be done in short order, but let’s do a workback plan:
So that gives us five weeks if you have your messaging and seven to include the messaging refresh. If you are bringing on a new agency to deliver this, you might want to add a week to select one and a week to onboard them.
This is more time than many startups have, so the reality is that it gets done more quickly, but understand that means condensing some of these stages.
What is a Form D?
Form D is a filing that companies must make to the SEC for the sale of private equity, recording an exception to the Securities Act of 1933. The exemption is under Regulation D, so sometimes the notice is referred to as Reg D. The filing lists the company, the investors, and the amount of the investment — namely critical facts in your funding announcement. The filing is public and searchable online in EDGAR.
Some venture reporters and funding tracking databases monitor EDGAR for submissions and then report them. These are necessarily bare-bones articles, but they do appear in the public domain and can trigger other coverage, or spike well-planned embargos. Startups can’t ask reporters to hold an embargo on information already public in a Form D.
The Reg D filing must be made 15 days after the investors’ commitment to purchase the securities (not necessarily when the cash hits the bank). So for PR purposes, once the deal is signed, the clock is ticking.
During the ZIRP period, there was so much funding the Form D filing wasn’t particularly an issue — it was hard to get your story covered, and overwhelmed reporters were not overly concerned about getting scooped. During HIRP, there were fewer rounds, but also fewer outlets tracking them, and it was less common for reporters to be monitoring EDGAR in the hopes of scooping a big round from a high-profile startup.
Today, there are some signs that Form D filings are getting tracked a little more, such as this piece in TechCrunch, but it can’t be called a trend. At the same time, the mechanism of funding rounds with convertible notes such as SAFEs, longer closing times resulting in multiple Form D filings in the same round, and round extensions mean that Form Ds may not capture the round at all, or not its full extent. So they are not as reliable a gauge of funding as they once were. But Regulation D is still in force, so the risk is there, however small.
Do you need a PR firm to announce funding?
Given the complexity of the process and the importance of a good outcome, many startups engage a public relations agency for support. It isn’t essential. Some startups opt to handle it in-house or get support from their venture partner. But beyond the question of whether they have capacity to do everything that needs doing while funding is in the process of closing, startups often lack fluency in the timeframes involved, which reporters to pitch, how to position the round, how to prepare for interviews and how to handle the myriad other issues that inevitably come up during the process.
How much does it cost to announce funding?
Getting agency support to drive the funding announcement will cost from $8,000 to $15,000, sometimes higher, depending on the messaging required.
What can go wrong when announcing funding?
Lots! We have seen all of the following:
Taken individually, these instances are rare. But funding announcements rarely go as planned. Something unexpected always seems to crop up. Wrinkles in the process are the rule, not the exception.
What can you do if you don’t like an article a reporter has published?
The big difference between sponsored content and “earned coverage” is that you, the subject, have no real say over the final product. That’s what makes earned coverage valuable. The reporter’s independence gives their coverage the stamp of prestige. Otherwise, it’s simply advertising.
The downside, from a marketing standpoint, is that every article, no matter how positive, contains wording you might not have chosen, or might not even agree with. You can request corrections for errors of fact. You can’t, in good faith, ask a reporter to change language that reflects a difference of opinion or interpretation. Nor can you really “take back” statements made in an interview unless the reporter is unusually accommodating. Equally, if you don’t like the image (and some can be very random), there’s little you can do. Note that reporters don’t always write the headline or get input into the artwork, so it’s often out of their control.
Many reporters are very happy to correct the amount of funding, the spelling of names, and misunderstandings about a product. But if you don’t like the way they describe the company because it’s not how you do it in your marketing collateral or you don’t like the fact your competitors are named, that is not a legitimate correction to request. In fact, you are likely to damage the relationship by asking.
For example, if you announce a combined Seed and Series A round, the reporter would be totally correct in just reporting the Series A in the headline since that is the news. They might opt to reference the undisclosed Seed amount and the total raised to date later in the article, but it is not an error to lead with the new round.
The thing that is hard — but so necessary — to keep in mind is that while your PR plan is part of your marketing program, reporters are not there for your marketing purposes.
It’s also hard, but important, to keep perspective. Funding is a major milestone for you, but few will parse the article word by word the way a founder might. Remember, unless a story is egregiously negative, the very fact of its existence will be seen as a win by your customers, your backers — and your competition.
Should you thank the reporter for writing a funding article about your startup?
It’s a fine line. It is entirely appropriate to thank the reporter on social media \_for their time and care\_ when sharing your article. However, you should avoid language thanking the reporter for “writing a fantastic piece” or the like. The reporter is doing their job to cover their beat for readers, and many are sensitive to the implication that they were doing your startup a favor by covering it. Reporters feel differently about this sort of thing, but unless you know for sure where they fall on this issue, it’s safer not to cross the line into over-familiarity or give feedback about how they did their work. Chances are they will have moved on to the next story by the time this is published. If you want them to think well of you, promote the story and make sure it gets as many clicks as possible. Reporters do tend to notice that.
Final thoughts
Closing a round of funding, whether it is the first institutional check or a late-stage round, is a huge achievement for a startup. It is a chance to introduce the company to new audiences and showcase its growth trajectory. By following the steps above and avoiding the notable pitfalls, the announcement should be a high point in the PR program. It should help build relationships with new reporters, drive traffic to the site, provide media articles to share on the site, on social media and via email and boost internal morale. It’s a large statement of intent — and an announcement worth celebrating.
Handle it well — then move on towards greater heights. With these new funds come higher expectations, fresh resources and goals to hit. Good luck with your startup funding announcement. Now get out there and crush your marketing goals.
© 2025 Firebrand Communications LLC
Original source: https://www.firebrand.marketing/2024/08/how-to-announce-startup-funding
This is an LLM-optimized cache with preserved navigation context and semantic structure.