Here’s Why Women Founders Need Media Coverage
Women’s History Month has an interesting way of helping us celebrate just how far women have come in such a short period of time while simultaneously showcasing how much work we still have left to do.
One cringe-worthy stat that gets a lot of buzz every March is the small, sad percentage of VC funding that women founders receive. Unless you’ve been living on a startup-free planet, you already know that this number hovers right around two percent.
Many variables factor into that pathetically low percentage, including unpredictable markets that negatively and disproportionately impact funding for women, Black and other diverse groups. Yet women founders can take steps to make sure they aren’t always fighting a losing battle for financial scraps.
There is one superpower women can access to help them steal some of the spotlight from their male counterparts, put their companies ahead of the competition and ramp up the kind of elite credibility that catches and keeps investor attention.
The superpower? Media coverage.
Still on the fence about earned media coverage for your woman-led startup? Here are four compelling reasons why media coverage should be non-negotiable if you’re finally ready to smash that glass ceiling.
If They Find You, They Can Fund You
If we want investors to fund women, then we need investors to find women.
By “find,” I mean create the kind of media attention that investors can’t ignore because it’s literally everywhere they read and watch — magazines, podcasts, digital outlets, print publications, you name it. For a new startup, brand awareness is more than half the battle. And if you’re a woman founder or entrepreneur, you automatically have to fight even more for airtime.
Investors want the best deals, but they also don’t want to work that hard to source them. That’s partly why it’s been so difficult to change the way VCs think and invest. Some will tell you privately that when the going gets tough, it’s safer to invest in what they already know works (read: white men).
If you want to make your startup as easy to fund as possible, then make sure you’re as easy to find as possible.
However, that’s not 100 percent the case. For some, it’s simply easier to do what they’ve always done. This means that a lot of times, investing in men is simply a convenience; they are the founders and companies already in the pipeline.
The solution?
If you want to make your startup as easy to fund as possible, then make sure you’re as easy to find as possible. Be where they are. Be on the podcasts they listen to and in the articles they read. Appear in both mainstream and niche media. Keep showing up until they can’t ignore you. Consistency is the key to winning the media coverage game, and if you keep showing up you’ll outperform your competitors’ visibility and catch investor attention without having to beg for a meeting.
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Interesting in 10X’ing your company’s visibility?
Email Jenny@pinksharkpr.com