🗞 Coverage to Capital x Olivia Minnock: commercial vs mainstream journalism
Why founders should drop the ego and embrace 'fridge door syndrome'.
Journalists get a bad rap in public opinion. It would be unfair to call them the least trusted professionals in the UK. Most polls have them in second place, just a smidge behind members of Parliament. But Olivia Minnock, senior partnerships manager at an embedded finance startup and a former fintech editor of five years, is here to tell us why the general public are wrong. "I think journalism is incredibly important. That’s why I never said I was a journalist when I worked in content - you have to get all these qualifications, it's a very important job."
But having worked for FinTech Alliance - a content hub meets community for the fintech ecosystem - Olivia deeply understands the value of media exposure for founders. Or anybody trying to find a place in their space. "We were building a community. Through written content, events; online during lockdown. That became my passion: bringing together different people from all these small companies, helping startups to raise capital, find new talent, and just learn a bit more."
There's an important difference between commercial and more traditional journalism. "I'm proud of the work I've done on the commercial side. But when a founder or someone in fintech approaches the mainstream media, sometimes they expect the same thing. And that's not going to be the case: it's not just [having] a coffee and then they'll immediately publish something about your company. There won't be copy approval. There might be hard questions. It's much more of a risk."
Trying to build your company’s media profile? Avoid clichés.
Back on the commercial side, and with her content hat on, Olivia says that when she hears from founders, she doesn't want the clichés. "The new Monzo? No, you're not. And even if you are, there's a lot of new Monzos out there. The Uber of something? Well, you'd better be." Instead, what gets attention are "the opinions of the founder and the founding team."
“It's going to take a lot of sending stuff to people, and people not publishing it… It's hard for a CEO or fintech founder to accept that: they want to see numbers.”
It's crucial to stay reactive to what's going on. "It's very rare that your company will actually do something worthy of a press release, like release a new product or raise money. So you have to engage with stories that are already happening. That doesn't mean being controversial, just being useful, so that when an editor or journalist sees your email in their inbox, they think 'Hey, this is going to be valuable to me, I might be able to use this'."
You won't get there overnight. "It's going to take a lot of sending stuff to people, and people not publishing it, which is very frustrating. It's hard for a CEO or fintech founder to accept that: they want to see numbers. We sent out this email, this much money came in. That's not how it works."
Usefulness > creativity
This is particularly important for founders that might not have a product right away.
"The first couple of years is about you as a person. How do you engage? What are you trying to do? What's the vision? What's your experience and your knowledge? Then you move into your product, and then your case studies.
“As a rule, people don't have a huge imagination. Give them information that is useful.”
Those are key: this is what people want to hear about when they're researching their investments and purchases. As a rule, people don't have a huge imagination. Give them information that is useful. Be specific."
She thinks there's been a change in who [reporters] want to hear about, too. A couple of years ago, they wanted to hear about founders that were "30 years old, had raised hundreds of millions, were doing this really cool thing… didn't necessarily have any customers. Those are still fascinating stories, but now it's more about who is solving problems, who can offer a bit of wisdom and guidance. We're all growing up a bit.”
And this change is reflective of the wider investment climate. "There used to be a lot of competition, a lot of FOMO, people were investing just in case other people did. But now there are slightly longer cycles, and people are taking longer to get to know each other. Investors want to see a lot more progress before they invest: what is a series A round, now, was a seed round two years ago. And people want realism. If you're saying you don't have competitors, that just comes across as childish."
All of this means that investors have to know you before they've even met you. And that means coverage, as many kinds as possible. "Commercial media, social media, quotes in the papers, blog posts on LinkedIn. Look at influencers: they post, they build engagement, and people begin to feel like they know them. They trust them because they've seen their journey. Do as much as you can. Basically everything. And be available!"
What founders can learn from ‘fridge door syndrome’
Because, sometimes, availability is the tastiest thing of all. "I always talk about fridge door syndrome. You open the fridge, you're thinking about having a snack, you've got no food. And then two hours later when you're really, really hungry, you go back in and you're like 'Oh yeah, I'll grab this.' This is what we used to do with our magazine cycle. Four weeks off publication? We don't want to speak to that CEO. Two weeks? They're looking kind of interesting. Need copy tomorrow? Suddenly this person is great!"
So put the ego aside and make yourself a grabbable snack. "Be easy to work with. If you give the journalist, PR or event organiser what they need, they will come to you when they're stuck. That's what you want to portray as a leader: someone who people come to and ask for help, someone who's willing to engage with the community."
The sense of engaged leadership is crucial. "Don't let your PR run the show and script everything for you. Listen to them - because they get the media and you need that - let them set things up." But even if you get terrible stage fright, "the founder has to show up. They have to speak on the panel. They have to do the interview. That's the value. When people hear from the founder, the dreamer, the person whose baby this is - their whole expression changes."
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