Disqus - Latest Comments for gregory

Re: 2019 Journalists Survey: What it Means for Comms Pros

gregory — Tue, 08 Jan 2019 13:38:50 -0000

Thanks for the comment @Laura Petrolino and great point Gini! Social media isn't just for the social media dept -- it's essential to media relations now too.

Re: Fifteen Years

gregory — Sun, 23 Sep 2018 21:00:15 -0000

Congrats Fred! I remember trying to learn everything I could about VC and internet entrepreneurship when I was in college. There was previous little information about it back then on the web. Your blog and Dave Hornik's Venture Blog were the only two VC blogs I could find, and they were much more valuable than any books or magazines I read on the topic. I continue to learn a lot from your blog, thank you!

Re: The next ten years of Instapaper

gregory — Tue, 07 Aug 2018 12:03:25 -0000

I've never been so excited to type my credit card number into a website -- paid for the year upfront. I've been on Instapaper since it was just a web app (the original iteration was just to save URLs for later, before iPhone/Android apps were in vogue) as side project of Marco's, and am still a believer despite the issues.

To all the skeptics on this thread: It's a wonder that Instapaper survived the acquisition at all. Most acquirers completely ruin what they buy and shut it down. Let's give the new independent management team a shot.

Re: Media Relations: The Smart Way to Make an Announcement

gregory — Mon, 30 Apr 2018 11:15:51 -0000

Thanks for the comment Joan. Interesting take on the embargo. Think that even applies when the journalist explicitly agrees to the embargo before accepting the information? I agree embargoes are challenging in any circumstance.

Re: Media Relations: The Smart Way to Make an Announcement

gregory — Thu, 26 Apr 2018 21:38:54 -0000

Well said Dawn. People put far too much effort into writing long press releases no one reads, and far too little effort on the subject line that everyone sees first.

Re: Media Relations: The Smart Way to Make an Announcement

gregory — Thu, 26 Apr 2018 21:36:16 -0000

Thanks Mike! Well said.

Re: The Way Ahead: 2017

gregory — Thu, 15 Dec 2016 12:42:02 -0000

Great insights on the of the shifts in 2016. There's never been a more exciting time to be in this industry.

Happy Holidays!!

Re: Back From Sabbatical

gregory — Sun, 02 Oct 2016 21:45:08 -0000

That sounds wonderful. I aspire to go off the grid for a month. I've started doing one week off the grid trips, and similarly found it had the benefits of forcing me to delegate and see what my team is capable of (always with surprisingly good results) in addition to the personal benefits.

Re: Fighting Back Against Passive PR Pitches | AirPR Blog

gregory — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 12:33:25 -0000

I love you

Re: Lifestyle Businesses

gregory — Mon, 06 Apr 2015 20:29:17 -0000

Love the term Cashflow Business.

Funny enough, Josh Kopleman asked this question in 2009 http://redeye.firstround.co... -- Now we have a good answer.

Inversely "lifestyle business" can be derogatory towards VC backed businesses, since it implies funded companies lack or have a bad lifestyle. While running a VC business is hard work (as is running a cashflow business), there are many VC-backed CEOs and employees that enjoy the lifestyle a fast growing funded company provides.

Re: Entrepreneur Russ Fradin Makes More Money, Less Noise

gregory — Wed, 03 Dec 2014 15:58:26 -0000

I come to bury Russ, not to praise him.

Re: Entrepreneur Russ Fradin Makes More Money, Less Noise

gregory — Wed, 03 Dec 2014 13:36:58 -0000

Great to see Russ get his due. He's been an extremely helpful investor in our company and great friend. All of his advise is thoughtful and practical. One of my favorite people to call before making an important decision.

Re: How we’re spending $55,930.08 a year on SaaS

gregory — Mon, 01 Dec 2014 11:40:43 -0000

Great idea! Thanks Patrick!

Re: How we’re spending $55,930.08 a year on SaaS

gregory — Mon, 01 Dec 2014 11:34:12 -0000

It's a fair consideration. Another way to think about it: A programmer being paid at a fully load comp of $100k (which would be on the low end, especially after you include healthcare, office space, employment tax, etc) is $50/hr. So if Embedly saves us an average of 5 hours a week building/maintaining/fixing/updating a scraper, its worth it.

Re: How we’re spending $55,930.08 a year on SaaS

gregory — Mon, 01 Dec 2014 11:25:07 -0000

It struck me while writing this how little correlation there is between price and value. Embedly is totally worth the money. But we'd probably pay over $1,000 per month to use Github alone, yet we get it for only $97 per month (and it'd be cheaper if we didn't have multiple products). This could be a blog post in itself.

Re: How we’re spending $55,930.08 a year on SaaS

gregory — Mon, 01 Dec 2014 11:23:17 -0000

We use Embedly on a ton of links, which is why it costs so much. We decided to have our engineers works in higher leverage parts of our service rather than something we could outsource. Also the Embedly team is awesome to work it.

Re: How To Stimulate a Growth Economy

gregory — Tue, 11 Nov 2014 21:59:34 -0000

Very good post Dan. I'd also add reduce regulation. Having fewer regulations has given the US a huge advantage over other counties, but there are still a lot of regulations holding even the US back -- and more at the state and county level. For example, in New York State it's necessary to "advertise" a new LLC in select law journals at a cost of about $1k -- completely unnecessary and money that could be much better spent growing businesses.

Re: Respecting you… and your work (Rant)

gregory — Sun, 09 Nov 2014 21:01:56 -0000

Seneca also charged for his advice http://en.wikipedia.org/wik... He would have loved Clarity!

Re: Podcasting

gregory — Sun, 02 Nov 2014 14:13:49 -0000

It's easy to forget how hard it was to listen to a podcast on the go in 2005. I found many people weren't in the habit of syncing their iPods regularly, and even when you did a host of things could go wrong to prevent the downloading of new episodes. I remember having to burn my podcast, Venture Voice, to a CD for my mother to be able to listen in the car.

While I'm enjoying listening podcasts more now than before due to the increased variety and quality, there is something that I miss about the early days when it almost felt like ham radio. Like the early days of blogging, it was so personal, and many of the people making even the most popular ones were amaturs.

Fred, will you be bringing back Positively 10th Street or otherwise re-entering the podcast world?

Re: The Silent Benefits of PR

gregory — Sun, 26 Oct 2014 20:47:15 -0000

Great post Mark!

One of my favorite examples about the importance of PR is from Steve Jobs, as recounted by Walt Mossberg: http://allthingsd.com/20121... Jobs's marketing genius was mostly known for TV ads and product events, but he clearly cared as much about PR as advertising. When Jobs returned to Apple, he called Mossberg every Sunday for over a month. 99% of CEOs would have left that to the PR person, but Jobs obviously knew that it was an important enough job for the CEO to spends hours on a week. It's no coincidence Jobs was able his story about Apple's resurgence using the media.

Thought you might also enjoy my post on startup PR goals and selecting publications to target: https://www.linkedin.com/pu...

Re: 54 Tools for PR and Digital Success

gregory — Wed, 13 Aug 2014 11:28:43 -0000

Kellye, thanks for including Muck Rack! Great and very useful list of tools.

Re: Prioritizing Your Product Features

gregory — Thu, 31 Jul 2014 23:31:09 -0000

Great post Spencer!

How do you keep track of your feature ideas?

We've adopted Trello company-wide, and have an "ice box" board with all of our new feature/improvement ideas for Muck Rack. Each idea is a card, will descriptions and wireframes attached, and often a discussion in the comments. We also keep another board with raw suggestions from customers to cross reference.

Re: How to get press | WSGR Startup Basics

gregory — Sun, 27 Jul 2014 21:11:03 -0000

Great advice Jason! That's everything we're about at Muck Rack. This should be required viewing for all startups before they can pitch anyone.

Re: Introducing the Content Promotion Ecosystem

gregory — Wed, 02 Jul 2014 23:53:20 -0000

Very helpful diagram. Thanks for including Muck Rack!

Re: Tool for journalists: Muck Rack social sharing reports

gregory — Fri, 30 May 2014 07:45:27 -0000

Pete, please email or call us and we'll help! http://muckrack.com/contact