E715 | Cathy White, CEW Communications on Why Comms is now infrastructure in European tech

21:39Cathy White:But how do you see people doing this? How do you see people creating this presence in the market in ways that you think are smart or that are effective? What would you say is kind of the playbook here?

21:53David Cruz e Silva:Honestly, it's start small and layer up, right? Because you also think about this from the perspective of a founder, particularly, you have a finite amount of time right and and different priorities depending on where you are in the cycle of the business but building presence you know simple basic things like just be doing something on LinkedIn um you know like that that's bare minimum you know grant in the grand scheme of things vast majority of people that see you doing something on LinkedIn probably aren't going to engage probably aren't going to read it but they saw that you did something that's all you need right that's the basic level of presence so you know this is why we see more founders doing kind of build in the open right so actually like communicating what's going on at the business doing the updates etc because that's one simple way of creating content frequently tie it to stuff that you're already doing and then like i said layer from there so for instance if we're working with a new client one of the first things we would say to them is right?

22:56David Cruz e Silva:We need to have a look and see what your general online profile looks like. Because from a journalist point of view or an event organizer point of view, if we're approaching someone on your behalf, well, they're going to stalk you on the internet, right? They're going to qualify whether you are the expert you say you are, what it is that you've done in the past, and why they should talk to you and not the other person. So fix your online profile. Make sure it's up to date, get rid of old photos etc etc but the other thing there is if you're if you're active i.e you're posting on social semi-frequently and someone else isn't but when you're posting you're sharing some actual insights and actual opinion being a little bit bold in what you say you're a much more appealing person to talk to and this is where the kind of the layering effect happens because the more you can just start even at that level the more you're going to be approached by others to do other things like a podcast like a little interview like a comment and then as you grow scale so if you're adding more people to your team you have a little bit more free time or you have the ability to employ someone that works on digital marketing whatever it might be delegate and make the next thing happen and this is where you also I think need to be willing to experiment it you're early enough particularly as a startup that unless you really up no one going to give a crap and you can learn from that and you can do something else um it's not gonna you know it's not like a 10 000 person strong company goes hey we're launching a newsletter you you're starting from a very different level and you've got more ability to experiment then

24:41Cathy White:the way i see it is many of the best founders and investors i i see and i engage with they don't really rely on media that much you know they build the distribution themselves you know in europe LinkedIn in the US, Twitter or X, they're probably the most important media platforms in tech, right? It's kind of crazy when you think about it, that you can out-compete traditional media by just being consistent, clear. And I think I agree with you, right? It's about just starting and keeping that recurrency, right? Whenever someone comes to me with, oh, we're thinking of doing a podcast, we need to do X, Y, Z.

25:16Cathy White:I'm like, no, no, no, you need to write the script for the first six episodes. Like just do that, right? Who are the first six guests? Write the script and do two recordings and then let's talk. I don't know. Do you think there's still space for founders and investors to build that distribution? Or is there a point where there's also like a bit of a capacity issue here of there's no, like, you know what I mean? Like the space is taken.

25:43David Cruz e Silva:Yeah. I mean, we'll be here this all the time, right? Like I just said, we're starting a podcast at CEW. you and I would love for people to listen to it obviously but I'm also going to be realistic right like I've got to go out with my way on the marketing side to push it but you know with a podcast for instance there's numerous other reasons to do podcasts so yes an audience is fantastic and yes it's great if you can grow it but again that presence piece or you know if you're a company doing a podcast it's an opportunity to bring on potential customers potential partners You're building relationships with these people, right?

26:20David Cruz e Silva:Going back to that network effect. I, you know, people say that everything is saturated already. Bullshit. Like, just, we're human. If we see interesting content, we will watch it, read it, look at it, right? It's just trying to find a way to stand out from the crowd. I don't think we've reached full saturation levels. It would just be jumping on what's hot right now, in a way. Yeah.

26:49Cathy White:Okay, I want to make it spicy now and get us in trouble here. I feel, this is my personal opinion, it's not Cathy's, I will see what her is in a minute, but a lot of the tech media, and by that I mean the people, the individuals, they're very, very close to the ecosystem because in venture, whether it's media or investing, access is the name of the game. And access changes how you write. I'm not a writer, but if I were to write about an investor that I'm very close to versus an investor that I don't know that well, it would definitely change how I wrote. The elephant in the room, from my perspective, is not is media biased.

27:32Cathy White:The question for me is what is media biased towards? And sometimes I feel it's biased towards access. And I think that's not true. So I think that's very common on the more creator side, podcast side, community side these days. But also on the opposite spectrum, sometimes I feel like it's biased towards eyeballs. Or in other words, maybe a less nice word. Sensationalism. Also not true.

27:59David Cruz e Silva:I can guess what publication you're looking for. What's your take?

28:03Cathy White:What's your take?

28:06David Cruz e Silva:I think at the end of the day, media is a business, right? so particularly the publication I think you're alluding to the adventure backed you might be running out of money you know you you eyeballs equal money right so you want to be always thinking about first of all the readers that you really do have and what it is that they're looking for but also how do you attract more readers and sometimes that means you know if if business isn't performing as well then yes they could slip um and there's a there's a lot of ethical debate that you could raise around that however as long as the publication is being factual and not slanderous anything like that then they haven't technically broken any journalism rules

28:52Cathy White:right what are kathy sorry what are the journalism rules i think we hear about it uh i've never studied journalism right so i actually don't i don't know i have like a guess but what would you say in your playbook what are the journalism rules okay well first of all everything should technically be based on fact right there has to be evidence proof of some form

29:14David Cruz e Silva:and that can come through talking to people um but obviously people sometimes have their own agendas and this is where things get a little bit sketchy i technically all articles should be balanced right that's technically in truth they're not and you'll see this more for instance you know less necessarily with something like the tech media but if you were talking like a national publication then yeah you're going to have some form of political party sway and you know that will normally often come from who owns it who is controlling the money and who is who is spending the money.

29:53Cathy White:You see this a lot in the US already in tech media, not in Europe, because as you said, there's not enough money in tech, in European tech media for this to happen. But we see it, it's very clear.

30:02David Cruz e Silva:Yeah. And it's scary. But then this is where not only founders and VCs and stuff need to be aware of it, but just like the average reader. And actually most readers aren't aware of it. And that's why, it's where you said it could be spicy, right? It's when they're dumb and we have issues in the world you know it's it's it's manipulation at that level right it's propaganda stepping back into more kind of tech and business stuff yeah okay fine that's there as well but technically in journalism it should be balanced um if a claim is being made against a business or against an individual they should have an opportunity to respond journalists have to have given them the opportunity to do that even if the business or the individual doesn't and that needs to be clear in the article as well um now that's what we're used to in the uk across europe technically in america but different countries different cultures different rules you know for some countries in the world media isn't earned media is paid

31:07Cathy White:and it gets when we shift from traditional media to more like independent voices content creators sub stack blogs blah blah waters get really murky there right yeah not saying it's a bad thing i put myself in that bucket by the way but it's it's less it's much less clear because these

31:25David Cruz e Silva:people are not necessarily well they're not journalists there you go yeah yeah that's it they're not journalists right they're they're it's different we're talking content creation and that comes with opinions journalists have too obviously but they're meant to be more balanced whereas you can be as spicy as you want david sometimes you still have shareholders

31:47Cathy White:okay um i want to we talked a bit about ai and you mentioned a bit about like how how people get information how people find stuff like discoverability generally speaking like you know i we're starting to see more people asking less on google example um searching less on Google, sorry, and asking more on pick AI tool you love, right? And this, of course, affects as a company when you're thinking about how you're perceived and when people think of you and kind of inbound and whatnot, this affects how you think. So I did a little exercise, Kathy. Oh, yes. And I went on, and this is a very dumb exercise, but I thought it would be a nice way to frame this conversation.

32:31Cathy White:Okay. So I asked chat GPT and I asked perplexity. What is EUVC? And now before I read out the answers, like, let's just bear in mind, EUVC puts out one podcast every day or every two days for five years. So the amount of content out there, everything has a transcript, right? It's crazy when you think of it. So the amount of times I have briefly explained what EUVC is or Andreas has briefly explained what EUVC is. I think it's fair to say it's more than the average company in terms of of comps and still when I read this Kathy I'm like ah that's kind of not true like that's that's 50 % true right so chat GPT says that EVC is a platform and community focused on European venture capital three things content community capital and deals it's not inaccurate but it's not really accurate it's not our positioning let's put it like that and then perplexity just for the listener as well what what is what should it be yeah so the the the first line is somewhat correct right so uvc uh is and aspires to be as well kind of the the go-to platform for european tech right so we started with venture capital that's our that's our history but that's not where we are right now and yes then we have a media side to it we have an education side to it and we have an event side to it and yes we do investments in the background but i don't talk that much about it right so for some reason it finds it um so it's not off right it's close enough and perplexity actually gets it worse right so it says uh it's a media and community platform focused on european venture capital uh it is a community of investors centered on european venture a content platform with podcasts and written insights and an events and networking brand hosting summits awards and other gatherings for the european venture ecosystem blah blah and then it can mean other stuff it's not bad but the reason i bring this up is the amount of content we put out there that is findable and searchable for ai and whatnot is a lot and i still as a founder i look at it i'm like ah that's not like that's not on point like that's really not on brand that's not what i would like a random person asking chat gpt what what we are about that's not what I would like them to get so you know I'm just using that example because I thought it would be a cool example but for the average company how would you navigate this like how would you think about that how this AI trend is now affecting the way people find out about our businesses about our pitches products blah blah okay so one question before I answer that yeah

35:12David Cruz e Silva:where what were the sources on those searches okay so chat GPT on mobile doesn't give us that

35:19Cathy White:on perplexity it told me it reviewed 10 sources some linkedin stuff about page on our website it reviewed something that's completely off topic which is abbreviations.com

35:33David Cruz e Silva:it's completely off yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly what else did uvc name exactly yeah

35:39Cathy White:it reviewed our our apple podcasts um pages which is funny because we don't we focus on um on Spotify actually there you go because we're European it reviewed everend.com no idea what that is company's house okay how it knows about investing side of the guess yeah Substack not our Substack just Substack and it reviewed Isomer because we're mentioned on their website so those were the 10 sources that they worked on

36:07David Cruz e Silva:okay so this is an interesting exercise right and this is something that any business should be looking at so if you are asking any of the AI search engines out there, you know, for information about your company, go and actually have a look and see what it's pulling from. If it is something that you own, or you update, you can go and update it. Exactly, right. So basic level of cleaning that stuff up. And then really what they're going to be pulling from as well as sources that are credible. So any media publications would fall under that bracket. And that's why, you know, media still has a part to play because they are a credible trusted source.

36:48David Cruz e Silva:So, you know, if a business is changing what they do or how they talk about themselves, it's worth thinking about how they then get that reflected in new stories in media. Now, I gave you a teaser to this yesterday, but I had an interesting conversation recently with a newswire service. I'm aware they were trying to sell me their service. So there's the little asterisk around that as well. But what

37:12Cathy White:they were arguing was interesting so sorry what's a newswire service many people might not know oh yes so a newswire service basically if you have a press release that you want to get out

37:23David Cruz e Silva:into the world and newswire is a way of distributing it so you pay the newswire service and it will send it out to as many publications newsrooms as possible that are registered with

37:37Cathy White:that service basically it's a little bit you would buy that because they have the database of contacts and they have the right email to send it is that is that it's not an email yeah so they send it out

37:48David Cruz e Silva:on the wire um so it would just be distributed to anyone that receives that wire now it's not necessarily the greatest way to get news out into the world because it's a bit more of like a spray and pray method where it's helpful is if say for instance you're a publicly listed company or something like that then you know you can put something on the wire it will be distributed to newsrooms it will be published online in particular websites and and and they will be cited they will be used as sources basically for ai usually i mean we we tend to avoid using them because again like i said it's spray and pray it's not a very clever way of getting stories to journalists um but in some instances they do make sense now the argument that they made to me was you know if companies are looking at how they they have better geo whatever you want to call it that's another argument for why news wires should be used so if you for instance have a story going out you can combine the two efforts you can have the you know the the classic approach of going talk to journalists and actually pitch them bespoke stories and then the day the announcement goes out you have a newswire distribute it wide as well and then it will be spotted online yeah so So yeah, so the short summary is basically use the AI search engines to have a look at what is being said about your business, but look at the sources and then see what it is that you need to fix.

39:08David Cruz e Silva:And then if you are changing your positioning or you're adding more products, et cetera, et cetera, you just need to be making sure that you're making that very clear across lots of different channels over a consistent amount of time so that it turns up. Okay.

39:23Cathy White:Yeah. Before we wrap things up, founders, what do you see them getting wrong? What would be top two, three things that you see currently that you wish people knew better or didn't do? Are you able to kind of summarize it?

39:42David Cruz e Silva:I mean, three is a really short list. I have like 100.

39:47Cathy White:Well, we have five minutes. I have five minutes.

39:50David Cruz e Silva:um no but the the ones i think okay so first of all your messaging is not a story and so you know when we work on press releases or something like that there's always going to be key messages that a business wants to get across you've got no um you have no control over whether that's going to end up in a journalist's story ultimately and you know they want a story your your verbatim this is what we want to say about ourselves isn't what they necessarily want to cover so the first thing for for founders is really think again like we said earlier think about narrative think about how you humanize what it is that you're doing and just making an announcement from the company is not the only reason to be talking to media so that's that's number one um two you need to be much more prominent for the business and so like we said if you have a bit more of an online profile whether that's through social or you know just popping up in the media a little bit more from a journalist point of view they need an argument for why they should talk to you and not talk to someone else so so make yourself more visible so that you're much more appealing from a press point of view from a speaking point of view from an awards point of view it's all connected and then the the final one is honestly say something new bold different first of all you're a startup you can afford to not play it safe uh it's the whole point of having a startup so so really make sure that you're bringing that into everything that you do um you know no one wants to talk to an expert who says the same thing as everyone else they wanted so they want to talk to someone who's going to have some edge they're going to say something new so don't be afraid to rock the boat a little bit yeah on that note if

41:41Cathy White:you know you're listening in and you think like narrative storytelling distribution comms execution is a challenge definitely reach out you know we've uh we've had the pleasure of working with kathy on a couple of projects um very good feedback which i think is is very important in this space you know there's a lot of players out there so it's always good to have a trusted trusted referral we're happy to refer cw and kathy specifically as a wrap-up no no the way the way I would frame it is is no no no spiciness in the end I don't see it as European tech has the storytelling problem even though we don't see a lot of strong narratives in original thinking I do think it has a consistency problem I I do think that's that's what I see at least and I think what's really exciting kind of zooming out from like state of of tech media to state of like truly exciting is we're actually really good at building stuff right from a technical standpoint really good i think we're not so good at explaining it um and so that's that's kind of what what we're seeing and and and what we ended up talking a lot about i guess especially in a world world where attention is more fragmented as you said and machines are mediating discovery right we just did it with my own company and i was like not super happy with it so i can imagine if you're doing a deep tech industrial deep tech company out of a small um small city in europe it's probably going to be worse so uh you know just make things easy to understand um and just

43:11David Cruz e Silva:be clear about it kathy any final words of wisdom i i think i don't know if this is wisdom but you were talking about discovery of your own business when it comes to using ai search but remember if this is the way that people are now starting to search for things they're also going to apply it two people so you know kathy white's a really freaking common name um you know i you know you got to think about how you as an individual are found as well and connected back to the business so as an experiment i would say go and chat gpt or perplexity to yourself in your company and see what comes up i'm still competing with a woman that had an affair with jay-z and got killed by Beyonce apparently so you know that's where I'm at don't know if you're gonna win that

43:59Cathy White:battle Kathy I'm sorry no probably not I've got to do something quite extreme I don't know what that is yet on that note Kathy thank you for your time talk to you soon and thank you everyone for tuning in if you think I'm a better host put it in the comments say David is a better host