Where are you based?
Mauro Battellini: London.
What are your favourite things about living in London?
Mauro Battellini: London is like the world got compressed into one English-speaking, left side of the road-driving city. There’s everything and something for everyone. One of my favourite things is the huge variety of food options from all over the world. People all over the world think British cuisine is terrible, but they should also know Britain imported some of the best cuisines in the world. There are loads of museums, concerts and other cultural events. And you can get anywhere easily with the tube, DLR or train (although rush hour can get messy).
How long have you been at Black Unicorn PR?
Mauro Battellini: I joined as co-founder shortly after it was founded. I ditched the suit for a hoodie, as I like to say, and now it’s been about 5 years of the steepest learning curve in my life.
What are the startup verticals that most interest you?
Mauro Battellini: Fintech seems like an easy answer, but it simply has so much transformative power. It’s the economy, s….! I feel it personally – I use Revolut, Freetrade, Pensionbee and more. I’m also interested in any startup that can bring environmental and social benefits together with the needed scalability and financial sustainability.
At the end of the day, we all know we can’t evolve truly as more prosperous, healthy and educated societies unless we get big, structural things right, too. We need solutions for the physical world. Energy, housing, healthcare, food, transport infrastructure – a lot of areas where humanity managed to push the boundaries in the 20th century now seem to be in crisis. I look forward to seeing startups innovate more on this side.
What are things you have seen startups struggle with, when it comes to PR?
Mauro Battellini: Like humans, startups are not perfect. In fact, because of the huge effort they require from its founders to scale fast, startups are often imbalanced. They are really strong in some areas and… not so much in others. It’s the founders’ job to identify and fortify the weaknesses.
PR tends to be an early weakness. But that’s a feature, not a bug. At first founders’ priorities simply lie elsewhere. Mainly in making sure they have a product capable of generating revenue, and getting that revenue. The issue is when founders take too long to think about how PR works, because at some point it will really become a necessity. And when it does become a real need, they end up totally misunderstanding it. This can lead to hiring the wrong person or agency, or insisting with an approach for PR that just doesn’t work.
At best, these uneducated founders miss excellent opportunities for image building and awareness. At worst, they waste significant budgets and time they could have spent in more productive areas or in a better agency or approach. Actually, the worst thing that can happen is the founders become disenchanted, disillusioned with PR and avoid real, good PR in the future.
Unfortunately, a few years ago we did see snake oil sellers posing as startup PR agencies in quite a few countries in CEE. This happens in new, fast-growing industries. Some startups fell for it, but luckily the community got wise and these actors got driven out.
From startups that you see excel with PR, what are some of the things that they are doing right?
Mauro Battellini: They understand what journalists want, and what to expect from PR at different stages of their journey. And what journalists want is not to report on how amazing your startup is, or what a great idea you have. More often than not, great ideas alone don’t cut it. Like in general in startup building, execution trumps ideas. Journalists need certain criteria of newsworthiness.
What real-life impact is your startup making in this world? What case studies and stats support it? If you don’t have much of that, then it is very likely that you will need it before investing substantial resources into PR. And don’t expect to get a lot of top tier (or any) until your impact in the real world is substantial.
The best-performing startups build understanding first, understand what is newsworthy about them, and execute from a place of certainty and managed expectations.
What would you recommend to a startup that wants to get started with PR that they focus on first?
Mauro Battellini: I would recommend that at least one founder is assigned a PR role. He or she doesn’t need to spend considerable time on PR, but should become educated as to how it works, and be ready to be the company’s spokesperson, available for interviews, speaking at events and podcasts, and other PR activities.
Once they truly understand how PR works, they will also be in a position to understand whether they should hire someone in-house, a freelancer or an agency. It might be a different choice at different stages of the startup, and that should be something they also understand.
Finally, they should understand it enough to confidently hire a marketing or communications lead they will be able to delegate PR to, such as a CMO or Head of Marketing.
What is your top tip for early stage startups when it comes to PR?
Mauro Battellini: I have a few, and they are based on early conversations with startups that are yet to discover what PR is about.
Don’t demonise it or ignore it without understanding it first. Don’t do PR for the sake of it. Do it because there is a tangible opportunity. When there are tangible opportunities, such as a fundraise announcement, seek to understand it. In many cases not doing PR at the right moment, when you have a certain window of opportunity, will definitely become a cost of opportunity.
Don’t put the pressure of KPIs on PR too early on. When you are a company that the public has its eyes on every day, you will be in a position to start using PR to move numbers. But as an early-stage startup, you need to think about building an identity, an image, and supporting your proactive sales, marketing, fundraising efforts with trust and credibility in “the middle of the funnel”.
Also, don’t do PR in a silo. It’s not rocket science, anyone that will do deals with you or buy from you will eventually land on your website. The journey has to be impeccable, and the website is the central component. If your product is too difficult to understand, buyers might abandon the journey. If you are not sharing some basic details about the founders or core team, investors and partners (and journalists) will think you have something to hide. Similarly, founders should have polished profiles on social media, especially LinkedIn. Think of the journey of every stakeholder and think which other areas need to be leveraged to improve it. Subsets of marketing like PR or advertising alone are no silver bullets to grow a startup.
Last but not least, have good startup-style photography of the team. Make sure you have some with the founders only, individually and together. Not just headshots, not just portrait photos. They will come in handy before you think!
Are you a summer or winter person? Why?
Mauro Battellini: Summer. I grew up in Mar del Plata, a city on the Atlantic coast. The beach is not just a holiday, it’s a way of life. Nothing like a good day at the beach with friends, drinking mate and playing cards until the sun goes down. But I do enjoy a good snowboarding session.
Favourite cuisine? Why?
Mauro Battellini: This is a really hard question, because I love (pretty much) all cuisines. Each can have delicious dishes. And so many cuisines I haven’t tried yet. The Argentine classics like a good asado, or milanesa with puree go without saying. But if I had to choose just one, I’d go with Italian.
What are your favourite hobbies?
Mauro Battellini: I love football and have been playing at a club since I was a teenager, I even have a coaching licence from the England FA. It’s an art but also a science, no game is identical to another, and each time you play it awakens the entire spectrum of emotions that you can find in life. I also love walking my dog, hiking, travelling and exploring new cultures, and I’m known to be a workaholic.
You have a free weekend. Movies and popcorn or outdoor adventures?
Mauro Battellini: I would go for outdoor adventures every time. If you know of any cool ones where you’re from, let me know and I might add them to my list!
For more
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