A friend asked me over the weekend whether I thought TechCrunch Europe's demise created an opportunity for someone to cover more European funding rounds. I paused before answering.
Putting aside the fact that several outlets already focus on European funding news, her question assumed that the business of covering funding rounds still works.
What if it doesn't?
For two decades, funding announcements have been the primary — sometimes only — news moment for young startups. I've been on both sides: pitching these stories as a communications professional and covering them as a journalist. The value for founders was clear: credibility. Those little media logos on startup websites substituted for customer logos when you had none.
Most founders I talk to have noticed it's gotten harder to land coverage. I am now telling them that the era where your early-stage funding round will get covered if you raise from a halfway decent VC is ending. Founders who haven't noticed are wasting valuable time and resources.
Competition and journalism shrinkage have made funding round coverage hard
The superficial explanation for why it has become increasingly difficult for startups to land funding round stories in recent years is competition. Europe has seen 478 Series A rounds so far this year, while Sifted has published 686 news articles — far from all of which would have covered funding rounds, let alone Series A funding rounds. Meanwhile, a multitude of PR agencies have sprouted to help startups secure coverage. Startups now need something exceptional to break through with media: a top-tier fund leading your round, a celebrity founder, a truly huge sum of capital or a genuinely novel business model. Most rounds feature none of these.
The other explanation for the difficulty in landing funding round coverage is the poor financial state of journalistic outlets. 4,000 journalism jobs were cut in 2024 in the US and the UK, according to the Press Gazette, at least a step down from the 8,000 cuts made the previous year. This reflects a fundamental shift in journalism’s economics — and the real issue that founders should be paying attention to.
The changing economics of journalism mean funding rounds don’t pay
Advertising, the revenue model that sustained journalism for decades, has largely collapsed. Outlets are pivoting to events and subscriptions. These business models require different content strategies, including putting content behind paywalls.
For subscription-based journalism to work, readers need to feel that they are paying for business-critical information they cannot get anywhere else. A startup's Series A announcement isn't business-critical to anyone except the startup raising it. Investors are already aware of this information, competitors are probably already tracking you, and customers are probably not reading the tech publication writing about funding rounds.
Now throw AI into the mix. Regardless of whether it's accurate or not, anyone can ask ChatGPT for information about companies. The survival of journalistic outlets will depend on providing curation, taste and exclusive information — precisely what funding announcements are not. It's not hard to imagine a tool in the not-so-distant future that simply aggregates funding news from startup websites and social media, making dedicated coverage even less viable.
What founders should do instead
First, adjust your expectations. If you're raising a small round without a tier-one lead investor or a compelling narrative beyond the funding round, understand that traditional media coverage is not a given. Set a realistic deadline for your PR efforts — two weeks, for example — and don’t waste time chasing journalists after that.
Second, invest in owned and social channels. A coordinated announcement across LinkedIn, with your team, investors and advisors posting simultaneously, can create more visibility than a single trade publication article. What if instead of spending money on a PR agency or freelancer to chase the small probability of getting coverage, you used that budget instead on getting crisp copy and professional graphics (a video even!) that you can ask your investors and network to share on the big day. The impression of momentum matters more than the source.
Third, and this is admittedly harder, look for moments to connect with journalists beyond fundraises. Contrarian market insights or founder stories with emotional resonance travel further than financial transactions. Tech comms professional Kim Oguilve has studied how startups can look beyond media relations as a simple tool for gaining credibility and use PR as a way to test their growth assumptions.
Founders spend time understanding their customers' needs and their investors' incentives. They know that VCs need 10x returns because most portfolio companies will fail. They build their fundraising strategy around this reality. But many founders haven't applied the same thinking to media and understood why the calculus has fundamentally changed.
As journalism continues to shift away from commoditised news, the era of funding rounds as a viable communications strategy is waning. Founders need to internalise this and redirect energy towards channels and narratives that move their business forward.
