Reputation is Everything, Why Smart Founders Invest in Public Relations: Great startups don't just sell products, they sell trust

Juliana Pulecio Velasquez

Reputation is Everything: Why Smart Founders Invest in Public Relations

Great startups don’t just sell products—they sell trust

Copyright © 2025 by Juliana Pulecio Velasquez

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

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To my husband Andres, my son Pablo, and my daughter Alicia—whose unwavering love has been my anchor. While I’ve dedicated much of my life to PR, it is the love and joy of being your wife and mother that truly defines me.

To every founder I’ve had the privilege to work with —

your ambition, chaos, and courage have been my greatest inspiration.

It takes real magic to make your creation feel like a unicorn

in a world where rainbows appear unexpectedly.

Public relations is a silent presence, like a river carving through stone—patient, relentless, and capable of shaping the world around it. Its power lies not in noise or force, but in the steady, strategic push of truth, perception and reputation.

Contents

Introduction

1. The PR Myth

Common Mistakes

PR Isn’t Just Action—It’s Strategy

2. The Arc of Reputation™

How Does the Theory Apply?

Who Is It For?

Phase 1: Credibility

Phase 2: Validation

Phase 3: Visibility

Phase 4: Accountability

Phase 5: Legacy

How to Know Where You Really Are

Application Guidelines

Laws of the Arc

Case Studies: Real Examples from the Field

3. Why Most Founders Get PR Wrong. (and Why You Should Care)

The Real Value of a Brand: The Data You Can’t Ignore

The Two Engines of Perception

The Formula for Brand Equity

PR vs. Marketing: Understanding the Difference

4. Who Is Responsible for PR

Founders Who Use PR

Aligning Your Presence with Purpose

5. Turning Your Startup into a Story Everyone Wants to Tell

Avoid the Cliches: 20 Overused Startup Stories

Your Story

6. Crafting Narratives that Shape Reputation: The Subtle Art of Influence

Consistency Over Time: Building a Long-Term Narrative

The Power of Momentum

The Cost of Starting Your Narrative Over, and Over and Over Again

7. The Power of Reputation in the Startup Ecosystem

What the Most Trusted Companies Have in Common

The Reputation Formula

Reputation-Building Tips for Startups

Ego and Reputation

Comfortable Visibility vs. Real Reputation

Building a Team That Believes in You

8. How to Measure Success in PR

The Illusion of Metrics in PR

Six Key Concepts to Analyze the Quality of Coverage

9. The PR Dream Team: Scaling PR with Your Startup

The Ideal PR Profile for Startups

Where Should PR Go in the Structure of a Startup?

Reputation, on Your Terms

10. Bonus Chapter: Key Learnings from Over 20 Years Doing PR for Startups

Notes

Introduction

This is not a book about PR. It’s a book about survival.

If you’re a startup founder, you already know this: perception can make or break you. Your product can be brilliant, your team world-class—but if people don’t trust you, believe you, or even know you exist, it won’t matter.

The startup world celebrates visibility—launches, funding rounds, founder tweets, profitability, viral moments. But reputation? That’s quieter, but essential. It’s what sticks after the spotlight moves on. It’s what gets remembered when things go wrong. And most founders don’t start building it until it’s too late.

I know this firsthand. I’ve spent over 20 years in PR, working with startups at every stage—launch, growth, crisis, exit. I’ve worked with Latin American unicorns and early-stage teams with barely a logo. I’ve helped founders land their first headline, navigate their first crisis, and build credibility in markets where they didn’t even speak the language.

This is not a theoretical book. It’s not a vanity project or a PR 101 guide. This is founder-to-founder truth. It’s the result of two decades of sitting in high-stakes meetings, reworking statements minutes before publishing, handling journalist calls in the middle of the night, and being the last line of defense between a startup and the reputational hit that could’ve taken it down.

Startups are hard. Everyone in the ecosystem is either building something extraordinary or talking about it. The pressure to perform is constant. The desire to be noticed, to be covered, to be seen as the next big thing is real. That’s why ego plays such a big role—and why this book will challenge yours.

Here’s something I wish someone had told me early on: reputation doesn’t grow in a straight line. It evolves—through five distinct phases that every startup, no matter the industry or market, must move through. I call it the Arc of Reputation™. It’s not a buzzword or framework for consultants—it’s a lived pattern I’ve seen in every team I’ve worked with. Once you understand where you are on the arc, you can communicate better, lead with clarity, and avoid the traps that tank even the most promising startups.

You’ll be tempted to delegate reputation. To let marketing run comms. To treat PR like a launch task. But the truth is this: your story is already being told, whether you’re in the room or not. This book isn’t about turning you into a PR expert—it’s about giving you the tools to lead your narrative.

Your startup’s reputation is already being built—from day one, with or without your permission.

This book will guide you through several key insights that every founder should understand. You’ll discover why PR is not the same as marketing—and why treating it like marketing will only burn you. You’ll learn what it really takes to build reputation from scratch, and how to distinguish between a founder who merely attracts attention and one who earns lasting trust. We’ll dive into how to tell your story before someone else tells it for you, what to do when the headlines aren’t flattering, and how to recover when things inevitably break. Most importantly, you’ll explore the Arc of Reputation™—a founder-first framework I developed to help you understand how trust evolves inside a startup.

This book is direct, tactical, and sometimes uncomfortable. But that’s because reputation is real. It’s earned. And it matters.

You’ll build a company. That’s your job. I’ll help you protect what people believe about it. That’s mine.

If you’re building something ambitious—something that could challenge the status quo—you can’t afford to ignore how people perceive you.

This isn’t about being perfect. It’s about being intentional. And it’s about understanding that PR isn’t an accessory. It’s armor. Let’s get to work.

1

The PR Myth

Let’s get one thing straight: PR doesn’t stand for press release. But if you talk to most founders, you’d think that’s all it is. This myth isn’t just annoying—it’s damaging. It leads to bad strategy, missed opportunities, and in some cases, full-blown reputational disasters.

The press release has become a kind of startup superstition: If we send it, they will come. That mindset is not just wrong—it’s lazy.

Press releases are tools. Public relations is a system. A long game. A strategy. A discipline.

The myth starts early. A founder closes a round and sends a release to every contact they can find. A journalist doesn’t reply, so they send it again with a friendly nudge. Maybe it works. Maybe they get one piece of coverage. The dopamine hit is real. But the brand value? Minimal.

They think PR is done. We got a headline, they say. But they never ask: Did it say what we wanted it to? Did we sound like a company people should trust? Did it even reach the right audience? That’s where the myth becomes dangerous—when visibility is mistaken for influence.

Founders who fall for the PR myth usually make one of two mistakes:

They assume any coverage is good coverage.

They treat PR like a vanity lever—one that makes them look good instead of making their business stronger.

It’s easy to understand why. PR is abstract. It doesn’t come with clean dashboards or obvious key performance indicators. It moves slower than product launches and doesn’t scale like paid marketing. It’s not designed to go viral.

But what it does is protect your long-term vision. What it does is open doors and create resilience. What it does is make people believe in what you’re building.

Common Mistakes

Public relations is one of the most misunderstood functions inside a startup, and much of that misunderstanding starts at the top. Over the years, I’ve seen well-meaning founders fall into the same traps again and again, often without realizing it. These aren’t just tactical errors; they become cultural ones. When the wrong assumptions are modeled at the C-level, they trickle down and shape how the entire company views and practices PR. That’s how myths get reinforced, and why it becomes so difficult to course-correct. This section outlines some of the most common pitfalls—so you can recognize them early, address them clearly, and build a more intentional communications culture from the start.

Mistake 1. PR Is All About Press Releases

The first and most common mistake startups make is equating PR with press releases. While press releases can be useful tools, they’re not the essence of PR. Today, you don’t even need a PR professional or agency to write one. With AI, you can generate a fair press release in seconds.

But let me ask you this: how many journalists or key stakeholders has your team had lunch with this week? Have you actively participated in or attended events where your target audiences are shaping their ideas? Have you taken any action to educate others about your product or service? How many people have heard your story for the first time in the past week?

PR is not about sending emails with announcements; it’s about building connections. It’s about relationships, context, and action. PR is about being present in the right places, with the right people, at the right time. It’s about making sure your narrative doesn’t just exist but thrives in the spaces where it matters most.

And it’s not just external. Are your internal communications aligned with your business goals? Are your employees clear on your mission and message? Can they easily explain your vision to others—at family gatherings, with friends, or with clients? Your internal alignment is just as critical as your external execution.

What about regulation or legal concerns? If your startup is in an industry where regulations could be an issue, have you defined how your messages, narrative, and content will position you to win advocates? Or, if you’re building something new in an industry that’s operated the same way for decades, are you actively training new generations to understand your concept so that it becomes natural to them as they grow up?

Here’s the truth: audiences today aren’t just buying your product—they’re buying your story. The value of PR lies in shaping that story and connecting it with the right people at the right time.

There are several reasons why press releases aren’t enough:

Press releases don’t build relationships.

A press release is a one-way communication tool. It delivers your message but doesn’t foster interaction or connection. The true value of PR lies in relationships—how many journalists, influencers, or stakeholders have you engaged with recently? How many conversations have you started that