Every start-up wants to develop a platform. Everyone’s trying to leverage a network. You have to tell enough of the right people that you exist for there to be any hope of turning that ten-slide pitch (the last slide illustrating your exit strategy) into a reality of any kind. But I still marvel at the sheer amount of content that gets spun. Most of it consists of blindingly obvious truisms that get re-tweeted again and again — and this is described as ‘engagement’. Stop it. Do work. Do good work of which you are proud, and tell people about that.

It’s like the basic rules of good storytelling. Show, don’t tell. PR is good for your ego, but what is better for your ROI is creating a great product that solves a problem. Now that’s worth PRing.