Who is Front Lines?
In 2013 we founded a startup working in something that few had heard of at the time — Bitcoin. We hired a PR firm to help us break through the noise and get our story out there.
They didn’t deliver (despite taking our $20,000). So we took matters into our own hands. Instead of trying to get the media talking about “how amazing” we were — like our PR firm did, we took a different approach.
Here’s what we did to help ourselves break through the noise...
#1:
We positioned ourselves as industry advocates – publicly defending criticism against the industry.
Like when we went on national TV in 2014 to tell the public to not worry about the latest crash
#2:
We positioned ourselves as industry experts – providing commentary on real-time events happening in the space.
Like this open letter we wrote and mailed to FINRA defending Bitcoin (which Business Insider wrote about)
#3:
We positioned ourselves as industry educators — clearing up misconceptions and making sure people were informed.
Like when we registered to become one of the first federally registered lobbyists
These efforts put us on the radar and helped us break through the noise. We had investors, journalists, customers, and opportunities coming to us every day and we were able to get doors opened.
But there was one problem: our product sucked. Despite all the buzz and momentum, it wasn’t enough to get our solution adopted and we failed. Very painful and depressing moment as a startup founder.
The day that Bloomberg announced our demise, founders began to reach out. They said, “Your company sucked, but you were really good at generating awareness for yourselves. Can we hire you to do that for us?”
We said yes, and have been helping visionary founders break through the noise ever since. Our programs, tactics, and approach is based on what we first learned for ourselves then mastered doing it for other founders.