Emilie Gerber
Founder and CEO of Six Eastern, a PR agency; formerly led PR at Uber and product comms at Box
Where to hear and read about Emilie Gerber1 episode or test
Emilie Gerber is the founder and CEO of Six Eastern, a PR agency for tech companies, and formerly led PR at Uber and product comms at Box. The thing most worth learning from her is to give a reporter a short, plain story built around a known incumbent, and to value press mainly as third-party proof.
The only thing that a relationship will get you is an open and an answer.
The ultimate guide to PR | Emilie Gerber (founder of Six Eastern)
Emilie Gerber: the story and the lessons
1Emilie Gerber's path from Uber and Box to Six Eastern
Gerber learned PR inside tech companies before starting an agency. At Uber she led PR for the business development team and B2B programs. Earlier, at Box, she worked on product communications, focused on launches and partnership announcements.
Her advice is tactical: which outlets to target, how to write the pitch, how to reach reporters and what an agency costs.
Six Eastern has worked with over 100 tech companies. The agency serves clients from stealth startups to public companies. It helps them get press, build awareness and level up their comms strategy.
2Why Gerber says press is worth it for B2B companies
Gerber treats B2B press as outside proof, not a growth channel. A salesperson can link a story in a sales email, and a recruiter can link it in a 100-character LinkedIn message. Early-stage buyers worry a young company will vanish, so a third party's vouching counts for more than the company's own claims.
"when that AE is sending their sales emails and they can link to a story, I think that really helps."
She says press that brings no signups can still pay off elsewhere. Lenny's Fast Company, CNBC and Entrepreneur stories brought no visible growth. They still help when he emails potential guests, because publication logos carry weight.
A business with several audiences, such as listeners, sponsors and guests, gets validation from press in each of them.
Founder-journey stories help hiring more than they help sales. Reporters tend to write about the founder's journey, not how good the product is, and that will not convince customers to sign up. Culture and initiative stories do help recruiting.
Press can drive growth directly when the product is easy to try. Perplexity has spent essentially nothing on paid marketing and has no marketing person. It still saw a spike in signups and pro users after its latest announcement.
One query shows the product's power, so organic press is enough. Other consumer companies may need affiliate coverage, where publications earn a commission on sales, which her agency does not offer.
3How Gerber frames a story so reporters bite
Gerber names the incumbent you are taking on. Her subject lines read like a company taking on Salesforce with a new approach. It gives the reporter an instant frame of reference without learning your category language.
TechCrunch described one automation startup as setting out to eat Zapier's lunch, which said more than the company's own release did.
Ramp's bill pay launch was pitched as an underdog taking on Bill.com. Bill.com had captured only two percent of its market, which made Ramp a credible challenger. CNBC covered a launch it would normally skip, and the next day a story on Bill.com's falling stock mentioned Ramp.
A pitch built on simple, seamless, streamlined payments would not have been a story.
She never pitches a company as a new category. Category language does not land with press, and claims of being first are rarely fully true. She counts only two or so category-creation winners out of thousands.
It may help on the sales side, but she would never use it in a pitch. Gamma's headline, Brings PowerPoint into the 21st Century, compared it to an existing product.
Gerber picks the one thread tied to a bigger story. Column Tax had many customers, but the pitch used only its Propel partnership putting tax filing in a SNAP benefits app. That tied into TurboTax's fines over free filing claims and the IRS's early free filing system, and Fast Company covered it.
About 40% of Column's filers had not filed the year before. Growth metrics and a partnership announcement would have been a weaker story.
When everyone agrees, she offers the dissenting view. Shopify's canceled recurring meetings drew uniformly positive press, so another cheering piece had no chance. Clockwise's CEO Matt Martin wrote an op-ed arguing a meeting cost calculator does not fix wasted time, and Fast Company ran it.
The take need not oppose the idea, since a more thoughtful view is enough. It must fit the business, so skip topics like regulation if you do not want that debate.
4Gerber's rules for writing and sending the pitch
Her most successful pitches are three sentences long. She states the offer in the subject line and opening, whether that is a Q&A, a story or an exclusive funding story. She finds that longer pitches tend to be weaker.
Gerber says a well-done cold pitch beats leaning on relationships. Reporters change beats and outlets quickly, and a relationship only gets you an open and an answer. Many reporters she works with regularly have never met her in person.
After one story together a reporter may come back for quotes. She says to nurture that but not call in favors.
She pitches funding news plainly: exclusive, amount, space, investors. Match the reporter's beat, such as a fintech reporter for a fintech round, and say why it matters. Do not bury the ask under a big problem statement or trend story. Six Eastern has never failed to finish a funding-only project.
"We're offering this to you as an exclusive, meaning we're not going to pitch anyone else if you take the story."
Gerber follows up after three or four days with something new. She adds a fresh tweet or article from the reporter. If nothing comes of it, she moves to another reporter and tries three or four of the most relevant ones.
A polite line like I know your inbox is slammed keeps it human. Moving on after about a week is fine.
She keeps hard-news lists small and staggered. A funding story goes to one to six reporters on average. Offering exclusives is why the list stays small, since if two say yes you tell one Nevermind.
She does not blast one pitch to a list. Relationship outreach is the opposite, a numbers game where some clients get one opportunity per 20 or 30 pitches.
A ten-word reply to a reporter's tweet can be the whole pitch. When a reporter tweets about a story in progress, she replies with ten words on why her person is the one to talk to, plus a link. That can beat a 30-minute email.
Short DMs also work, and an email subject line can name the reporter's recurring column and the suggested guest.
5Which outlet Gerber pitches for which story
Gerber warns that a funding round is not a guaranteed TechCrunch story. TechCrunch wrote nine funding stories in a week while about 50 rounds happened. A good pitch is how you become one of the nine.
It is still the likeliest home for funding news, with no paywall and a smooth process, and it can drive traffic on announcement day.
She matches each story type to the outlet that covers it. Axios wants deals, never product news, and its local editions suit regional stories. VentureBeat wants AI news, Fast Company wants future of work and leadership op-eds, and Forbes awards like FinTech 50 and AI 50 open doors to earlier-stage companies.
TechCrunch has no dedicated beat reporters for health tech or martech, so clients there struggle.
Business Insider is her fallback when funding news is hard to place. It runs pitch deck stories where financials and growth metrics can be redacted. Its top-professional and top-startup lists take about five minutes to enter.
Its founder-journey pieces push hard for revenue and spend.
Gerber tells early companies the WSJ, NYT and CNBC want hard numbers. A feature there generally needs an on-the-record valuation and metrics like revenue. Without them, a startup is a sentence or two in a bigger story.
Early companies mostly get in through a crisis. Her joke: fire your CEO or have a regulatory issue, which got Uber many stories. Beat reporters are still worth an intro meeting.
6How Gerber prepares announcements, spokespeople and podcast outreach
Gerber has clients read releases aloud and translate every jargon phrase. One release announced AI assistance, human in the loop collaboration and a robust multiplayer experience, and a smart reader could not tell what the product was. She asks clients to explain each phrase and swaps in the plain version if they can.
She estimates at least 50% of releases read this way, and works with each new hire to strip out the marketingy voice.
She built Gamma's funding announcement as a scannable page. The announcement was itself a Gamma presentation, with a direct opening fact, bulleted investors, user quotes and a video from the lead investor instead of a quote. TechCrunch covered it.
She sent the page only after the reporter showed interest, because anything emailed to a reporter is on the record.
Gerber opens podcast outreach with a light note, not a pitch. Her LinkedIn opener is love the show, are you open to guest ideas? with no client named. Maybe one in ten hosts replies, so the short note saves time and still gets an answer.
She sends the spokesperson who fits each show's guest profile. Check whether a show hosts vendor executives and whether it is still active, then listen to an episode and read the past guests. A CFO show wants a CFO, not the CEO.
She misfired once by pitching a CEO to a show that rarely has them: the topic was right but the spokesperson was wrong.
Gerber pitched Nubank to Lenny on what his audience wants to learn. The first bullet said 80 to 90% of Nubank's growth is organic, which is rare. The second said Nubank is bigger than Coinbase, Robinhood, Affirm, SoFi and Lemonade combined.
The first bullet mattered most because it showed a unique way to grow. Scrolling a show's episode titles is enough to see the pattern, here tactical lessons rather than launches or founder journeys.
She says you cannot steer a story, only prepare for it. Reporters are not employees, so the levers are briefing the spokesperson on key messages and correcting factual errors. A category label the founder dislikes cannot be corrected.
A truly hostile story is unlikely after an advance briefing unless something negative is going on. The bigger risk is the wrong angle.
The ultimate guide to PR | Emilie Gerber (founder of Six Eastern)
Startups get press by sending short, direct pitches that frame the story around a known incumbent and match each reporter's beat. The advice covers which publications fit which stories, how to pitch and follow up, and why press pays off mostly through second-order credibility.
Gerber learned PR inside tech companies before starting an agency. At Uber she led PR for the business development team and B2B programs. Earlier, at Box, she worked on product communications, focused on launches and partnership announcements.
Her advice is tactical: which outlets to target, how to write the pitch, how to reach reporters and what an agency costs.
Six Eastern has worked with over 100 tech companies. The agency serves clients from stealth startups to public companies. It helps them get press, build awareness and level up their comms strategy.
Gerber treats B2B press as outside proof, not a growth channel. A salesperson can link a story in a sales email, and a recruiter can link it in a 100-character LinkedIn message. Early-stage buyers worry a young company will vanish, so a third party's vouching counts for more than the company's own claims.
"when that AE is sending their sales emails and they can link to a story, I think that really helps."
She says press that brings no signups can still pay off elsewhere. Lenny's Fast Company, CNBC and Entrepreneur stories brought no visible growth. They still help when he emails potential guests, because publication logos carry weight.
A business with several audiences, such as listeners, sponsors and guests, gets validation from press in each of them.
Founder-journey stories help hiring more than they help sales. Reporters tend to write about the founder's journey, not how good the product is, and that will not convince customers to sign up. Culture and initiative stories do help recruiting.
Press can drive growth directly when the product is easy to try. Perplexity has spent essentially nothing on paid marketing and has no marketing person. It still saw a spike in signups and pro users after its latest announcement.
One query shows the product's power, so organic press is enough. Other consumer companies may need affiliate coverage, where publications earn a commission on sales, which her agency does not offer.
Gerber names the incumbent you are taking on. Her subject lines read like a company taking on Salesforce with a new approach. It gives the reporter an instant frame of reference without learning your category language.
TechCrunch described one automation startup as setting out to eat Zapier's lunch, which said more than the company's own release did.
Ramp's bill pay launch was pitched as an underdog taking on Bill.com. Bill.com had captured only two percent of its market, which made Ramp a credible challenger. CNBC covered a launch it would normally skip, and the next day a story on Bill.com's falling stock mentioned Ramp.
A pitch built on simple, seamless, streamlined payments would not have been a story.
She never pitches a company as a new category. Category language does not land with press, and claims of being first are rarely fully true. She counts only two or so category-creation winners out of thousands.
It may help on the sales side, but she would never use it in a pitch. Gamma's headline, Brings PowerPoint into the 21st Century, compared it to an existing product.
Gerber picks the one thread tied to a bigger story. Column Tax had many customers, but the pitch used only its Propel partnership putting tax filing in a SNAP benefits app. That tied into TurboTax's fines over free filing claims and the IRS's early free filing system, and Fast Company covered it.
About 40% of Column's filers had not filed the year before. Growth metrics and a partnership announcement would have been a weaker story.
When everyone agrees, she offers the dissenting view. Shopify's canceled recurring meetings drew uniformly positive press, so another cheering piece had no chance. Clockwise's CEO Matt Martin wrote an op-ed arguing a meeting cost calculator does not fix wasted time, and Fast Company ran it.
The take need not oppose the idea, since a more thoughtful view is enough. It must fit the business, so skip topics like regulation if you do not want that debate.
Her most successful pitches are three sentences long. She states the offer in the subject line and opening, whether that is a Q&A, a story or an exclusive funding story. She finds that longer pitches tend to be weaker.
Gerber says a well-done cold pitch beats leaning on relationships. Reporters change beats and outlets quickly, and a relationship only gets you an open and an answer. Many reporters she works with regularly have never met her in person.
After one story together a reporter may come back for quotes. She says to nurture that but not call in favors.
She pitches funding news plainly: exclusive, amount, space, investors. Match the reporter's beat, such as a fintech reporter for a fintech round, and say why it matters. Do not bury the ask under a big problem statement or trend story. Six Eastern has never failed to finish a funding-only project.
"We're offering this to you as an exclusive, meaning we're not going to pitch anyone else if you take the story."
Gerber follows up after three or four days with something new. She adds a fresh tweet or article from the reporter. If nothing comes of it, she moves to another reporter and tries three or four of the most relevant ones.
A polite line like I know your inbox is slammed keeps it human. Moving on after about a week is fine.
She keeps hard-news lists small and staggered. A funding story goes to one to six reporters on average. Offering exclusives is why the list stays small, since if two say yes you tell one Nevermind.
She does not blast one pitch to a list. Relationship outreach is the opposite, a numbers game where some clients get one opportunity per 20 or 30 pitches.
A ten-word reply to a reporter's tweet can be the whole pitch. When a reporter tweets about a story in progress, she replies with ten words on why her person is the one to talk to, plus a link. That can beat a 30-minute email.
Short DMs also work, and an email subject line can name the reporter's recurring column and the suggested guest.
Gerber warns that a funding round is not a guaranteed TechCrunch story. TechCrunch wrote nine funding stories in a week while about 50 rounds happened. A good pitch is how you become one of the nine.
It is still the likeliest home for funding news, with no paywall and a smooth process, and it can drive traffic on announcement day.
She matches each story type to the outlet that covers it. Axios wants deals, never product news, and its local editions suit regional stories. VentureBeat wants AI news, Fast Company wants future of work and leadership op-eds, and Forbes awards like FinTech 50 and AI 50 open doors to earlier-stage companies.
TechCrunch has no dedicated beat reporters for health tech or martech, so clients there struggle.
Business Insider is her fallback when funding news is hard to place. It runs pitch deck stories where financials and growth metrics can be redacted. Its top-professional and top-startup lists take about five minutes to enter.
Its founder-journey pieces push hard for revenue and spend.
Gerber tells early companies the WSJ, NYT and CNBC want hard numbers. A feature there generally needs an on-the-record valuation and metrics like revenue. Without them, a startup is a sentence or two in a bigger story.
Early companies mostly get in through a crisis. Her joke: fire your CEO or have a regulatory issue, which got Uber many stories. Beat reporters are still worth an intro meeting.
Gerber has clients read releases aloud and translate every jargon phrase. One release announced AI assistance, human in the loop collaboration and a robust multiplayer experience, and a smart reader could not tell what the product was. She asks clients to explain each phrase and swaps in the plain version if they can.
She estimates at least 50% of releases read this way, and works with each new hire to strip out the marketingy voice.
She built Gamma's funding announcement as a scannable page. The announcement was itself a Gamma presentation, with a direct opening fact, bulleted investors, user quotes and a video from the lead investor instead of a quote. TechCrunch covered it.
She sent the page only after the reporter showed interest, because anything emailed to a reporter is on the record.
Gerber opens podcast outreach with a light note, not a pitch. Her LinkedIn opener is love the show, are you open to guest ideas? with no client named. Maybe one in ten hosts replies, so the short note saves time and still gets an answer.
She sends the spokesperson who fits each show's guest profile. Check whether a show hosts vendor executives and whether it is still active, then listen to an episode and read the past guests. A CFO show wants a CFO, not the CEO.
She misfired once by pitching a CEO to a show that rarely has them: the topic was right but the spokesperson was wrong.
Gerber pitched Nubank to Lenny on what his audience wants to learn. The first bullet said 80 to 90% of Nubank's growth is organic, which is rare. The second said Nubank is bigger than Coinbase, Robinhood, Affirm, SoFi and Lemonade combined.
The first bullet mattered most because it showed a unique way to grow. Scrolling a show's episode titles is enough to see the pattern, here tactical lessons rather than launches or founder journeys.
She says you cannot steer a story, only prepare for it. Reporters are not employees, so the levers are briefing the spokesperson on key messages and correcting factual errors. A category label the founder dislikes cannot be corrected.
A truly hostile story is unlikely after an advance briefing unless something negative is going on. The bigger risk is the wrong angle.