There\u2019s great advice out there on how to pitch a tech blogger. My favorite is\u00a0this post<\/a>\u00a0by Mark Hendrickson, a former TechCrunch blogger.<\/p>\n However, it can also be helpful to look at actual examples of pitches that worked.<\/strong>\u00a0So, I\u2019m including here two tech pitches that\u00a0Jim Moran<\/a>, my co-founder, and I submitted to TechCrunch for two projects we worked on before Yipit.<\/p>\n Before we launched\u00a0Yipit<\/a>, we worked on two side projects called\u00a0140it<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0UnHub<\/a>. We built both in a weekend and were looking to get some broader exposure for them.<\/p>\n The problem was that we didn\u2019t have an \u201cin\u201d. It\u2019s always best to get a warm intro to a blogger from an investor or friend. We just didn\u2019t have it.<\/p>\n So, we decided to try TechCrunch\u2019s\u00a0startup submission form<\/a>\u00a0which didn\u2019t look promising. I pictured the other side as an endless stream of terrible pitches that TechCrunch authors\u00a0dreaded and probably didn\u2019t look at.<\/p>\n Less than an hour after submitting 140it via their form, we get out this email from TechCrunch writer Jason Kincaid:<\/p>\n Hi Vinicius, looks cool, am trying it now and writing up a post. \u00a0 Please lift the password in around 20 minutes or so (let me know once you have).<\/p>\n Thanks, Months later, TechCrunch also covered UnHub.com, another weekend project of ours. Again, we applied via their submission form.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve included both TechCrunch pitches below but wanted to highlight the key tactics we used in our submission:<\/p>\n Below are the two pitches we submitted.<\/p>\n 140it TechCrunch Pitch<\/p>\n Company Name: 140it Description: 140it helps twitter users reduce their tweets to less than 140 characters. \u00a0It abbreviates words, converts company names to their StockTwits ticker and shortens URL\u2019s using\u00a0bit.ly<\/a>. \u00a0Its intended use is as a bookmarklet so that the user can use 140it without ever having to leave Twitter. \u00a0Please see our demo video at\u00a0http:\/\/140it.com<\/a>(The password for the video is 140.)<\/p>\n Note: \u00a0http:\/\/140it.com<\/a>\u00a0is currently password protected. \u00a0The login credentials are: Additional Info: This was a weekend project for us and we aren\u2019t trying to make money off of it. \u00a0We just wanted to give back to the Twitter community.<\/p>\n We were inspired by a recent Arrington post where he said: \u00a0\u201dthis is the way to fix Twitter, directly via the user interface, not from a third party site that users will forget to go to.\u201d<\/p>\n We built 140it to work as a bookmarklet so that the user would never have to go to our site. \u00a0 We also made it a bookmarklet so that it would work on all browsers including Chrome which has become our de-facto browser.<\/p>\n Also, we would love to get 140it to as many people as would like it and are thus happy to have TechCrunch be the first to reveal the project.<\/p>\n Competitors: Twonvert:\u00a0http:\/\/www.twonvert.com\/<\/a> But, unlike our competitors, we made our utility work as a bookmarklet. \u00a0We also convert company names to their StockTwits tickers and shorten URL\u2019s using the\u00a0bit.ly<\/a>API. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n Company Name: UnHub Description: We were really excited about the new Skittles website, so we made a way for anybody to have one. Your UnHub URL allows others to navigate your profiles, photostreams, channels, etc with a persistent bar at the top of their screen. When we saw the Skittles\u2019 website on Monday, we thought its user interface would work well for individuals who wanted to showoff their web presence; and, three days later, we are releasing UnHub.<\/p>\n Your UnHub URL makes a lot of sense for the \u201cWeb\u201d entry on your Twitter page. As an example, we made one for Michael Arrington:http:\/\/unhub.com\/MichaelArrington<\/a>and we also made one for Josie\u2019s Restaurant here in New York: \u00a0http:\/\/unhub.com\/josies<\/a><\/p>\n Overall, we wanted UnHub to be a dead simple, lightweight way to display your \u201cdecentralized me\u201d to others. \u00a0 On that topic, we enjoyed your post (http:\/\/www.techcrunch.com\/2008\/03\/30\/friendfeed-the-centralized-me-and-data-portability\/<\/a>) and some earlier discussions by Robert O\u2019Brien, Loic Le Meur, et al.<\/p>\n Additional Info: We don\u2019t think UnHub is technologically remarkable in any way (iframes have been around for a long time). That said, we\u2019re excited about it for the same reason we were impressed with Skittles: it could be a new way for companies and individuals to showcase their online presence.<\/p>\n In addition to individuals using UnHub, we also think businesses should take a page out of Skittles\u2019 book. UnHub is a simple (and free) way for them to start. \u00a0A restaurant\u2019s UnHub could include a link to their current web page, but also to a google map of their location (for directions), yelp profile (for reviews), menupages (menu), opentable (reservation) and seamlessweb (ordering online). \u00a0Seehttp:\/\/unhub.com\/josies<\/a><\/p>\n Soon we\u2019ll allow people to replace their UnHub URL with a custom domain name, which should make the experience more personal. We\u2019ll also start delivering analytics.<\/p>\n Also, Twitter has temporarily disallowed iframes, so we\u2019re redirecting to Tweetree for now.<\/p>\n As far as our backgrounds, please check our new unhub pages: \u00a0http:\/\/unhub.com\/vacanti<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0http:\/\/unhub.com\/jdmoran<\/a><\/p>\n The site is password protected, so please use the following login information: We had a great experience with techcrunch announcing our twitter tool 140it and would be thrilled to have you guys announce UnHub.<\/p>\n Competitors: Social network aggregators, and there are some great ones like Chi.mp, Power.com and Friendfeed, pull in content from other sources to a single profile page. However, our goal is to \u201cstay out of the way\u201d of dedicated sites that specialize in a single aspect of your web presence (e.g., Flickr for photos, Youtube for videos, etc.). We\u2019d never be able to replicate the functionality of these specialty sites, nor effectively marry their diverse user experiences. That\u2019s why we don\u2019t have an UnHub profile page, just a persistent bar that sits on top of the ordinary browsing experience.<\/p>\n Also, you can include any site in your UnHub (e.g., your company website that was built 10 years ago or your Halo 3 player profile), not just those sites up to speed with Data Portability. Aggregators are great at bringing content into a single place, but UnHub is about sharing multiple places at once.<\/p>\n In theory, another competitor is blogs: some folks devote a lot of energy on their blogs and think of them as their primary web presence. They can designate their blog as \u201chome\u201d on UnHub, so when people follow their UnHub URL their blog will appear \u2013 in addition to a persistent navigation bar with which to explore their other locations (Twitter, Yelp, Flickr, etc). Blog widgets \/ links serve a similar linking purpose, though if a visitor clicks to a blogger\u2019s Flickr stream, it\u2019s unlikely the visitor will go back and check out other sites the blogger has invested in. Hope you find these two pitches helpful. If people have examples of other pitches that worked, let me know below in the comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Your launch will hav… more A Little Background<\/h3>\n
\nJason<\/p><\/blockquote>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/yipit-vinicius.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com\/files\/2011\/03\/140it-300x111.png\")
<\/a>It was up on TechCrunch shortly after and thousands of people tried out the site, got the bookmarklet, tweeted about it, and started using it. While we never intended to turn 140it into a business, it was a great experience and gave us the confidence to keep pushing forward.<\/p>\nKey Tactics<\/h3>\n
\n
\nWebsite:\u00a0http:\/\/140it.com<\/a>
\nSubmitted: January 26, 2009 at 11:55 AM PST<\/p>\n
\nusername: friends
\npassword: 140<\/p>\n
\nTweetShrink:\u00a0http:\/\/tweetshrink.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n
\nTags: twitter, utility, bookmarklet<\/p>\nUnHub TechCrunch Pitch<\/h3>\n
\nWebsite:\u00a0http:\/\/unhub.com<\/a>
\nSubmitted: March 6, 2009 at 11:16 AM PST<\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/unhub.com<\/a>
\nusername: techcrunch
\npassword: techcrunch<\/p>\n
\nTags: socialnetworkaggregator, sharing, identity, lifestream, socialnetworknavigator<\/p><\/blockquote>\n