How to Get Your Startup Featured in the News as a Teenager
To get your startup featured in the news as a teenager, pitch a specific reporter one short, personalized email with a clear story hook (a teen building a real company that solves a real problem), a few concrete numbers, and everything they need to write the piece without asking you follow-up questions. That’s the whole game. The rest of this post is how to do each of those parts well.
Press is worth chasing for two reasons. Trust: a link from your local paper or a real online publication tells strangers, customers, and future judges that you’re legit. Traffic: a single article can send hundreds of people to your landing page in an afternoon. And here’s your unfair advantage. “A 16-year-old built a company” is a story a reporter can sell to their editor. Most adult founders are boring to cover. You are not.
What makes a teen startup newsworthy?
A reporter’s job is to find things their readers will care about. They are not going to write “local teen makes an app” just because you asked. You need a hook, which is the one-sentence reason this is news right now.
Strong hooks for a teen founder usually fall into a few buckets:
- A milestone. You launched, hit 500 users, made your first $1,000, or won a competition. Something happened.
- A local angle. You built something that helps people in your own town, or you go to a school the paper covers.
- A relatable problem. You solved something people already complain about (parking near the high school, finding a tutor, splitting group work).
- A surprising fact. You’re 15 and turned down an offer, or you built the whole thing for under $50.
If you can’t say your hook in one sentence, you don’t have one yet. “I’m a junior at Lincoln High and I built a free app 400 students use to find open study rooms” is a hook. “I have a startup” is not.
Winning a competition is one of the cleanest hooks there is, because the news already happened and someone else validated it. If you don’t have a milestone yet, entering the right competition can hand you one.
Who to actually email (and how to find them)
Do not email tips@newspaper.com. That inbox is a graveyard. You want a specific human whose job is to write about people like you.
Here’s how to build a list in about an hour:
- Start hyper-local. Your town’s newspaper, your school paper, your city’s local news site, and any “local business” or “young people doing cool things” blogs. Lowest bar, highest hit rate.
- Find the right beat. A “beat” is the topic a reporter covers. Look for people who write about education, local business, technology, or community. Skip the sports and crime reporters.
- Get their name and email. Reporters usually put their email in their bio or byline, or on LinkedIn. If it’s hidden, common formats are
firstname.lastname@publication.com, and a free email-verifier tool will confirm it. - Note something they wrote. Find one recent article of theirs you can genuinely reference. This is what separates you from spam.
Aim for a starter list of 10 to 15 real people. Ten personalized emails out-perform a hundred blasts every time. This is the same principle behind cold emails that actually get replies: make the person feel like you wrote to them.
Which outlets should you pitch first?
Bigger is not better when you’re starting out. A national tech site gets thousands of pitches a week and will ignore you. Your local paper gets a few and would love a good student story. Work the ladder from the bottom up: each small piece becomes proof you use to land the next, bigger one.
| Outlet type | How hard to land | What it’s good for |
|---|---|---|
| School newspaper | Easy | Practice, a first clip, on-campus users |
| Local town paper / news site | Medium | Trust with locals, real backlink, credibility |
| Regional / city outlets | Harder | Wider reach, stronger name to cite |
| Niche online blogs (edtech, teen founders) | Medium | Readers who are exactly your customers |
| National tech press | Very hard | Skip for now unless you have a big milestone |
Notice the second-to-last row. A blog read by exactly your target customers often beats a bigger outlet full of readers who’ll never use your product. Coverage is a distribution channel like any other, and the best channels are where your customers already are.
How to write the pitch email
Keep it under 150 words. A busy reporter decides in five seconds whether to keep reading. Your email has four jobs, in order:
- A subject line that is the story. Not “Interview request” but “16-year-old built a free study-room finder 400 students use.” Say the news in the subject.
- One line of genuine context. “I read your piece last week on the new career center at Lincoln.” This proves you’re a person, not a bot.
- The story in two or three sentences. Who you are, what you built, and the hook with a real number.
- Everything they need, attached or linked. A link to your site, a one-paragraph summary, and one good photo of you or the product. Make it impossible to say “send me more info.”
End with a soft close: “Happy to hop on a quick call or answer questions over email, whatever’s easier.” Then stop. No “please please please.”
Here’s the skeleton:
Subject: 16-year-old built a free study-room finder 400 students already use
Hi [Name], I really liked your recent story on [specific thing]. I’m a junior at Lincoln High and I built [Product], a free app that shows students which study rooms are open in real time. Since launching in October, 400 students have used it and it’s cut the “walking around looking for a room” problem to basically zero. I think your readers would like the angle of a student solving a school problem themselves. I’ve linked the site and a photo below; happy to jump on a call whenever works. Thanks for reading.
What to have ready before you hit send
Reporters work on deadlines. If you make them wait for materials, they move on to an easier story. Have these ready first:
- A working landing page. When 300 people click through, they need to get you in five seconds and do something (sign up, download, join a waitlist). Fix this before you pitch, because a landing page that converts is where all the traffic goes.
- One clean photo. You at your laptop, or a clear screenshot of the product. Phone quality is fine; just make it well-lit and not blurry.
- A two-sentence description. No jargon. If a reporter can’t restate what you built after reading it once, rewrite it, the same muscle as explaining a complicated idea simply.
- Two or three real numbers. Users, downloads, dollars, signups, weeks since launch. Never invent them. A small true number (“400 students in three months”) is more credible and more interesting than a vague big one.
- Your parent’s okay. You’re a minor, so a reporter may want a parent’s permission before quoting you. Sort it out early so it doesn’t stall the story.
What to do after you send
Send your batch, then wait three or four business days. Silence is normal and is not a no. If you haven’t heard back, send one short follow-up: “Just floating this back to the top of your inbox, no worries if it’s not a fit.” One follow-up, then move to the next name.
When someone says yes, over-prepare. Reply fast, answer clearly, and give them the numbers and quotes they need without making them dig. Reporters remember sources who made their job easy, and they come back. A good relationship with one local reporter beats a hundred cold pitches.
When the article runs, amplify it. Share it everywhere, add a “Featured in” logo to your site, and screenshot it for your pitch deck’s traction slide. Press is one of the strongest credibility signals you can put in front of judges, customers, or a program’s admissions team.
Getting covered is a real, teachable marketing skill, and it’s exactly what you practice with feedback during batch0’s Market week. If you want structured reps at building traction and telling your story, look at the program or just apply. Applying is free, and the teen-founder angle you’d use to pitch a reporter is the same one that makes your company worth building in the first place.