The below is taken from our Live Webinar with Tech PR Pro and TFD Founder, Stephanie Forrest – you can find the full video here.

For early-stage and scaling tech businesses, Communications can be a low priority. Product comes first. Engineering comes first. Sales comes first. But in today’s noisy, competitive landscape, communications, and increasingly Public Relations (PR), isn’t a “nice to have”, it’s a strategic lever for growth. Many founders wonder when they should invest in PR, but the reality is that strong communication and PR strategies underpin every successful growth journey and influence every key stakeholder.

As Stephanie Forrest, Founder and CEO of TFD, put it during our recent discussion: “If you don’t have a story, it’s really hard to engage externally with all of the audiences… whether those are investors, potential partners or customers.” This is the foundation of communications and PR for start-ups: making your organisation understandable, memorable and relevant, while also protecting and elevating your company’s reputation.

Storytelling Drives Visibility, Perception and Credibility

The businesses that scale successfully don’t just build great products, they build great narratives. A clear, compelling story helps you articulate your mission and relevance, stand out in crowded categories like AI, deep tech or robotics, build trust with investors, attract top-tier talent, secure meaningful media coverage, and establish your market position early. Strong storytelling also enhances brand awareness, supports reputation management, and helps founders raise your profile among investors, partners and customers.

This is where a well-structured PR program or partnership with the right PR agency becomes invaluable. A cohesive PR team amplifies your voice, nurtures strong media relations, and works to increase visibility while safeguarding the brand equity you’re building.

Richard Savage, Partner at Sapio Consulting, argued that this isn’t optional for high-growth companies: “If you look at any business that scales successfully they aren’t just scaling their product or workforce, they are scaling their narrative and brand equity.”

This is especially critical during fundraising. Communications, alongside targeted PR campaigns, acts as a credibility engine, something founders underestimate. Richard highlighted how earned media creates validation: “If you’re going into conversation with early-stage investors and they see credible media endorsement for your business or product… it’s going to grease the wheels for those conversations.”
In other words, great PR builds trust and credibility, strengthens investor confidence and ultimately drives business growth.

When investors search for you – and they will – they should find more than a website. They should discover a coherent narrative across multiple touchpoints that reinforces your expertise, traction and vision. This is precisely why so many scale-ups choose to invest in public relations early, or partner with a specialist PR partner to strengthen their visibility and maximise ROI from communications.

Communications Isn’t One-Dimensional Anymore

Today’s communications landscape is fragmented, complex and fast-moving. Startups must think beyond traditional PR. They must consider brand narrative, multi-channel content, thought leadership, influencers and subject-matter validators, internal communications alignment, policy and regulatory communications, community engagement, and how PR integrates with their broader marketing strategy to strengthen your brand long term.

Stephanie described this new complexity: “Comms has become much, much more complex… If you’re really good at it, you’re thinking about different platforms, different channels, different audiences.”

This complexity is also what creates opportunity. If your competitors aren’t telling a coherent story, but you are, you gain early advantage. While others remain invisible or inconsistent in their messaging, a well-executed communications and PR strategy helps you own the narrative in your category and shape how your market perceives innovation in your space.

AI Isn’t Replacing Communications – It’s Increasing the Need for Human Storytelling

AI came up repeatedly during the discussion. Both leaders agreed AI is useful for efficiency, but dangerous when misused. Stephanie warned: “I’d be really wary about a person or a team, or an agency, that says they use AI for content.”

Richard added that AI has hugely added to the noise: “AI has led to a huge increase in quantity… but with that we have diminishing authenticity and trust. In a busier landscape the human reaction is to try and shortcut to trust markers and messaging that resonates with us – so earned media, influencers and human storytelling have an increasingly important role to play within the context of AI.”

In a world full of AI-generated sameness, human insight becomes the differentiator. Authentic voices, nuanced perspectives and strategic storytelling, core to strong communications and PR, cannot be automated. As content proliferation accelerates, quality and authenticity become more valuable, not less.

The Takeaway

Start early. Define messaging. Build your narrative. Invest in PR and strategic communications. It pays dividends across hiring, fundraising, brand visibility and long-term market differentiation.

Or, as Richard put it: “There’s a real opportunity for businesses at the early stage to use marketing and communications as a competitive advantage.”

The startups that recognise this early won’t just survive the noise, they’ll rise above it.

Thinking about a hire? Connect with our expert team across both Venture and Start Ups to discuss how we might be able to support.