Most PR onboarding calls fail in the same way: the founder talks, the comms person takes notes, and everyone leaves satisfied. Then someone sits down to write the pitch and discovers there’s nothing in the notes that a stranger would care about.
The fix is structural. As one experienced tech communicator put it, the problem begins when the founder is driving the conversation and you’re furiously transcribing — rather than you driving and extracting what you actually need.
Below are the questions to ask a founder during PR onboarding, organised by what each set is designed to surface. Use them as a working script, not a survey.
Before you start: set the expectation
Tell the founder upfront that this will involve a lot of questions, and keep going until you genuinely understand the company.
A writer who produced investor pitch material for technical companies described doing exactly this — announcing at the start that he’d be asking a great many questions until he was satisfied he understood the product thoroughly. His view on the typical twenty-minute product explanation: it’s not enough. Keep them for a full hour and keep digging into whatever doesn’t land.
The framing that makes this comfortable for both sides: you’re playing reporter. You’re asking what a journalist will ask, so nobody is surprised later. Founders accept this readily when they understand a deeper brief produces better coverage.
Block 60–90 minutes. Record it if they consent — several practitioners run recordings through AI afterwards to check what actually came across.
Block 1: The product, in plain language (7 questions)
- Explain what the company does as you’d explain it to a smart twelve-year-old.
- What does the product actually do or change — and for whom specifically?
- Who is worse off if this doesn’t exist?
- What did people in this situation do before you existed?
- What’s the essence of what you’re doing, as opposed to how you’re doing it?
- Which parts of the technology stack matter to the customer, and which are purely internal?
- If you had to remove one technology from your description entirely, which would lose the least meaning?
That last question is more useful than it looks. It surfaces whether a trend term — blockchain, AI, whichever is current — is doing real work in the story or is decoration that will invite skepticism.
Block 2: Newsworthiness (6 questions)
- Why should anyone care about this today rather than last year?
- Is the underlying science or technology genuinely new, or a new application of something established?
- Who else is doing something comparable, and how are you different?
- What’s the most surprising thing you’ve learned building this?
- What proof do you have — adoption numbers, performance data, customer outcomes, independent validation?
- What can you now do that was impossible or impractical eighteen months ago?
Questions 9 and 10 identify whether you have a science angle. Question 12 determines whether you have a pitch at all. Claims without proof points don’t survive a reporter’s first look.
Block 3: The founder story (4 questions)
- Why you? What in your background led here?
- What did you get wrong early on?
- Have you done anything genuinely unusual — an unlikely career path, an unexpected origin, a decision most people wouldn’t make?
- What would you say publicly that a competitor wouldn’t?
Be honest with yourself about the answers. As one practitioner observed, very few people care about a generic startup profile unless there’s a remarkable backstory behind it. If Block 3 comes back thin, drop the founder angle and lead with impact.
Block 4: Risk and skepticism (5 questions)
- What’s the strongest argument against what you’re building?
- What would a skeptical journalist in this sector ask you first?
- Is there anything in your category that has a credibility problem right now?
- What happens to the business if the regulatory environment changes?
- Has anyone accused you — publicly or privately — of overstating what this does?
This block is the one most agencies skip, and it’s the one that prevents disasters. In categories carrying baggage, experienced practitioners warn that reporters will lead with the challenge rather than the compliment — asking, in effect, whether the whole proposition is legitimate. Related concerns like greenwashing arrive unprompted in sustainability-adjacent sectors.
A founder hearing question 19 for the first time from a journalist will answer badly. Hearing it from you, in onboarding, they get to practise.
Block 5: Audience and access (5 questions)
- Which publications do you and your customers actually read?
- Which recent article about a comparable company did you think was good, and why?
- Who else on the team can speak to the technical detail if needed?
- What can you not say publicly — under NDA, in a quiet period, or commercially sensitive?
- What does a successful outcome look like to you in six months?
Question 24 is quietly the most valuable in the list. It gives you published examples in the founder’s own language preferences, which becomes leverage later — a tactic several practitioners recommend is showing founders the actual language used in coverage of similar companies rather than arguing about simplification in the abstract.
Question 25 matters because the founder may not be the best explainer in the building. Involving other team members is a legitimate route when the CEO can’t get out of the weeds.
After the call: three checks
Write the summary and review it with them. A former journalist’s method: draft short summaries, then go through them with the founder to verify accuracy. It can feel humbling to admit something didn’t land, but the subject being complex isn’t your failing — translating it is your job.
Run the one-sentence test. Give the client’s existing materials to an AI model and ask what the company actually does, in one sentence. If the answer is vague, the source material is vague. Some practitioners use this routinely as a diagnostic on press releases and marketing copy.
Apply the layperson check. Explain the company to someone with no background in the sector. If they can’t repeat it back, you’re not ready to pitch — and neither is the founder.
When onboarding reveals a bigger problem
Occasionally this process surfaces something uncomfortable: there isn’t a clear story because there isn’t a clear product. Several experienced practitioners noted that some startups are genuinely vague beneath the pitch, and that no amount of messaging work fixes that.
If Blocks 1 and 2 both come back empty — no concrete outcome, no proof, no differentiation — you have an advisory conversation to have, not a pitch to write. Telling a client their announcement isn’t ready is part of the service.
Frequently asked questions
How long should a PR onboarding call with a founder be? Longer than most people schedule. Practitioners working with technical founders routinely describe an hour or more, followed by independent research and follow-up questions.
What if the founder can’t answer these questions? That’s common and not disqualifying. Technical founders are frequently too close to the detail. Your role is to ask enough questions to construct the answer, then verify it back with them.
Should I record PR onboarding calls? With permission, yes — it lets you review what was actually said rather than what you managed to write down, and you can process the transcript afterwards to check whether the explanation holds up.
What’s the most important question to ask? “What does it actually do or change, and for whom?” If you leave without a clean answer to that, nothing else in the engagement will work.
Related reading: How to Explain a Complex Product Simply · How to Pitch a Deep Tech Startup to Journalists
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