You're an early stage company eager to secure Angel or VC investment. You think "If I could just get some visibility, it will help validate my company and drive customer interest or sales..." Great idea, and you'd be on to something if it were easy to create buzz for a concept or very early entity. But it's not. This is not a one-size-fits-all answer, but generally speaking, the small funds you can allocate for marketing should be applied toward collateral/web site, sales or even advertising (moreso for consumer markets) - then you can go after publicity with customer, investor and adrenaline in your back pocket. You'll simply get much better bang for the buck with traditional media outreach once you're actually "press ready."
A PR person can serve you well in the earliest stages, however, with competitive positioning, messaging, company materials (like exec bios) and helping to evolve your core sales deck for investor or analyst audiences. One of our roles is sanity checking based on our knowledge of the media landscape, present market hot-buttons, vendor perceptions, etc. We dilute the cool aid you're drinking and poke holes, so that you're better prepared to field tough questions and can succinctly explain your market, offering and competitive differentiators.
Here's why. Press credibility, albeit blurring with the blogosphere, assumes checks and balances, which is why editorial has been measured to be 3x more credible than an ad. With tech PR in particular, there are phases when a company is most appealing to press: funding, launch (caveats here), customer wins, awards, new product launches, etc. Note the first being funding. To get into the Boston Business Journal or Mass High Tech, for instance, a reporter will ask or want you to share who/what entities are backing you, who your initial few paying customers are, where your office is based, how many employees you have, AND who you deem as your closest competitors. Answering "we compete with in-house/proprietary systems" won't cut it. Pick at least one market and company that comes close, then state how you differ. Also be aware that U.S. press generally have tunnel vision and decline to cover organizations based outside of the country.
There are of course a few exceptions to securing very early-stage interest. For instance, if your innovation or organization happens to be spearheaded by a noteworthy experienced and well-known executive, you might get some early buzz going. But do you want to spend that one-time "launch" article opportunity on a largely executive profile? It's hard, but try to think longer term.
