Who are you?:

Julija (JJ) Jegorova, Founder, Black Unicorn PR

Who are your key clients?

Fintech:

Non-fintech:

Describe your PR firm in one sentence. What makes it different?

Black Unicorn PR is a boutique agency built exclusively for B2B tech startups, scaleups and VC. We operate as a true extension of the founding team, not just another agency pitching press releases for the sake of it. We're embedded in our clients' day-to-day in a way most agencies simply aren't. Think fractional, remote PR department: a Head of Comms and their team, plugged directly into yours via Slack and the tools you already use.

Who is your typical client?

We work with B2B tech startups from seed to pre-IPO, primarily in the UK and across Europe.

Fintech (we’ve been working with both earlier stage and unicorn clients), defence and insurtech have traditionally been our strongest verticals, but we work across the broader VC-backed tech landscape, including cybersecurity, healthtech, climatetech, travel tech, robotics and more.

We're a team of 15 and our sweet spot is companies that have product-market fit, a genuine appetite for thought leadership and are ready to invest in PR for the long haul.

Fintech is a crowded and noisy sector. How can founders cut through when everyone claims to be "revolutionising" something?

One of our journalist friends always talks about exactly this: “show, don’t tell,” she says. Journalists have heard it a thousand times. It might have worked at the beginning, but now it works against you.

Even if you’re genuinely revolutionising something, what cuts through is specificity, real numbers, real customer impact, case studies, a genuine point of view on where the industry is going wrong or an interesting opinion.

Fintech founders who position themselves as credible thought leaders, not just product promoters, consistently outperform those chasing headlines.

The story has to be about something bigger than the product. You can’t cut through with sheer willpower and brute-forcing PR, by the way. The foundation has to have real-world impact, otherwise, what are you even communicating? Why would anyone care? That needs to be there too.

What's the single biggest misconception founders have about what PR actually does?

In general, I find that most founders are not aware of how PR works. At all.

Some think that one well-written press release will have their phones ringing off the hook. Others expect top tier coverage with nothing to show for, simply because they are working with an agency.

PR is a long game, and its value is in building credibility and brand awareness over time, not generating instant sales spikes. I would say that 70% of my job is managing expectations.

The founders who get the best results are the ones who understand that PR is infrastructure, not a switch you flick. Coincidentally, it’s also the founders that are willing to listen and play ball with their PR team or agency.

Which types of founder personalities are easiest/hardest to work with?

We worked with all types of founder personalities: from driver CEOs to expressive CMOs. I don’t think it relates to a personality type, actually. Founders don’t need to be overly amiable, we’ve had founders who are in a rush, want to see results and use few words, but they still had the ability to trust, be patient and see PR results flourish by listening to advice and giving the inputs we needed.

We also worked with much more ‘talkative’ founders who are quick to develop personal relationships, and have been equally successful. We’ve also worked with extremely analytical people who look at every activity and result in detail and quantify constantly every single detail. At the end of the day, what matters most is being open to being a part of our team and listening to the advice they are paying to get.

How do you measure success in your work? Does this differ from the metrics that founders often rely upon?

Oh that is a tricky question! PR is genuinely hard to measure and that's part of what makes it misunderstood.

Founders often fixate either on a single big placement (“we want to be on TechCrunch”) or on numbers and numbers of articles. Much more interesting is to look at what’s behind the numbers: we look at share of voice, sentiment, quality of outlets relative to target audiences.

Then there’s the intangibles, and the compounding effect of consistent coverage over time: website visits, often reflected as unique viewers monthly, and AVE (advertising value equivalent) is one proxy, but it misses the point of what PR is actually doing for your reputation and sales funnel in the long run.

An article in a niche trade publication in front of the right small number of people can be worth more than a mention in a national, as there is more relevance and stakeholders with intent. On the other hand, sustaining wins in important publications can in itself become a super strong signal of trust. In our view, it’s more about a holistic approach that builds reputation, while leveraging everything the company has to offer, rather than an obsession with metrics.

Leverage your newsworthiness to the max, be the best you can be with PR. Track numbers and analyse performance, yes, but don’t obsess over them. There’s performance marketing and sales for that, PR works differently.

Pitching to journalists can be tough. What should founders know when trying to get coverage?

Journalists aren't your marketing team: they won't use your exact words and they certainly won't send drafts for approval before publishing. They have their own agenda, their own audience and their own angle. The sooner founders understand that, the more productive their relationship with the media becomes.

Do your basic research before you pitch: know what they cover, who their audience is and whether your story is actually relevant to them. Keep pitches short and lead with the newsworthy element for that contact, not the product. It’s all about stories, not benefits and features (of course, they can be mentioned in the right place, at the right time). If you want to purely focus on your product features: go to performance marketing or sales.

Also, don't mass-blast. It’s not email marketing. Don't chase backlinks. Followups are fine, but not if incessant. A warm, relevant, well-timed pitch to one journalist beats a blanket email to a hundred.

What's the most common mistake a founder makes in their first media interview? And how do you fix it?

There is so much. Some people are naturals, but it definitely helps to be prepared with some key messages and a briefing with information on the journalist, the outlet and example articles from that journo in the past.

The key messages are not designed to ramble about your own company, but to make sure you are confident in introducing yourself and the most important aspects about our company. Be a human, not a robot. Know where the red lines are in terms of what you can say or not, but otherwise answer candidly and have a real conversation.

Media is changing. How is your budget allocation shifting?

We're almost exclusively focused on earned media: media relations, thought leadership, podcast placements, speaking opportunities and opeds. Essentially, everything that builds credibility through third-party validation rather than paid placement.

Having said that, if we consider allocation of time and resources, we can definitely say that podcasts, events and newsletters are gaining ground rapidly. PR is all about trust and new trust intermediaries are emerging. As AI proliferates and content becomes cheaper, people’s bar for trust increases - it’s important that a founder can sustain a long, recorded conversation, or appear on stage.

We like to challenge a bit the perception that some push that mainstream media’s days are numbered. There’s definitely a shift happening, with winners and losers, but cases like the NY Times and The Atlantic show that legacy media can become sustainable. And many media brands born in the last 10 years are still doing well.

What's been your biggest win in PR?

It's a broad question and the easy answer would be to rattle off publications: BBC, Bloomberg, Reuters, FT, TechCrunch and the likes. Or point to a campaign, a broadcast segment, an op-ed that landed well.

But honestly? The biggest win has been accompanying some incredible founders through the full arc of their journey. We have clients we've worked with for four to five years, watching them grow from early-stage bets into market leaders. Translating real-world impact into media narratives and public conversations that actually moved the needle for them. Watching where those stories took them: exits, unicorn valuations, acquisitions. Whether early stage or bigger companies. And being there through the tough moments too. Those are the wins I actually remember.

A notable one in fintech where this is reflected was Nordigen. We worked for some time and were very successful. Their founder Rolands played a big part in that, he helped break down open banking so clearly. It was early days for open banking back then. Among other things, we helped them with the launch of their free open banking data API (everyone else was charging back then). The launch of the platform made it to TechCrunch, a rare feat as in those years funding was pretty much the only way in for early stage startups. We were also working hard on Rolands’ thought leadership. Some time after, they exited to GoCardless.

Which campaign, stunt, or piece of comms work from another PR team made you think 'I wish I'd done that'?

Back in the day, TransferWise sent naked protesters to demonstrate against unfair forex fees in front of banks. Bold, visual, and it told the world there was a David willing to take on Goliath, fighting something genuinely unjust. It earned attention and kickstarted a narrative that carried the brand for years. Brilliant move.

Stunts like that don't work for everyone, though, and shouldn't be tried without careful thought. The context has to be right, the timing has to be right, and above all, there has to be a real point of tension worth dramatising. There’s a place, time and reason for that. Done without that foundation, it's just noise. Done well, it can define a brand.

What advice would you give to a fintech founder who's about to hire their first PR firm?

Learn the basics of PR so you can make the right choice. Look at case studies and evidence of previous success rather than promises. Have they worked in your sector? Ask who will actually be on your account (you want senior people managing your day-to-day, not just showing up for the sales call). And if you're a startup, a boutique firm will likely serve you better: bigger agencies save their attention for bigger clients.

Be ready to let your PR agency manage you. The best agencies are confident enough to push back on your ideas and challenge your assumptions. That's a green flag, not a red one.

And here's something founders often underestimate: PR is not a tap you turn on and walk away from. The output is directly tied to the input, especially in the early stages.

Be ready to invest time: in briefings, in reviewing angles, in making yourself available for media opportunities. The more embedded you are in the process, the better the results. Hiring an agency and expecting miracles without that collaboration is setting everyone up to fail.

Want to feature in Fintech PR Unfiltered? Get in touch at [email protected], and we’ll take it from there.

Features are not endorsements unless stated.