When was your company founded & where is it located?

Press Ranger was founded in 2024 in San Francisco, CA

What are past projects, failures, or successes you’ve had in your career?

Press Ranger is my 4th startup. My first startup was a software/hardware retail analytics tool that was acquired by Groupon. The second was a tours and activities platform that was acquired by Booking.com. The third was a fundraising platform that was acquired by a private equity firm in 2023. All three of them are still operational and growing today, but throughout that time, I became very frustrated with the PR software options. It felt like they operated as a cartel with aggressive contracts and expensive pricing. I'm building Press Ranger to make PR tools accessible for businesses of all sizes.

What is your team size?

Technical founder alongside additional developers, contractors, support and QA

Are you funded or bootstrapped?

I (Steve) put in $1.5M of my own money into Press Ranger. We are already profitable and we'll use that capital to invest in the product throughout 2025 alongside sales and marketing in 2025.

What 3rd party tools is your product critically dependent on?

We are not critically dependent on any 3rd party system.

Where is customer data stored?

AWS / USA, encrypted at rest and in transit

How many customers do you have today?

More than 3,000

What’s the origin of the idea for your product?

In trying to get press for my previous startups, I spent so much money on PR software that didn't *do* anything or PR firms that also did even less. In talking to other founders, I noticed that everyone has the same story of spending thousands of dollars on PR campaigns that didn't work. Big PR tools like Cision/Meltwater/Muck Rack/Prowly charge $10,000-20,000/year for access to media databases so that companies can pitch their press releases via PR firms who pay for the software. The result of media databases being that expensive is that only big companies can get in the press. We want to change that.

What problem is your product solving and how?

Legacy PR software is expensive, outdated, and doesn't actually help you run a PR campaign. Press Ranger fixes this by giving everyone access to the same toolkits used by big PR firms for a fraction of the price. Rather than spend $10,000+/year on PR software and then $3,000 per press release, you can run your own campaigns and publish press releases at wholesale pricing.

What’s the #1 thing you’re looking to gain from the AppSumo campaign?

We got amazing feedback and momentum from the previous campaign. We’re looking to build upon that and see how the AppSumo community likes all of the features we’ve launched in the past 6 months.

What are your plans with the customers, cash, and learnings from the AppSumo campaign?

This is my second Press Ranger AppSumo campaign. We’ve spent the past 6 months adding in a ton of additional features and integrating all of the feedback we got from the first campaign. Now we want to do it again to get more ideas, stress test the product, and continue to build on the momentum we built from the first campaign.

Any other details to clarify the deal?

Press Ranger works everywhere that has news but favors US/global media outlets. Even if you are not in the US, global media coverage is generally what people shoot for in PR campaigns though you can target any country that has news.

Press Ranger is not a bulk email tool. You can export data from the platform and run mass email campaigns but we strongly suggest against that as we never see those campaigns perform well. We have detailed guides to show you how to run your own PR campaigns, publish press releases, and add PR campaigns to your repertoire.

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