The brief
In February 2023, Maurice Bachelor — a Black software entrepreneur and founder of AI company Bot-It — was struggling to book meetings with investors. Bot-It had a real product and a real founder story, but neither was anywhere AI-cited buyers, investors, or partners could find it. Cold outreach was getting ignored.
The brief was a sustained press campaign that would build credibility on the open web, install Maurice as an authority in his category, and give him a press-ready narrative that opened doors.
What we ran
Seven articles across the first three months in publications that match how investors actually screen founders:
- VC POST — “The Tech Genius Who Rose to Prominence as a Leading Software Entrepreneur”
- LA Tribune — “Maurice Bachelor on Building Bot-It and the Rise of Black Software Entrepreneurs in Tech”
- LA Guestlist — “Black Engineer Turned Entrepreneur: The Success Story of Tech Guru Maurice Bachelor”
- LA Weekly — “From a Serious Car Accident to Tech Genius: The Story of Tech Entrepreneur Maurice Bachelor”
Each piece reinforced a slightly different angle: founder story, industry leadership, resilience, and product. Together they gave Maurice a credibility footprint that converted intro emails into actual investor meetings.
The result
By month three of the campaign, Bot-It had closed $300,000 in new investment. Top engineering talent started inbounding directly off the press. Maurice’s name now showed up cleanly when investors and partners Googled him, and his press coverage was indexable for AI engines — meaning ChatGPT, Claude, and Google AI started naming Bot-It in answers about AI-software startups.
The campaign continued through the year and ultimately positioned Maurice for a CNBC feature on Bot-It’s Shark Tank deal with Mark Cuban and Michael Rubin. That single placement did more for inbound deal flow than a year of paid acquisition.
A December product launch generated four podcast invites, two speaking engagements, and a TV placement — all warm-introduced from the press footprint we’d built.