Paras Chopra Profile picture
Feb 21 11 tweets 2 min read
Get press by giving journalists something surprising.

a 🧵
1/ Journalists don’t get excited about new products and features the same way an entrepreneur gets.
2/ This is because:

First, a journalist gets 100s of pitches every day and a particular product launch announcement is no different than the many hundreds of launch announcements sitting her inbox.

Second, aliens visiting us is news but your new feature is certainly not news.
3/ News is something that caters to basic human curiosity about the new and surprising.

There is a reason why one death in a tragic car accident gets covered as news but thousands of deaths every day due to preventable diseases in poor countries don’t make it into the news.
4/ The former is surprising. People want to know how that particular accident happened.

The latter is a statistic, a daily occurrence that people are familiar with and after a while becomes pretty boring to read (even though everyone knows that's so much more important).
5/ To get a journalist’s attention, you have to get into the mindset of being a journalist yourself.
6/ Given the almost infinite number of things they can read online, people choose a few pieces that catch their attention (and those are usually surprising, breakthrough, or controversial).
7/ Similarly, a journalist chooses to read only the pitches that catch her attention among the hundreds of pitches that get sent daily.
8/ Next time you try to get into the press, try answering why would the journalist pick your piece to cover.

Don’t talk about the boring.

Highlight only the surprising part of your announcement.

And if there’s none, don’t spend effort and money on doing press releases.
9/ Remember 🧠

to be in the news, understand what usually is news.
10/ That's it!

I'm posting ~1 new mental model for entrepreneurs every week.

Here's the entire list of 60+ mental models that I'll cover: invertedpassion.com/free-book-ment…

Make sure you sign up for email updates on the book page.

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More from @paraschopra

Feb 22
Some random thoughts on people feeling offended / triggered online.

🧵
1/ If you’re online and have thoughts or opinions, you will end up triggering someone.

You can’t help it, neither can the other person.

It’s the nature of non-face to face interactions.
2/ Social media is perfectly designed to amplify group solidarity around hate.

That’s what gets engagement and ads.

It’s not in Twitter or Facebook’s interest to curb hate because that’ll curb engagement too.
Read 12 tweets
Feb 16
🎉 Announcing Jan 2022 winners of Gaur and Chopra Escape Velocity grants.

We're awarding 6 people under 25 years of age, a sum of Rs 50,000 each.

Their profiles in 🧵
1/ Maxito is a young 🎶 music composer.

Right now he records songs using the phone mic but this grant of Rs. 50k will help him buy equipment to take his compositions to next level and make a living out of this.

Check out his songs: open.spotify.com/album/58qDziUO…
2/ Maryam is a high school student from Ernakulum, Kerla.

She got into the semi-final round of 🧪 HSBC science innovation contest (top 200 out of 500 entries).

She will use this grant to purchase components (such as GPS module and fingerprint sensor) for her project.
Read 9 tweets
Feb 15
The biggest barrier to solving world’s hardest problems (such as poverty, climate change, animal suffering, pollution) isn’t knowledge gap, it’s their economic infeasibility.

If a problem is economically attractive, entrepreneurs and investors rush in to solve it.
Government funded programs are often seen as a way to solve these economically impractical problems.

But government isn’t well suited for innovation.

Its role, rather, should be to create economic incentives that make solving these problems attractive.
For example, carbon tax will suddenly make reducing carbon emissions economically attractive.

Similarly, eliminating subsidies to meat industry will suddenly make investment into cultivated-meat and alt-proteins economically attractive.
Read 4 tweets
Feb 7
Starting to do a 🗓️ monthly retrospective in public. Should be a fun experiment.

Here's how my Jan 2022 went and what I'm looking forward to doing in Feb.
Earlier I did a retrospective on how my 2021 went: invertedpassion.com/how-my-2021-we…

I got a ton of value from pausing and seeing where did my time go.
Hopefully, the increased frequency (from yearly to monthly) will help in becoming more intentional about life and doing it in public will help in accountability.
Read 4 tweets
Feb 7
Your 30 second pitch shouldn’t be about you.

a 🧵
1/ Entrepreneurs generally confuse their 30 second pitch as something that needs to be about what they’re doing.

This interpretation is understandable because usually anyone they meet ends up asking them what they do and the entrepreneur faithfully launches into her pitch.
2/ Unfortunately, such a pitch often ends up with the listener quickly losing interest.

This is because even though people ask what you do with good intentions, they usually do not actually deeply care about what you do.
Read 18 tweets
Jan 31
Recently finished "The Spike: An Epic Journey Through The Brain in 2.1 Seconds" by @markdhumphries

a 🧵 with my notes on the #book Image
1/ As the book's subtitle suggests, it's about the neural code our brain uses for doing what it does.

The book is rich with details and I learned a lot of new facts and ideas about the brain. I highly recommend the book to anyone who has an interest in neuroscience.
2/ Since writing about an object as complex as the brain can fill encyclopedias, I will focus my notes on what I know now that I didn't know before reading the book.
Read 50 tweets

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