AlleyWatch Editorial Guidelines

In an effort to provide more transparency around The AlleyWatch editorial process, the team at AlleyWatch has compiled the following editorial guidelines in the interest of reducing redundant work for startups, brands, agencies, and our team. As the largest New York City-focused tech organization, AlleyWatch has a responsibility to maintain a stringent focus for the benefit of our readership, employees, management, and shareholders.

Our editorial coverage is limited to companies that are based, founded, and headquartered in New York City.

New York City comprises the 5 boroughs that sit where the Hudson River meets the Atlantic Ocean. The 5 boroughs and counties are commonly known as Bronx, Kings, New York, Queens, and Richmond County.

Companies that are founded outside of this geographical area do not qualify for editorial coverage on the AlleyWatch platform even if these companies have a local presence in the city. The struggles and challenges of launching and building a business in New York City are unique and as a result, companies that do not share in this experience cannot relate and would provide a voice that is inauthentic to the AlleyWatch editorial mission.

Any recurring columns that include companies outside of New York City (e.g. national funding roundups, notable fundings) are completely data-driven and pitches have no relevance to, or impact on, the data.  The data is the data.

We do not provide any editorial coverage to service providers.

Service providers in this context can be described as but not limited to legal, accounting, financial services, real estate including coworking spaces, crowdfunding platforms, consultancies, hosting providers, data centers, advertising agencies, PR agencies, HR benefits platforms, payroll platforms, recruiting firms, large brands interested in reaching an entrepreneurial audience through corporate innovation programs and such, and legacy technology providers.

If you are one of these service providers, you should have a vested interest in seeing AlleyWatch succeed and supporting its growth through paid advertising; we are happy to work with you.

We have executed a multitude of successful campaigns for companies in these spaces and maintain parity in our offering. More details on how you can reach the most influential audience in tech in New York City at scale here.

We are primarily interested in major lifecycle events of companies that include launch, funding, exit, and shutdowns.

By launch, it is the first time that the company is covered on AlleyWatch. The rest are rather self-explanatory.

Strategic partnerships and hirings do not usually qualify as a major lifecycle event.

Growing startups should be signing awesome new partnerships and hiring awesome new people. These events usually are not of interest to qualify as major news for our audience. Outside of the headline, there is very rarely enough to warrant producing a piece.  For hiring announcements, we offer a paid service, NYC Tech Hired.

We do not promote events or initiatives unless done under a marketing partnership.

We work with several organizations across the spectrum on a paid marketing basis to drive targeted response from our audience in the form of qualified registrations and applications for events, conferences, and initiatives.

We do not cover crowdfunding campaigns, ICO capital raises, and similar capital-raising campaigns.

We have extensive experiencing assisting companies with these types of campaigns through paid marketing partnerships. Learn more here.

Pitches from agencies that do not meet the criterion listed above will be recorded as irrelevant and logged at Startup PR League Table.

This is an initiative that we have undertaken to provide more transparency around the Startup PR industry as a whole – an industry that we strongly feel should have some accountability.

The aforementioned items are not meant to be exclusionary but rather provide some definition around our areas of editorial interest and our interest in establishing equitable partnerships within the startup community. These guidelines are evolving, as is our company to meet our growth. As a result, items that were previously suitable for editorial on our platform may no longer be aligned with our present objectives.

Lastly, if you do not qualify for editorial coverage, there is a strong likelihood that we can help your organization accomplish its goal through a marketing partnership at scale. Feel free to learn more about these opportunities here.