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What early-stage startups can learn from tech giants
November 2, 2026
When you’re building an early-stage startup, it’s easy to look at companies like Microsoft, Cisco or IBM and think: We could never communicate like that.
They have massive teams, huge budgets, decades of brand recognition, entire departments dedicated to communications, marketing, investor relations and corporate affairs. In my experience, the most valuable lessons from these companies have very little to do with their size.
I’ve worked on both sides of the equation: startup communications and communications for large technology companies. And one thing I’ve noticed is that early-stage companies can borrow a lot from the way Fortune 500 companies think about reputation.
You don’t need their budget to adopt their discipline. Here are five things I’d take from the Fortune 500 playbook.
1. Build your reputation before you need it
Startups often think about PR when they have something to announce, something like:
- A funding round
- A product launch
- A new executive
- An acquisition
The companies with the strongest reputations don’t only communicate when they have news. The companies winning in the media build credibility continuously.
Microsoft, for example, doesn’t only talk about its products or acquisitions. Its leadership regularly discusses larger shifts in technology, the economy, AI, cybersecurity and the future of work. Its annual reporting also ties its technology to customer outcomes and broader questions around trust and responsible innovation.
Talking about more than announcements is an important distinction. I like to say that the news gets attention and reputation creates staying power.
An early-stage startup, whether raising a friends-and-family round, pursuing pre-seed funding or bootstrapping, should be thinking about what it wants to be known for. Most startups are ultimately looking for some combination of customers, investors and talent. Your media coverage should start associating you and your company with the larger problem you’re solving long before you need those audiences to pay attention.
2. Stop making every story about your company
One of the biggest PR mistakes I see from startups is making every piece of content sound like a product announcement. It’s harsh, but with no weight to your company name, the media doesn’t care. We need to think beyond:
- “We’re excited to announce…”
- “Our innovative platform…”
- “Our revolutionary technology…”
Your intended audiences do not care about your company nearly as much as you do. It’s not meant to be an insult, unfortunately, it is reality. Large technology companies have learned to make their expertise useful beyond their products.
IBM, for example, increasingly positions its expertise around the business problems companies are trying to solve with AI and hybrid cloud, rather than simply describing individual products. Your startup can do the same thing!
If you sell cybersecurity software, have an opinion about where cybersecurity is heading.If you built an AI company, talk about what AI is changing in your industry. If you’re a fintech founder, talk about how consumer expectations are changing.
You get where I’m going with this.
3. Develop a point of view
A company can publish 100 pieces of content and still have nothing to say because content and thought leadership aren’t the same thing.
The strongest technology companies tend to have clear positions on the issues that matter to their customers and industries.
Cisco, for example, isn’t selling networking and security products. Its leadership consistently talks about the changing technology landscape, AI, digital resilience and the infrastructure businesses will need to operate in that environment.
An early-stage startup doesn’t need to have a 40-year corporate history to have a point of view. It just needs to answer this question: What do we believe that our industry needs to hear?
Maybe you believe companies are approaching AI completely wrong. Maybe you think customer acquisition has become too expensive to be the default growth strategy. Maybe you think the future of your industry will look fundamentally different in five years.
Interesting PR starts with “here’s what we believe” and not “here’s what we do.”
4. Make complex things easy to understand
This is especially important for technology startups as the people closest to a product often have the hardest time explaining it simply. The engineers and founders know every feature, every technical detail and every acronym. Their audience does not.
One of the things large technology companies have gotten very good at is translating complex technology into business outcomes. Microsoft’s messaging around AI, for example, frequently connects the technology to specific customer outcomes rather than leaving the audience to figure out why the technology matters.
Startups should use a similar approach:
- Don’t tell me what your technology does. Tell me what changes because it exists.
- Don’t tell me your platform uses machine learning. Tell me what problem that machine learning solves.
- Don’t make the journalist, investor or customer do the translation for you. If your audience has to work to understand your value, you’ve already lost them.
5. Start building voices beyond the founder
In the early days, the founder is usually the company’s spokesperson, salesperson and visionary. Sometimes the person doing the podcast and the person posting on LinkedIn.
Eventually, a company’s reputation can’t depend entirely on one person. Large organizations have figured out how powerful it can be to have different experts speak to different issues.
- Your CTO might be the best person to talk about technology
- Your head of product might have the strongest perspective on customer behavior
- Your chief revenue officer might have something interesting to say about the market
- Your customers might be your best proof point of all
Startups can begin building that bench much earlier than they think, which also makes the company more credible.
Suddenly, you’re not just hearing what the founder thinks, you start seeing an organization with expertise throughout it.
You don’t need to communicate like a Fortune 500 company
And to be clear, I’m not suggesting startups should suddenly start writing 40-page corporate reports or creating a communications department of 50 people.
The lesson isn’t to look like a Fortune 500 company, it’s to think like one. If you takeaway anything from this article:
- Build reputation before you need it
- Talk about the industry, not just yourself
- Have a point of view
- Make complicated things understandable
- Build multiple voices
The irony is that these things are often easier for a startup to do than a Fortune 500 company. You are free from layers of approval, you don’t have 12 stakeholders debating a LinkedIn post and you don’t have years of corporate language to unwind.
You have the ability to establish what your company stands for while it’s still small. You may not have Fortune 500 resources today, but there’s no reason you can’t start building a Fortune 500 reputation.
Originally published on LinkedIn on October 7, 2026.
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