Building a Press Kit for Products No Journalist Has Covered Yet

Last month I spent two hours exporting logo files for a product with exactly zero press coverage. Not "minimal coverage." Zero. No mentions, no backlinks from publications, no podcast appearances. The product exists. The press kit exists. The journalists? Not yet.

Sounds backwards. Maybe it is. (Probably it is, honestly.) But here's the thing — the moment someone wants to write about you is the worst time to scramble for assets. I've learned this the hard way running eight SaaS products at VDL — the same approach we documented in our post on how we manage 9 SaaS products. A TechCrunch writer isn't going to wait 48 hours while you figure out which folder has the transparent PNG version of your logo. They'll move on. And you'll never know.

So we build the kit before anyone asks. Call it premature optimization for attention we haven't earned yet.

What You'll Have at the End

By the end of this guide, you'll have a complete press kit folder containing:

Logo files in multiple formats (PNG, SVG, light/dark variants)
Founder headshot(s) at web-ready resolution
3-5 product screenshots that actually show the product doing something
A one-page fact sheet with positioning, key stats, and contact info
Boilerplate descriptions at 50 and 150 words
A public link you can drop in any email without friction

Two to three hours, done right. Worth it.

Prerequisites

Here's what you need before starting:

Access to your logo source files (Figma, Illustrator, or whatever your designer used)
A reasonably current product build to screenshot
A photo of yourself that doesn't look like a hostage photo from 2019
A cloud storage account (Dropbox, Google Drive, or similar)
30 minutes of undistracted time to write the fact sheet

If you don't have logo source files — just a low-res PNG from your original designer — you're stuck. You'll need to recreate them or pay someone to redraw them. Non-negotiable. A 200x200 logo stretched to fit a publication's header image looks amateur. (Ask me how I know.)

Step 1: Export Your Logo Files

Open your logo source file and export the following variants:

Primary logo (horizontal lockup)

PNG at 1000px wide, transparent background
PNG at 1000px wide, white background
SVG (vector, infinitely scalable)

Icon only (no wordmark)

PNG at 512x512, transparent background
SVG

Dark mode variants (if your primary is dark on light)

Same formats as above, inverted for dark backgrounds

Name them consistently. I use: productname-logo-primary-dark.png, productname-icon-transparent.svg, etc. No spaces. No version numbers. Keep the folder clean.

Why bother with all these variants? Because publications use different logo treatments. Some want just the icon. Some need a white version for their dark-themed newsletter. Some are pulling your logo into Figma and need the SVG.

If you don't provide variants, they'll create bad ones.

I've seen our logos butchered — wrong aspect ratios, pixelated, slapped on a background color that clashes with everything. Infuriating. Give them options and they'll use your preferred version.

What you should see: A folder with 6-10 logo files covering common use cases. Test them — drop each PNG into a Google Doc on a white and dark background to confirm they display correctly.

Step 2: Get a Founder Headshot That Doesn't Look Terrible

Most indie founders skip this. Or they use a cropped photo from their friend's wedding in 2017. I get it — taking photos of yourself feels weird.

Do it anyway.

You don't need a professional photoshoot. You do need:

Natural lighting (near a window, not overhead fluorescents)
A clean background (plain wall, not your messy apartment)
A camera better than your 2018 laptop webcam (modern phone cameras work fine)
Someone else holding the camera (selfie angles read as selfie angles)

Shoot at the highest resolution your camera supports. Crop to a square, 1200x1200 minimum. Publications will resize down, but they can't resize up without making you look like a JPEG from 2003.

I keep two versions: one serious (for business press) and one casual (for indie hacker podcasts and Twitter features). Same session, different expressions.

Save as: foundername-headshot-1200.jpg and the alternate version if you have one.

(Look, I know this feels like vanity work. But your headshot appears next to every article, podcast guest slot, and Twitter mention. It's branding whether you like it or not. Spend the 20 minutes to get a decent one.)

Step 3: Capture Product Screenshots

Screenshots are harder than they sound. Most founders grab whatever's on their screen and call it done.

This is wrong. And I say this as someone who spent the first two years doing exactly that.

Good screenshots:

Show the product doing something useful (not empty states)
Have realistic data (not "test user" and "Lorem ipsum")
Are taken at consistent window sizes (1920x1080 is standard)
Don't have your personal bookmarks bar visible
Don't have debug tools open in the corner

For ClickzProtect, I screenshot the dashboard with actual traffic data — redacted where needed but real enough to show what it does. We shared the full build story in our how we built ClickzProtect case study. For JustEmails, I capture the inbox view with actual emails, the domain settings panel, and the API documentation page. Three to five screenshots that tell the product story.

Browser tip: Use Chrome's device toolbar (Cmd+Shift+M on Mac) to capture at exact dimensions without your OS chrome. Or use a tool like CleanShot that captures clean windows.

Export as PNG. Save them with descriptive names: productname-dashboard-overview.png, productname-settings-api.png.

If your press kit folder has Screenshot 2026-07-03 at 4.32.17 PM.png, you've already failed. Journalists see that filename and immediately assume you're not serious. Maybe unfair, but that's how it works.

Step 4: Write the Fact Sheet

This is where the actual thinking happens. The fact sheet is a one-page document (PDF and editable format) containing:

Company name and URL Velocity Digital Labs — velocitydigitallabs.com

One-liner What it is in 10 words or less. For VDL: "Multi-product SaaS studio building 8 active products."

Boilerplate (50 words) The ultra-short version for limited space:

Velocity Digital Labs is a bootstrapped SaaS studio running eight products across analytics, email infrastructure, ad fraud detection, and crypto payments. Founded by Rajat Pratap Singh, VDL operates with a 1-founder + 1-manager structure augmented by AI automation for operations.

Boilerplate (150 words) The fuller version for longer press mentions. Include founding story, key products, what makes you different.

Key numbers This is where pre-revenue founders panic. I've been there. You stare at the "Key Stats" section and realize you don't have impressive numbers yet.

Here's the move: use numbers that are true without faking scale. For VDL, that's:

8 active products in market
Founded 2024, Delaware LLC
Bootstrapped, no external funding

That's it. No inflated user counts. No "projected ARR."

Don't claim users you don't have. Don't claim revenue you haven't made. "8 active products" is accurate and verifiable. "Serving thousands of customers" when you have 17 is lying — and it will surface eventually.

Founder info Name, title, LinkedIn URL, one sentence of relevant background.

Contact Press-specific email if you have one, otherwise your regular contact.

Export as PDF. Also keep the source (Notion page, Google Doc, whatever) so you can update it.

Step 5: Organize and Host the Kit

Create a folder structure:

press-kit/
├── logos/
│   ├── productname-logo-primary-dark.png
│   ├── productname-logo-primary-light.png
│   ├── productname-logo-primary.svg
│   └── productname-icon.svg
├── screenshots/
│   ├── productname-dashboard.png
│   ├── productname-feature-x.png
│   └── productname-mobile.png
├── headshots/
│   └── foundername-headshot-1200.jpg
├── fact-sheet.pdf
└── README.txt

The README.txt file (yes, plain text, it opens everywhere) contains:

What's in each folder
Your contact email
Date last updated
Link to your website

Upload the entire folder to Dropbox or Google Drive. Set sharing to "anyone with link can view." Copy the public link.

Test the link in an incognito window. If it asks for sign-in, you've configured sharing wrong. Fix it. Journalists shouldn't need a Google account to access your press materials.

Then add a /press page to your website that embeds this link and includes your boilerplate text directly on the page (for easy copy-paste). Even if nobody visits it for months — and they probably won't — it's indexed and findable when you need it.

Common Errors

"Can't open SVG" complaints Some older software can't handle SVG. Always include PNG fallbacks. The SVG is for designers; the PNG is for everyone else.

Logo appears with white box on dark backgrounds You exported the PNG without a transparent background. Re-export from your source file with transparency enabled. In Figma, uncheck "Include Background" when exporting.

Screenshots look blurry when publications use them You captured at too low a resolution. Always capture at 1920x1080 minimum. Retina displays can do 2x. Publications can scale down; they can't scale up.

Fact sheet has outdated information Set a calendar reminder for quarterly press kit reviews. Product changes, pricing changes, team changes — the fact sheet should reflect current reality. An investor or journalist finding your "2024 fact sheet" in 2026 is a bad look.

(I forgot to update ours for six months once. Embarrassing when someone emailed about a product that no longer existed.)

Press page returns 404 You created the page but never linked it from anywhere. Add it to your footer navigation. Link it from your About page. Internal links help SEO and make the page findable.

Next Steps

Now that you've got a press kit, consider these adjacent assets:

Case study one-pagers — even if you don't have customer logos, document your own usage. For DevOS, I wrote up how we use it internally — similar to our AI agents as sprint team members post. First-party case studies are better than nothing.

Product demo video — a 60-90 second Loom-style walkthrough. Some publications embed video. Most won't, but podcast hosts love having something to reference.

FAQ document — common questions and answers. Saves interview time and ensures accurate quotes.

We've written about building other pre-launch assets across the VDL portfolio — check out how one solo founder built 9 SaaS products for the full journey. Same pattern: build the infrastructure before you need it. This extends to technical choices too, as we covered in our Railway vs Vercel vs Fly.io comparison.

Press coverage for early-stage products is rare. Let's be honest — most of us will never get a TechCrunch feature. But when coverage happens, it happens fast. Having the kit ready means you don't waste the opportunity fumbling for a PNG.

And if the coverage never comes? At least you've got a clean set of assets for your landing page.

Frequently Asked Questions

Should early-stage startups have a press kit?

Yes. A press kit isn't about current coverage — it's about being ready when coverage happens. Journalists work on tight deadlines. If they can't find high-res logos, founder headshots, and product screenshots in 30 seconds, they move on. The press kit removes friction from a process you want to make as easy as possible.

What files should a SaaS press kit include?

At minimum: logo files in PNG and SVG formats with transparent backgrounds, a founder headshot at 1200x1200 or larger, 3-5 product screenshots at 1920x1080, a one-page fact sheet with key numbers and positioning, and a boilerplate company description in 50 words and 150 words. Store everything in a shared folder anyone can access without signing in.

Where should you host your press kit?

A public Dropbox folder, Google Drive with link sharing, or a dedicated /press page on your website. The key is zero-friction access — no login required, no permission requests. Many founders use Notion but make sure the page is published publicly, not just shared with specific emails.

How often should you update your press kit?

Update screenshots and fact sheets whenever the product changes significantly — new UI, new pricing, new milestone. Check the kit quarterly to make sure links work and assets reflect the current product. Outdated screenshots are worse than no screenshots.

Follow the Studio

Velocity Digital Labs is a multi-product studio building 8 active SaaS products with a 1-founder + 1-manager + N-AI-agents structure. Receipts, dollar-signs, cap-table-honest. No VC platform-play — just shipping.

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