973 Victoria Vaughan:

Wings of Inspired Business Podcast EP973 – Host Melinda Wittstock Interviews Victoria Vaughan

Melinda Wittstock:

Coming up on Wings of Inspired Business:

Victoria Vaughan:

We have built out a set of AI agents that help us monitor the market really quickly. So, we like have a specific subtopics those agents constantly check and the list of outlets we want to monitor. And then when a new story comes out and we also check social media as well and when we see that there is like new trend coming up, we try almost to act as a news agency like ourselves and always try to be helpful to reporters. These AI agents, they help us find the reporters, so, we are able to come up with a pitch really quickly and we are now able to achieve much bigger number of mentions for our clients.

Melinda Wittstock:

Just about every business owner on the planet is trying to figure out the best applications of AI in their businesses, and there is no one size gradually fade music here fits all. What is increasingly clear is the need for a human-AI partnership, that is, leveraging AI as a work companion and not as a replacement. Victoria Vaughan is an award-winning communication strategist and founder of B612, a New York–based PR agency serving high-growth technology companies. Today she shares how AI is revolutionizing her PR work and where it can never replace the human touch.

PAUSE no words from 5-8 seconds…with music full

Melinda Wittstock:

Hi, I’m your host Melinda Wittstock and before we get going with this episode of Wings of Inspired Business, just a gentle reminder to make sure you’re taking time for yourself, to find some inner peace amid all the negative bombarding us at an ever-quickening pace. You feel it right? It’s chaos, uncertainty, fear, and elegant balance is finding a way to stay informed so you can make vital decisions while not getting overwhelmed. So, take a walk in the woods or the beach, ground yourself in nature, music and joyful hobbies. Be in community and service to others, and remember all that you have for which to be grateful. Ok now to the show, and if you’re new here, this is the place where we share the inspiring entrepreneurial journeys, epiphanies, and practical advice from successful female founders … so you have everything you need at your fingertips to build the business and life of your dreams. I’m all about paying it forward as a five-time serial entrepreneur, so I started this podcast to catalyze an ecosystem where women entrepreneurs mentor, promote, buy from, and invest in each other. Because together we’re stronger, and we all soar higher when we fly together and lift as we climb. If you’ve been listening to any of the past 970 episodes, please help us get the word out about the show. Please subscribe so you never miss an episode. Tell your friends and colleagues, share the episode and leave a quick 5-star rating and review on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We really appreciate it. Thank you! 

Melinda Wittstock:

Today we meet an inspiring entrepreneur who is all about helping AI and Web3 tech companies build trust and authentic relationships with journalists to boost their thought leadership and authenticity to attract customers and close successful funding rounds. Victoria Vaughan says her craft is all about unique voices and strong opinions that resonate beyond the noise. Today Victoria shares her journey from leading a major Web3 media outlet to launching her own PR agency B612, designed to elevate emerging tech companies in an ever-shifting digital landscape—and why human stories and true IRL belonging will matter more than ever in an AI world.

Melinda Wittstock:

Victoria is pioneering many ways in which AI is making her business and work for her clients more effective and impactful, whether as a research or targeting tool. But she also shares why authentic storytelling, building genuine thought leadership, and cultivating genuine journalist relationships—especially in the noisy era of AI-driven content and shrinking traditional media—matters more now than ever. You’ll hear about innovative PR tactics using AI, the importance of nailing your messaging, and how targeted media like newsletters can sometimes outperform the biggest outlets. Plus, if you like the idea of free earned media, you’ll learn what journalists really want, plus her recipe for standout client success, and why a founder’s unique vision is the real PR differentiator. 

Melinda Wittstock:

Let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Victoria Vaughan.

[INTERVIEW]

Melinda Wittstock:

Victoria, welcome to Wings.

Victoria Vaughan:

Hi Melinda. Thank you for having me today.

Melinda Wittstock:

You have a big background in technology, but also across media, and decided to create your own PR company helping technology companies. What was it that led to that shift into PR?

Victoria Vaughan:

Yeah, so while I was leading the media company, I was a hired executive. But for pretty long time I wanted to build something of my own. And it felt like a very logical step because I had a lot of experience and understanding how the media works, how editorial processes work. And I also gained pretty significant network in the blockchain space. And like, for my first founder experience, I decided that I’d like to build a business that I would be able to finance and scale myself without attracting any external investments. And then like being in this circle of like next and next rounds and valuations. So that’s how it started. Initially I just onboarded like one or two clients, some people I knew from the industry, industry, and initially was doing everything myself.

Victoria Vaughan:

And then later on I was able to start hiring a team and build more of like a process company. So, it’s been growing really well since then. Initially when I started, I was focusing only on working with blockchain companies. And then during last year, we also diversified into general tech as well. Because when we were doing PR for many blockchain companies, we also featured them in tradfi outlets, in general tech outlets. So, we acquired all those connections with the journalists. And then I thought, okay, it would be probably good to diversify into more verticals, especially given how volatile the cryptocurrency market is.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yes, I know we can get all into blockchain and bitcoin and, and, and all of that, you know, but every company now, pretty much, if they aren’t already, they’re going to have to become an AI company or at least utilizing AI. So, I imagine AI companies are a big part of your portfolio now.

Victoria Vaughan:

Yes, 100%. There is also a lot of intersection now between blockchain and AI. There are a lot of financial agents and many blockchain companies are now like both blockchain and AI. But to be honest with you, I feel like now AI is just like an infrastructure behind the companies. Still, I find it very important for startups not just to be an AI company, but more to focus on real problems they are solving.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, that’s just so true. I mean it, it like this kind of like just, oh, we’re AI. Yeah. Okay, great. And what, what problem are you solving? So there, there does seem to be a shift in people actually getting much more specific in, in, in just utilizing it to, to, to either make their current operations more efficient, but also there’s still, you know, fair amount of innovation. How do you see. Just, let’s just talk about that AI industry first of all and that landscape in terms of, I don’t know, like the what’s, what are. Sorry, I’m just going to ask this slightly differently.

Melinda Wittstock:

Let’s talk about that AI landscape right now and also from a PR perspective in terms of the types of companies that, that journalists actually want to write about. Like, you know, there’s so much, so much talk about what’s going on with you know, ChatGPT or Gemini or Anthropic, the wars between the big guys. What about everybody else? How, how is the, how are journalists actually looking at that right now for a company that wants to get that kind of attention?

Victoria Vaughan:

Yes, definitely it’s like not the easiest time to cut through all these big company news. And I find it’s really important for the founder and for the company to have the like authentic voice and unique data insights and strong opinions about the market. So, what we see is that when you’re able to come up with interesting story and unique perspective on the market, you, you are able to get a good attention with various editorial formats which can be not only the news announcements but also thought leadership pieces. It’s a really good format. We really love pitching this kind of articles. It’s a piece that is written by someone from the team about how they see the market, which problem they solve and how exactly they think those problems should be solved. And these kind of pieces, they always increase trust and highlight expertise of the team. And many top outlets accept this kind of contributor pieces.

Victoria Vaughan:

So, this has been showing really good performance especially when you are able to use some data insights other companies do not have and this kind of things. And then again of course you have to be always on top of the news agenda and there is a format called newsjacking when basically you use an existing news flow and provide commentary on that news flow. And speaking of the AI, for example, even for my agency, we have built out a set of AI agents that help us monitor the market really quickly. So, we like have a specific subtopics those agents constantly check and the list of outlets we want to monitor. And then when a new story comes out and we also check social media as well and when we see that there is like new trend coming up, we try almost to act as A news agency like ourselves and always try to be helpful to reporters. We, these AI agents, they help us find the reporters, for example who usually cover this topic that is coming up but they haven’t written about it yet. So, we are able to come up with a pitch really quickly like hey, there is like this story going out and we have like this and that expert to provide their unique opinion about that. So, after we build that out we find that we increase the speed so much and we are now able to achieve much bigger number of mentions for our clients.

Melinda Wittstock:

What a great use case of agentic AI in PR. I mean how many PR firms are actually doing this? 

Victoria Vaughan:

Yeah, I mean there is also so much noise in all those like AI use cases, right? From my perspective I find like this kind of analytics and monitoring use cases the like the most helpful. I still think that like human connection actually like I think human connection now is even more important because currently we have so much AI slope and so many PR people and generally people use AI to generate all the emails, all the cold called outreach. But I think people can always like tell that still that it was AI. And so, we don’t use AI for example to draft our pitches or to send out campaigns like massively to the journalists. So, after like doing initial preparation with AI which helps it like do it much faster than we were able to do it before, but like this final step of like actually writing email and connecting with the journalists, we only do it manually.

Melinda Wittstock:

That makes a lot of sense. I mean AI is very, very powerful when it comes to targeting and contextual targeting and just amassing information quickly and, so it’s, it’s working like a big matchmaker for you in essence.

Victoria Vaughan:

Yes, exactly.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, that, that makes a lot of sense. I mean you can tell now what’s been. I don’t know, not everybody can. But there, there’s, I don’t know you, I’m starting to, you can kind of tell when something’s AI, you know, I don’t know. It, it’s, it, it has this sort of style.

Victoria Vaughan:

Yeah, exactly.

Melinda Wittstock:

There’s just something about it, and it’s sort of subtle. Like I don’t know to what extent people can tell but there is so much slop and you kind of wonder at what point, you know, there’s been a lot of talk about model collapse and stuff like that where it starts training on itself and it’s like oh man, I mean are we just going to get like dumber at that point? So, do you see a lot of PR agencies falling into that trap of using generative AI for their content?

Victoria Vaughan:

Yes. And also, there has been a set of products that has come out like helping PR agencies and those products have those like AI generated pitches that massively bombarding like insane number of journalists for every story. Which I find like to be not the most efficient approach. From our experience we see that when really customize every page deeply referencing like some exact ideas from the previous articles of the journalist and finding like what they are interested in. I have not seen like we have tested out like couple of these tools and like all those speeches, they look just too generic. I think like same way when you try just to like write content with AI it comes out like quite like very, very general and bland. And same thing with pitching. And now like you can imagine, imagine how many pitches journalists get every day.

Victoria Vaughan:

And again, I think we can. They can tell when you have done your homework or when you were lazy and you just used AI to generate a pitch. And especially now when the whole media landscape is really shrinking, a lot of media outlets have done like significant waves of fires. So, the number of journalists is like really going down, down and down and the competition for their attention like is really big now. However, we also seeing a big trend with the new media. So, for example, a lot of those journalists living like media outlets but starting their own platforms like Substack, they’re running their own newsletters and this kind of newsletters they usually have like more niche audience. But like we have seen that being featured in this kind of like more targeted newsletters can be result wise even like bigger compared to some like big media feature. So, it’s also all about like targeting the right audience sometimes like companies tend to only want like oh make me a feature in Forbes, make me a feature on TechCrunch.

Victoria Vaughan:

But like why you always have to think who exactly you want to target with your communications 100%.

Melinda Wittstock:

I mean and AI can be very useful there just even in terms of understanding the end audience of a Substack or a YouTube or whatever. And often the audiences are bigger than the traditional media outlets.

Victoria Vaughan:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

And, and they’re not only bigger but they’re the right people, right? So, even if it’s a smaller audience, it might be the right audience.

Victoria Vaughan:

Yeah. Also I think like when it’s an article on like really big news outlet, they push out so many stories every day and like all those stories just like get, get kind of lost in the noise while I, I find that when people read the newsletter they really go through like everything in that newsletter and like, and result of people who have actually read it is higher.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, it’s interesting with the newsletters because you know, presumably if you as an end reader have taken the time to subscribe to something, you’re already interested. So those audiences are more pre-qualified, and they have more of a loyalty to that particular journalist and just more of a layer of trust. Do you find that those actually do for that reason get better results for your clients?

Victoria Vaughan:

Yeah, absolutely. I 100% agree that like readers really trust like particular person more. And yes, when they’re loyal to that person they really take the time to go through content and they have higher trust to that content.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I mean something you were saying earlier though, just about the, just the barrage of stuff that journalists get. I’ll put on my hat as a recovering journalist. I mean way back in time I was the media correspondent of the Times of London. Yeah.

Victoria Vaughan:

Oh really? Wow.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, yeah, I was in my 20s and people would just be calling you all day and they’d call you on deadline to invite you to a completely irrelevant press conference or pitch something that was just not even like they just hadn’t read what the types of things that you wrote about and they’d call you on deadline for something three weeks from, you know, it used to drive me absolutely insane and I’ve always, you know, for PR agencies it’s like get to know the journalists, like serve the journalist, right? Because if you don’t understand like what they do and what they’re up against on a day-to-day basis or an hour-to-hour basis. And now just how media has changed so much, where it’s just so instantaneous. So how do you manage those relationships with journalists? Because it does come down to the relationship and actually understanding them and understanding what they need.

Victoria Vaughan:

Yeah. Well first of all, of course we always connect with them across all the social media platforms like LinkedIn and X. And usually like as we understand general bits of the companies we work with, we always try to like constantly to expand the network of the journalists we are connected with. And usually, we like connect in advance and just start engaging with the content, not even trying to put to pitch anything like within the first months after connection. So, this is like on the social media side and also of course at events you can connect personally with journalists. There are like media rooms you can like hang out in and like get to meet them. And moreover, some of the media outlets also host their own events. For example, last like couple months ago I went to California and there were events by Wired and by Axios.

Victoria Vaughan:

So with these kind of events you also can meet like journalists and editors in person and like after you connect with them, usually I send them like email instantly that like we have met in person and then after this personal connection I find like success rate is like much higher, that they will open your pitch and like they will provide you some feedback.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right, right, exactly. Because it’s also that that trusted relationship is key and then that also helps you with the insights to figure out, okay, what do they need and what is a story that is going to be irresistible to that particular journalist.

Victoria Vaughan:

Yes, absolutely. And sometimes like we even like offer them like okay, you usually write about like this and that if you need any help like with the source or expert, we are like happy to help. And sometimes when they reach out to us asking like for particular opinion, we always try to find like a top relevant speaker and for example, even if it’s not our account. Right. Like we just always try to be helpful for the journalist and like find someone to, for the commentary opportunity.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right, right, right, exactly. That makes so much, so much sense. So, tell me about your clients and the types of clients you like to work with. What’s their stage, kind of, what are they doing? What, what, what makes them special? Like what qualifies them to work with you? Who are your ideal clients?

Victoria Vaughan:

Yes. Generally, we work with companies like Seed to Series B size. So, after they have raised usually at least like 5 million seed funding, it is both B2B and B2C. And when we qualify clients, for me it’s really important that they have like a unique long-term vision and it’s important that the founder and the team understands that it will not work. That like you will just hire a PR firm, and they will do everything for them, and they will not have to participate in the work at all. The most results come out when the team, like when we work together as a team and when the client team is able to quickly provide for example, answers for the commentary request. And also, I love founders, you know, like fanatics, crazy believers in what they’re doing and those who have a lot of strong controversial opinions they want to share, it’s always like much easier to pitch some interesting ideas as opposed to like when people don’t have like any strong, unique voice.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. And you mentioned earlier that thought leadership is, is, critical. So, the whole debate about AI, the ongoing debate, like the people who are, you know, they’re the ‘doomers’, right, people who think it’s an existential threat. There’re other people who think it’s going to solve everything. There’s a lot of people in the middle. There’s a lot of consumer fear about it. There’s a lot of confusion about it. So how do you help companies navigate all that? Say AI is their big advantage but on the other hand their customers might be afraid of.

Victoria Vaughan:

Really depends on the like companies we work with. And in terms of communications it can be like both sides, right. And when you come up with the story, like you use some classic like methods of storytelling and for example you can like the strongest feelings people usually have. You should try to make them feel either happy and hopeful or help them not help like, but make them feel fear. So, like those two sides of emotions both work for attracting attention. So, I would say like actually like both sides are fine because also the world is not black and white. Right. And people have different opinions and like we don’t know where all this will lead, but it’s good to explore different sides of things.

Melinda Wittstock:

Things, right. A hundred percent. So, tell me about your name. Why is it called B612.

Victoria Vaughan:

Is the inspiration comes from a book called the Little Prince by Antoine Son Exupéry and it’s about the prince who is traveling across the universe and in one of the planets, he finds the flower and the fox who like kind of become like, is like things in life that he really loves. So, it’s like a planet of life and of love.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right, yeah, funny, because I was like, yeah, where have I heard that before?

Victoria Vaughan:

Yeah, so like, one of like our values in working with clients is that we always like, like try to build really close relationships, understand their motivations and what they want to achieve, and like be, be really like in the boat with them to fight for results for them.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. So, your whole career began in tech, and you got fascinated with bitcoin and Fintech. And then you joined Cointelegraph, which was this very small startup, but you were very young, you were only 24 and you became the CEO of that, scaling it to 18 million monthly readers, seven languages. I mean just a huge, huge success. The largest news outlet in the Web3 space.

Melinda Wittstock:

I mean, you know, I’ve read it. I’m interested in Web3 and blockchain and, and where that intersects in particular with AI. That would describe what I’m doing with my own startup in the, in the podcasting space at the exact intersection. But tell me, what was that like growing that media company?

Victoria Vaughan:

It was a lot of fun and very interesting experience, to be honest with you. When like it was starting, no, almost no one in the team had previous building media experience, so we just did a lot of experimenting, and it ended up working out. Yeah. And as you mentioned, when I joined, it was just three or four people on a team, and we started hiring just several journalists. And initially we were publishing stories, maybe like one story a day. But then over time it grew significantly. And what helped us grow, I would say it was a really good like part partnership strategy and cross marketing activities. So, for example, one of the things we did is that we have built a thing we were calling Cointelegraph Media Group.

[PROMO CREDIT]

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Melinda Wittstock:

And we’re back with Victoria Vaughan, founder of the New York PR agency B612.

[INTERVIEW CONTINUES]

Victoria Vaughan:

So, we started partnering with other websites in the industry, not the news outlets, but more data specific. For example, even now also like this company exists, it’s called Coin Market Cap. And it, for example, it shows like capitalization of every cryptocurrency on the market. But like early on, all those like data websites, they were generally run by, you know, just was very technical, geeky crypto enthusiasts and they were not even very interested in doing, in dealing with the business part of things. So, what we did is that we reached out to all those websites that gained significant traffic and we suggested to them that we will buy out all the advertising spaces they have and that we will be able to generate more revenue for them compared to what they are getting from Google AdSense which like majority of those companies were using back then. And the part of the deal was that they needed to place our news widget on the main website. So many of those websites at that time actually had even bigger traffic than when than we did. But we basically started gaining all those audiences from those partnership media group websites.

Victoria Vaughan:

And because like, like our product was news outlet, we had a very high retention rate and conversion rate into male subscribers. So, it helped us gain a lot of initial audience and like worked out really well as a growth strategy. And then later on we also started expanding into local regions and we did it again by finding local partners who would run the local version of Cointelegraph. And we did it through a franchise program. So, it worked really well as well.

Melinda Wittstock:

Amazing, amazing. I mean but that experience growing that the media company, I can see exactly why and how you were able to create such success with your PR company so quickly. I mean you haven’t really been running this very long, but you have a number of clients. You’ve gotten them into the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, Tech Crunch, Wired and. And these companies have raised $100 million in funding just last year. And I mean how much of the PR helps them with that fund raise? It’s hard, it’s a difficult climate raising money right now. So, is the PR a really big part of that ingredient to actually succeed in your funding rounds? Are you finding that with the, with the companies that, that you have as clients?

Victoria Vaughan:

Absolutely. And even like all the reports show that when founders have strong personal brand it is like much higher, higher probability that they will be able to secure investments. So, for example, when investors see that like the, the person is someone profound and respected in the industry, he has been like cited by top outlets and have spoken in the top industry event like the level of both from investors, from partners and for future customers really grow significantly.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. That’s amazing. So, tell me a couple of stories about can you share a couple of your clients and the kind of before and after, you know like where they were when they hired you and then, and then what were the results?

Victoria Vaughan:

Yeah, of course. So, the use case you mentioned with New York Times and Wall Street Journal, for example, this company is building a tool, it’ called AI or not. So, they basically help detect if the image and video was AI generated or not. And it was like year and a half, like couple years ago when they launched their product and it was exactly like close to the time when all those deep fake images were coming out with Trump and Pope. I’m sure you probably remember that. And it was just like such a great product market fit with the right timing. So, we were able to pitch them to all the media like with this news jacking opportunity. As I mentioned before, like you should always stay like on top of the news flow.

Victoria Vaughan:

So yeah like all the journalists really got interested in that and back then they were not many tools who were allowing to make that and that the amount of misinformation that started coming because of all those deep fakes was insane. So that was like really amazing case. And after just three months PR campaign they were able to sell the company. They had a really good deal. Another example, more recent one, the company we worked with is called Open Mind and they are building a platform to build a software for, for robots. So, they partnered with like different robotics companies and they have very interesting use cases, pilot projects to like with the companies who produce robots for nursing homes and these kind of use cases. So also, they came to us before they did the Series A and we did a campaign I think like during four months and it was a combination of general media, robotics media and Also some of web3 media because the platform is running like on a decentralized smart contracts. And like after that they have successfully secured Series a funding of 20 million and they gained like really good new partnerships, and their community has grown significantly.

Melinda Wittstock:

It amazing. That’s just an amazing success story. So, if you’re a tech company of any kind, you’re listening to this podcast. I mean what’s the best way Victoria for people to find you and see if it’s a good fit?

Victoria Vaughan:

You can reach out on LinkedIn. Victoria 1B612PR and we can have discovery call and talk through your goals. What are your targets in terms of narrative building and which announcements you want to make on the market. And we will see how exactly we can help and what would be the best strategy to achieve the goals you have. And of course, for every client we built a custom strategy. It’s like surprising but we actually find that a lot of startups when they come to us they like don’t even like have strong like competition analysis for example. So, first step we always do is like we do this deep market research like for what’s happening on the market and what are the messaging gaps that we can leverage to diversify the client from. From their competitors? And this always also helps everyone, like, for general marketing strategy as well.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s fantastic. Well, thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us today. 

Victoria Vaughan:

Thank you, Melinda. It was such a pleasure to chat with you, and so cool that you also have a journalist background. That’s really interesting.

[INTERVIEW ENDS]

Melinda Wittstock:

Victoria Vaughan is a Web3 pioneer and the founder of B612, a New York PR agency serving tech businesses.

Melinda Wittstock:

Please take a moment to give us a five-star rating and review the podcast on Apple and Spotify—it helps more entrepreneurs like you find the secret sauce to support and grow their businesses.

Melinda Wittstock:

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