Startup Media List is a one-time journalist research service from Montana PR Agency. You order once, get a curated, hand-built list of journalists matched to your specific story, and pitch them yourself. A traditional PR agency typically charges $5,000 or more per month on retainer, onboarding takes weeks, and what you’re paying for is hours, not guaranteed results. This is the same quality of research and targeting, for founders who are ready to pitch their own story and don’t need the full agency setup.

PR databases give you access to large directories of journalist contacts, but the research is entirely on you. You still have to figure out who covers your space, which of them would be interested in your story, and what angle to use. Annual plans typically start at $5,000 or more, and require a call with a sales team before you see pricing.

Contact data in large databases is also frequently outdated. Journalists move between outlets, change beats, or go freelance, and databases don’t always catch up. Every contact in a Startup Media List is verified at the time your order is built, so what you receive is current.

You can get AI to generate journalist names, and it can write you a pitch email too. The issues show up in practice. AI tools pull from training data, which means the journalists they surface may have changed beats, moved to different outlets, or the articles they cite may not actually exist. Hallucinated journalist profiles and fabricated publication histories are a real and documented problem with AI research tools.

There’s also a craft issue. Journalists who cover startups are receiving a growing volume of AI-generated pitches, and many have said publicly that they can spot them immediately. The pitches that work are the ones where someone clearly did real homework: they know what this journalist has been writing about in the past two months, what they tend to say yes to, and how to frame the story so it connects to their current editorial angle. That comes from real industry experience, built up over years of doing this manually.

Starter (3–5 journalists): $499. Growth (6–10 journalists): $699. Full Pack (11–15 journalists): $899. All plans are one-time payments — no subscription, no retainer, no automatic renewals.

Not sure which plan? Start with Starter. You can always order again for the next announcement. Returning clients get 10% off.

Every list goes through two stages. First, a Media Analyst researches the journalists: who covers your beat right now, what they’ve been writing about, which angles they say yes to, and how to reach them. Then a Communications Strategist reviews the full report and writes their own layer: specific recommendations on how to approach each journalist with your startup and your news, and advice on how to build a pitching sequence with the contacts in your list.

What you receive is a research document and a consulting document in one.

No. Any service that claims to guarantee press coverage should be treated with scepticism. What we guarantee is a carefully researched list of journalists who actively cover your industry and are a genuine fit for your story, with professional advice on how to approach each of them. If we can’t find strong matches for your brief, we’ll tell you upfront and refund in full. The pitch and the relationship are yours to build.

If you have a product, a milestone, a funding event, or a point of view worth sharing, you have a story. Fill out the brief as best you can and note where you’re uncertain. We’ll flag if we think the timing isn’t right, or if a different framing would land better for the outlets you’re targeting.

Standard delivery is within 3 business days from when we receive your completed brief. Growth and Full Pack orders get priority delivery within 2 business days.

If we work through the research and conclude that we can’t find a strong enough match for your story — the niche is too narrow, the news angle isn’t developed enough, or the fit simply isn’t there — we’ll contact you before delivering anything and give you a full refund. We’d rather say that upfront than deliver a list that won’t do you any good.

If we do find the journalists, you can trust that we believe the list is workable based on everything in your brief. All contacts are verified as current at the time of delivery. Journalists move jobs, and that’s outside our control, but if someone changes outlets within a short window after you receive the list, email us and we’ll update or replace that contact for free.

Yes, and many founders do. A typical pattern is a Starter order before a launch, then a Growth or Full Pack order before a funding announcement. Each list is built fresh for the specific story and timing. Returning clients get 10% off, and we can include contacts from a previous list if they’re still relevant — though we always write fresh story angles based on the new brief.

Right now we cover US media and international outlets. Our database includes more than 3,000 US and world media outlets and over 100,000 verified journalist contacts.