Why your startup needs to go direct to tech media creators now

Plus, Brex's upcoming NY Tech Week events!

Author

Michael Morgenstern
May 20, 2025

Happy Tuesday Brex community,

My belief is simple: tech media is evolving into a Barstool Sports (*Brex customer, Viva!) model where personality-driven creator federations are replacing traditional publications. These loose alliances of independent creators share resources, cross-promote, and maintain distinct personal brands. However the real power is in their reach. Imagine a federation with 5 million combined followers: suddenly, you own a marketing channel bigger than most industry publications. Launches get instant visibility, and distribution isn’t rented. It is owned.

We’re seeing a dash to invest, scale, and consolidate these opportunities. Social media 3.0 is here, and the business implications will be felt most by the tech creator economy. I’m a bull.

Here’s my advice: go where the attention actually is. Ditch traditional PR. One appearance on the right creator network delivers 10x the qualified leads of any press release. Video rules. Find the three networks closest to your users, study their playbook, and pursue them with highly tailored, value-driven outreach. Treat these creators as the distribution kingmakers they are. Generic outreach fails; specificity converts. This is execution arbitrage. If you’re willing to challenge every other convention, why default to legacy PR/media?

Growing together, Michael Morgenstern

  • Brex Baseball Club in SF 5/19

    Designed for founders and investors at the Baseline Box, Oracle Park

    Apply Here: Brex Host: Anshul Shah

  • Office Hours: Series A Edition in SF 5/22

    Designed as office hours for seed stage founders prepping for Series A. Bring questions on term sheets, VC firm feedback, or market comps

    Apply Here: Brex Host: Michael Morgenstern  

  • Brex Supper Club in NYC 5/29

    Designed as a private conversational dinner for founders and investors building stablecoin infrastructure

    Apply Here: Brex Host: Michael Morgenstern  

  • Finding Your Passion - New York Tech Week 6/2

    Designed as a fireside chat featuring Zarna Garg (comedian, entrepreneur, and author of This American Woman) and Andy Dunn (founder of Pie, Bonobos and author of Burn Rate), as they share candid stories about taking bold leaps, reinventing themselves, and building personal brands that stand out.

    Apply Here: Brex Host: Erica Wenger

  • Brexfast Club W/ First Gen - New York Tech Week 6/2

    Designed as a breakfast mixer with l immigrant and first-gen Founders, Operators & VCs

    Apply Here: Brex Host: Shai Goldman

  • Brex Golf Club - Finance Leader Edition New York Tech Week 6/3

    Designed as an intimate golf outing for finance leaders in NYC

    Apply Here: Brex Host: Anshul Shah

  • Brex Flex Club - Yoga Edition New York Tech Week 6/4

    Designed as yoga class for Brex clients to jumpstart your day

    Apply Here: Brex Host: Ilias Benabdallah

  • Brex Founder Fuel Up - New York Tech Week 6/4

    We know NY Tech Week can feel like a marathon so come fuel up at our Coffee Truck in Union Square.

    Apply Here: Brex Host: Ilias Benabdallah

  • Brex Social Club w/ Khosla Ventures and Stripe - New York Tech Week 6/4

    Designed as a social mixer for founders and investors

    Apply Here: Brex Host: Gaby Levey

  • Brex Shabbat Club - New York Tech Week Edition 6/6

    Designed for founders and investors as at traditional shabbat dinner to end Tech Week.

    Apply Here: Brex Host: Michael Morgenstern

Maor Shlomo is the Founder at Base44

Base44 is an AI app builder taking a novel, "batteries-included" approach to "vibe coding." By integrating a built-in database with every app, it makes building fully functional applications and tools incredibly accessible for non-technical users.

Founded and bootstrapped by solo founder Maor Shlomo (formerly co-founder and CEO of Explorium AI), Base44 achieved explosive growth, scaling from 0 to over 170,000 users in just two months and now commanding $100,000 in monthly profit.

Ambassadors Perspective: I am watching solo entrepreneurs closely. Many are skipping VC, staying lean, and getting liquid faster by vibe shipping products that click instantly. I love the new playbook of autonomy + audience.

Jonathan Lehr and Jessica Lin are Co-Founders & General Partners of Work-Bench

Work-Bench is an enterprise venture capital firm based in New York City. They lead Seed rounds in enterprise software startups throughout the country with $2M - $4M checks, and focus areas include AI / ML, Dev Tools and Infra, Cybersecurity, and Enterprise Applications. They are laser-focused on supporting our companies on all things 0 to 1 go-to-market including nailing your messaging, defining your ideal customer profile, making curated customer introductions, and more. 

Work-Bench are early investors in NYC unicorns Socure, Spring Health, and Cockroach Labs, and additional portfolio includes companies like Dialpad, FireHydrant, AuthZed, Courier Health, ArthurAI, Alkymi, and GovWell.

 

The financial stack you can bank on. Trusted by 1 in 3 US startups, Brex allows you to manage your spend from MVP to IPO. Interested? Sign up here using the referral code NEWSLETTER and get 25,000 bonus points, $5K AWS credits, $2.5K OpenAI credits and up to $150K in SaaS discounts.

Don’t hesitate to reach out,🦾!