How to Pitch The Information: The 8-Step Briefing Sequence for AI and Enterprise Tech Founders

If you've placed stories in TechCrunch and you're ready to move up, The Information is probably the next name on your list. It's also the outlet that produces the most silent inboxes for founders who've never pitched it before.

That silence isn't random. The Information operates on a completely different logic than every other tech outlet you've dealt with, and most PR playbooks miss this entirely. What works at TechCrunch, what works at Forbes, what works at Decrypt: none of it maps 1:1 to how reporters at The Information decide what to write.

I'm going to lay out what actually produces coverage there, what kills a pitch before it's opened, and the 8-step sequence I use to move a founder from cold and unknown to recurring briefing source.

What The Information is (and why that changes everything)

Founded in 2013 by Jessica Lessin, a former Wall Street Journal tech reporter, The Information runs on 100% subscription revenue. No ads. Subscribers pay $399 per year, and the professional tier runs $999. That one fact reshapes everything about editorial decisions.

Every story a reporter writes has to answer one question: will this make a paying subscriber feel the subscription was worth it today? Not "is this interesting?" Not "is this a big company?" The question is whether the story delivers intelligence that a tech executive, a VC, or a senior operator could not have gotten anywhere else.

The outlet covers AI infrastructure, enterprise software, semiconductor deals, venture capital, and frontier model companies. Its AI Agenda newsletter, written by Stephanie Palazzolo, is one of the more closely read products in the enterprise AI space. The subscriber base skews toward institutional readers: fund partners, corporate strategy teams, and the senior technical operators those people back. This is not a publication written for the general tech enthusiast. It's written for people who make decisions worth tens of millions of dollars.

That context matters because it tells you exactly what story angle has a chance and what doesn't.

The Information vs. TechCrunch: stop treating them the same

Most founders pitch The Information the same way they pitch TechCrunch. That's the root cause of most rejections.

TechCrunch values speed and access. Reporters there build relationships with founders and VCs to get funding announcements first, and their core reader values being early to a name more than being deeply informed about a strategy. A Series A announcement at a company with a well-known lead investor will run fine at TechCrunch with a 72-hour embargo and a clean press release.

The Information isn't interested in that story. They're interested in what the funding reveals about a broader competitive shift, who the strategic LPs are and why they matter, or what the company's internal roadmap signals about where enterprise AI is actually heading. The announcement is the entry point, not the story.

Three concrete differences:

• Source standard. TechCrunch will publish a funding story from an embargo package plus a founder interview. The Information requires named sources, documented corroboration, or exclusive access to internal data. Single anonymous tips don't move.
• Volume. TechCrunch publishes dozens of pieces a day. The Information publishes far fewer, longer stories. Every slot counts more, and reporters protect them accordingly.
• Exclusivity. At TechCrunch, an exclusive is appreciated but not always required. At The Information, exclusivity is essentially table stakes for any story you initiate. They're not going to invest reporter time in a story that competitors can run simultaneously.

What actually lands at The Information

There are four story types that run reliably:

1. Exclusive scoops with named sources. A deal, a pivot, a product direction, or a personnel move that isn't public yet, confirmed on the record or by multiple independent sources. This is the highest-value pitch you can bring.

2. Proprietary data with a market interpretation. If your company sits on usage data, infrastructure metrics, or adoption numbers that reveal something non-obvious about where the enterprise AI market is moving, that's a real story. Not "we grew 3x." Something like: inference cost curves that show a specific category of model deployment is becoming economically viable for mid-market companies for the first time.

3. An inside account of a strategic decision. A founder who can articulate, on the record, why they bet on a specific architecture and how that bet is playing out has the raw material for a profile feature. This isn't a product launch piece. It's an access-driven story about how decisions get made at a company the outlet's subscribers care about.

4. A trend that's running ahead of coverage. If you can identify something happening across 4 to 6 companies in the AI infrastructure or enterprise software space that no one has connected into a pattern yet, and you can name the examples and provide on-record context, a reporter will take that briefing seriously.

Notice what's not on that list: partnership announcements, feature launches, award wins, conference appearances, and most funding rounds that don't reveal something strategically significant.

The 8-step briefing sequence

This sequence assumes you're starting with zero relationship at the outlet. It takes 8 to 16 weeks to execute properly. Shortcutting it produces the silence.

Step 1: Map the beat before you pitch anything. Spend three weeks reading everything The Information has published on your specific sub-sector. Understand which reporters cover your area. Right now, Stephanie Palazzolo covers the AI beat and writes the AI Agenda newsletter. Identify the angles they've already run, the companies they've cited, and the gaps in the narrative. You're building a mental model of what their editorial coverage map looks like so you can find the white space.

Step 2: Become a source before you're a subject. The fastest path to a placement is becoming a useful background source for a story someone else is the subject of. If a reporter is working on a piece about inference infrastructure or AI agent adoption curves, and you have a genuine data point or expert perspective, offer it without asking for a mention. That transaction builds trust. Reporters remember sources who gave them something useful without a quid pro quo.

Step 3: Use your investor network for a warm introduction. Cold pitches to The Information from unknown senders convert at near-zero rates. If you have a lead investor whose portfolio companies have been covered, or if an advisor has been quoted in the outlet before, get a warm introduction to the relevant reporter. One sentence from a credible third party clears a hurdle that a perfect cold email can't.

Step 4: Develop the scoop, not the announcement. The Information does not want your press release dressed up as a pitch. They want the story that the press release doesn't tell. When you have a funding round, a major deal, or a product pivot coming, ask: what does this reveal about where the market is heading that my competitors don't want public? That's the story to bring.

Step 5: Structure the briefing as a reporter-first document. When you do make contact, the first outreach should be a short note, under 150 words, with the scoop in the first two sentences. Name the exclusive you're offering, the on-record sources available, and the timeline. Don't attach the full press release. Don't explain your founding story. Don't include the team bios. Offer the scoop, explain why it matters to their subscriber base specifically, and ask if they want the full briefing.

Step 6: Offer a 48 to 72-hour exclusive window. For funding scoops or deal announcements, a standard exclusive window is 48 to 72 hours before you release to the wire or other outlets. State this clearly in the initial note. If they want more time for a deeper investigation-style piece, negotiate that separately. Don't offer an "exclusive" while simultaneously pitching 10 other outlets, even under embargo. Reporters talk.

Step 7: Prepare the source package. If a reporter is interested, they'll want more than a founder interview. Prepare: at least two named, on-record sources who can speak to the story from independent positions (customers, investors, or partners); any proprietary data in a clean format; and access to internal documents or communications where relevant and legally appropriate. The more of this you can offer upfront, the faster the reporter can make a decision.

Step 8: Maintain the relationship post-story. After a placement, the relationship is actually more valuable than the coverage itself. Brief the reporter regularly, even when you don't have a story ready to publish. Share data they can use for future stories. Flag market developments in your sector before competitors do. Reporters who trust you as a source come back. That's how you move from a one-time placement to recurring coverage.

The common mistakes that kill otherwise good pitches

Pitching a story that TechCrunch would run. If the story would appear on TechCrunch regardless of whether a reporter invested time in it, The Information has no reason to run it.

Offering a "soft exclusive" while running an embargo. An exclusive means one outlet, period. Offering The Information a 12-hour head start on an embargo you've given to five other outlets isn't an exclusive. Reporters figure this out.

Going through a PR firm that's unknown to the outlet. The Information's reporters are selective about whose pitches they read. A firm that mass-blasts press releases to every outlet on its list will condition those reporters to ignore anything from that sender. If your PR partner can't name a specific story they've placed at The Information, that's a signal.

Not reading the outlet before pitching. Pitching a regulatory angle to a reporter who exclusively covers AI infrastructure architecture is a fast way to get flagged as someone who hasn't done the work.

Expecting speed. The Information's investigative pieces take weeks. Their shorter scoops move faster, but still require verification. If you need something to run in 48 hours, The Information is probably not the right outlet for that specific story. TechCrunch or Decrypt might move faster.

What stage makes sense

Pre-seed founders almost never get into The Information unless the founder is a known name from a prior exit or a technical researcher with an established publication record. The outlet covers companies, not concepts.

Series A founders in AI infrastructure or enterprise software have a real shot, particularly if they're building in a category the outlet is actively covering and they can bring proprietary data or a named-source scoop.

Series B and beyond: if you're not in The Information by this point and your category matters to institutional readers, there's something wrong with either your story, your access strategy, or both.

For founders in the Web3 or crypto space, the bar is higher because the outlet's subscriber base is institutional tech and finance, not crypto-native. Crypto stories get coverage when they have direct implications for institutional capital, enterprise software adoption, or major fund movements. A DePIN protocol or an AI-plus-blockchain stack has more runway there than a token launch or NFT project.

One thing I'd tell every founder before they pitch

You can't manufacture the story The Information needs from raw air. The scoop, the proprietary data, the named sources: these exist or they don't. The sequence above is about positioning yourself to deliver those things at the right moment, not about dressing up a thin announcement to look like a scoop.

Journalists at The Information are among the best-sourced technology reporters working anywhere. They know what real news looks like. They also know what manufactured urgency and PR polish look like. The only thing that works is giving them something genuinely worth reporting.

When you have that, the sequence above gets it in front of the right person, in the right format, at the right moment.

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Book a 30-min teardown with Shilika to get a candid read on whether your story is ready for The Information, and what it would take to get there: https://calendly.com/shilikajain/30min/