Last week VentureBeat ran a piece about the launch of a new virtual PR service for startups that means they don’t need to hire a public relations agency any more. Meanwhile, Dragon Den’s Deborah Meaden said this week that if you spend less than £3,000 a month on PR, you might as well not spend any money at all.

On this week’s PR True Or False Phil Szomszor and Austin Brailey discuss the value of PR to startups, whether growth hacking could take off and if there’s an ethical consideration for PR agency’s taking startup founders’ personal money.

@theredrocket only if it's success can't be measured.

— Rich M Brady (@richmbrady) February 13, 2014

@theredrocket @PRTrueOrFalse smart PR is never a waste of money. 'Doing press releases' is ;)

— Serena Mariani (@social_serena) February 13, 2014

@theredrocket I don't know of any startup that became known just with paid PR. Curious how many startups had paid PR when joining @seedcamp.

— Horatiu Mocian (@horatiumocian) February 13, 2014

@theredrocket agencies have a role but only when startup has infrastructure in place to make an agency relationship work

— Paul Doran (@dorando) February 13, 2014

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Views expressed in this podcast are Phil and Austin’s and do not necessarily reflect the view of Firefly, its employees or clients.