Companies that have a well defined niche, on the other hand, don't need to spend much time or money on PR. And many of them are more successful than 37S.
"We’ve advertised here and there, but all things considered the number would round down to zero. We’re currently advertising Highrise on The Deck, for example.
I don’t have anything against advertising, but we’ve found better ways to get our message out than spending money on advertisements.
I like what Amazon.com does: Instead of advertising they give their ad budget back to their customers in the form of free shipping."
TechCrunch isn't aimed at successful, profitable businesses.
TechCrunch is essentially a brothel; Arrington fancies himself a pimp. So it is populated by whores, and patronized mainly by people who want to pay for sex.
TechCrunch is about VC, it's about the dream of the big cashout, it's about perpetuating the startup mythos.
Those other businesses simply don't fit that agenda.
On HN, you have a slew of TC-style masturbatory stories about funding and then you've got a handful of less exciting "hard luck" cases that touch people because they're like orphans who sing and dance.
Like that post about the plumber -- it's Puritan Work Ethic pr0n.
Most HN readers seem to think they're going to end up with the funding (the former), but at the same time they want to hear from those heartwarming orphans (the latter).
"In fact Yunus' story is actually actively counter-productive to the interests of systems like the venture capital system, since that is a system which maintains class division around concentrations of wealth, and this story demonstrates that eroding or circumventing those systems can be more profitable than co-operating with them.
The real reason you won't find this stuff on TechCrunch is because TechCrunch is about power, not money; because this story is too capitalist for the world of venture capital; and because TechCrunch embodies extremely unpleasant class politics." -- http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2008/05/never-hate-only-eve...
But it is essentially a meat market. And just like the biggest meat market in the US, Los Angeles, the meat's synthetic.
I think a bigger problem is not hearing about massive successes that fall outside the tech elite's interest. For instance WebKinz the virtual world/stuffed animal hybrid probably generates 9 figures of revenue per year, given Club Penguin was doing ~$75MM when it got acquired. How many TechCrunch stories have they had? A quick search yields 0 dedicated results. Thats huge revenue for what amounts to a startup within a toy company and no coverage in the publication of record. However we hear about every stupid ad based socialgraphwidgetfacebookappgcasualgame startup that raises $500K.
Also, it seems a little silly to say "We want to stay small!" and then to say "Why doesn't the press want to write about us!" Rails is awesome, but the rest of their offering has been eclipsed by Google Docs. They have done a great job attracting press compared to the value their products create. Same goes for other small companies where there isn't a lot of "there" there.