"The greatest challenge in an ever-changing world is relevance."
Meet Clara Armand-Delille, Founder & MD of ThirdEyeMedia, a global PR agency that helps startups, scaleups, and VCs scale their brand during crucial growth stages with hubs in Lisbon, Spain, Italy, UK, the US, and Latin America.
The agency was awarded in 2022 by the European Agency Awards as the winner of the category “Best Not-for-Profit Campaign” and by Prémios Lusófonos da Criatividade, in Portugal. ThirdEyeMedia’s past and present client portfolio include Sorare, Celo, Atomico, EU4UA, EightRoads, 360 Capital, FoodCheri, Juni, Tesselo, and many more.
With 15+ yrs experience, Clara developed a track record of building startups’, founders’ and VCs’ public profiles through communications campaigns, media announcements, and strategic positioning strategies.
She’s lived and worked in 5 countries, including France, the UK, the US, Portugal, and Italy, and is fluent in 6 languages. This asset helps her drive a solid global media footprint, secure investment interest, generate brand awareness and attract better talent.
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Table of Contents
We are thrilled to have you join us today, welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview! Let’s start off with a little introduction. Tell our readers a bit about yourself and your company.
Clara Armand-Delille: My name is Clara, I’m French and American and I have been a PR professional for over 10 years. After working in House at Google, venture capital firm Accel Partners and fintech startup iZettle (acquired by Paypal in 2016), I started ThirdEyeMedia.
We are a boutique PR agency catering to startups, scaleups and venture capital firms. What makes us special is that we are multi-lingual and multi-market, something very few agencies of our size can offer.
Our other unique feature is that we are entrepreneurs advising other entrepreneurs. WE are agile, flexible and resourceful in nature, and we act as a genuine partner, an extension of our client’s team.
In the past year, what is the greatest business achievement you’d like to celebrate with your team? Please share the details of that success.
Clara Armand-Delille: As PR partners to tech companies, we are on the front lines of the highs and lows of the industry. Along with venture capital firms and their LPs, I think tech PR agencies are THE market pulse for the tech sector. Any crisis, any movement in the market, we are on top of.
Right now, after a difficult Q4 2022, we’re capitalizing on a few trends that we see unfolding.
The wave of tech layoffs have given birth to dozens of startups, founded by highly qualified ex-GAFA execs. After a 3-4 mo freeze, Seed has picked up. Climate/GreenTech as well as HealthTech, continue to demonstrate ever-green tendencies. The Crypto winter is showing signs of turning into spring.
What advice do you wish you received when you started your business journey and what do you intend on improving in the next quarter?
Clara Armand-Delille: Risk-taking is part of life. You either take risk and manage your boat, or you are put at risk. We’ve seen it with the tech layoffs.
Folks who chose safety were actually massively exposed to risk by having all their career eggs in one basket, and were tossed into the deep end, as a result of big market movements in the last 6 months.
As far as things to improve, the volatility in the tech sector is a reminder to diversify our roster of clients, something we’ve already been putting into action in the last year.
ThirdEyeMedia works with tech entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, but we also have skincare lines, coworkers, and retail brands among our clients.
Online business keeps on surging higher than ever, B2B, B2C, online shopping, virtual meetings, remote work, Zoom medical consultations, what are your expectations for the year to come and how are you capitalizing on the tidal wave?
Clara Armand-Delille: We’ve always had a decentralized workforce and this is part of our strength as a service provider.
We cover more geographies, more timezones, and we have deep vertical expertise and contacts in all markets where we operate, from Europe to the USA, to Latin America.
Business is all about overcoming obstacles and creating opportunities for growth. What do you see as THE real challenge right now?
Clara Armand-Delille: The greatest challenge in an ever-changing world is relevance. To stay relevant, no matter what sector you operate in, it takes dedication to lifelong learning.
As PR professionals, we learn everyday, and this is what keeps us good at what we do: we learn from the media, from our clients, and from the process of pitching clients whether we win them or not.
We learn from observing the trends and movements in our industry, and from speaking to investors who have a unique and privileged view of the industry they fund.
In your experience, what tends to be the most underestimated part of running a company? Can you share an example?
Clara Armand-Delille: People tend to glorify freedom, and underestimate the grind. Speak to any entrepreneur, and they will tell you that they go through the good, the bad, and the ugly. Things are cyclical.
As a PR agency, this translates into the following:
- A project can be exhilarating or grueling
- A client can be grateful and a dream to work with, or not
- The industry can be on a high, with lots of cash available for PR projects, or in a crunch.
What does “success” in the year to come mean to you? It could be on a personal or business level, please share your vision.
Clara Armand-Delille: As a dedicated yogi, I’m constantly looking for ways to cultivate the balance between effort and ease. When I used to teach yoga, until a few years ago, I used to tell my students: go to your edge and then relax into it.
To stay in it for the long haul, you need to be able to stretch yourself and embrace the challenge, but also know when to surrender to the challenge and trust that the project will unfold in the best possible way.
This is particularly true in our industry, where media coverage can never be guaranteed. We can only do our absolute best at pitching, ultimately, the media is free, and it’s their call whether they want to cover the news we sell them.
Jerome Knyszewski, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Clara Armand-Delille for taking the time to do this interview and share her knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Clara Armand-Delille or her company, you can do it through her – Linkedin Page
Disclaimer: The ValiantCEO Community welcomes voices from many spheres on our open platform. We publish pieces as written by outside contributors with a wide range of opinions, which don’t necessarily reflect our own. Community stories are not commissioned by our editorial team and must meet our guidelines prior to being published.
