There’s one thing every PR person has in common: media monitoring duty. This is an essential, but tedious task that involves tracking news about clients, competitors, and industry stories, typically via a combination of Google News searches and monitoring tools.
In the VC world I operate in, the challenge multiplies with the addition of scanning for portfolio company news. Some funds have hundreds of portfolio companies. Others, thousands. Techstars, where I’m the director of communications, has nearly 5,000 portfolio companies. Initially, I was only able to track portfolio company news when companies mentioned Techstars directly.
During a conversation with a VC communications peer about portfolio monitoring tools, an idea came to mind: what if this was something AI could solve for? I posed the question to Claude:
"Can you help me create a media scan for a list of companies that feeds the results into a Slack channel?"
Our engineering team had, for a short period of time, tested a Slack channel for Techstars news, so it seemed reasonable that I could create a channel for portfolio company news. And that's how my journey to automate the impossible began.
Building the System
The system Claude built (with my prompting) had several components:
—> A Python script that could check Google News for mentions of our portfolio companies
—> Smart filtering to avoid irrelevant mentions (like distinguishing between our portfolio company called “Morty” and the TV show “Rick & Morty") or adding context with keywords to ensure relevance (like "Alloy" AND "fintech" to avoid articles about metal alloys). I opted for Boolean search terms in the original script and am currently working to create a simplified YAML (another term where I had to ask Claude, “what does that even mean?”).
—> A Slack integration that would post updates to a dedicated channel
—> Background processing so it could run continuously without supervision, though I’ve come to prefer manually running the script for news that has run in the last 24 hours rather than getting Slack notifications all day long.
The Results
Even though I haven’t yet solved the 5,000 portfolio companies challenge, my scanning process has been transformed. Every morning when I run the script, I can see when any of those companies have been mentioned in the news with all the details I need: Company Name, Headline, Source, Publication Date, Link to Publications
These findings power Techstars’ internal communications, portfolio company highlights on social media, and monthly newsletter content.
The Learning Process
With no technical background, the only way to approach this task was as a communicator and conversationalist. There’s a term for this now - vibe coding - but when I built this in December, I was simply having a conversation with Claude about what I wanted and how to accomplish it.
Some takeaways:
Communication skills translate well with AI collaboration. Your ability to articulate ideas, ask clarifying questions, and provide feedback is your superpower.
It’s easier to communicate when treating your AI system as a person. I know anthropomorphizing AI makes some uncomfortable, but you’ll communicate more effectively this way.
Just ask questions. I asked Claude approximately 1 million dumb questions to get through this. It’s a judgement free zone. Ask for explanations like you’re five years old or step by step instructions for processes you don’t understand.
Iterate, iterate, iterate. There’s no one-and-dones with AI (yet). Heck, I’m still iterating on this five months after I first built it.
Want to create your own media monitoring system? Start by asking your preferred AI system to help you build a simple script for 5-10 companies. Iterate from there, adding complexity as you learn.
Alternatively, you can try the prompt that I reverse engineered from my original conversation with Claude:
"I'm using a Mac and need help creating a real-time news monitoring Slack bot for a list of companies. Here are my specific requirements:
Real-time monitoring:
Only show news articles published after the script starts running
Check for new articles every minute
No old news or historical articles
For each news article, I want:
Publication name
Headline
3-4 sentence summary
Publication time/date
Link to full article
Need complete setup instructions for Mac:
How to use Terminal
All necessary package installations
Step-by-step file creation and script setup
How to start and stop the script
Slack configuration:
How to create the Slack app
Required permissions
Channel setup
Bot installation steps
Here's my list of companies to monitor: [company list]
Please write the instructions assuming I'm new to using Terminal and Python, and make sure to include any troubleshooting steps."
If you’re using Windows, change the Mac and Terminal language to “Windows” and “Command Prompt.”
What tedious work task would you like to automate? I'd love to hear your ideas in the comments.
*Special thanks to my wife, Brit, who had to deal with me on that fateful December weekend that I was hyperfixated on figuring this out, and for reviewing my writing.
This is cool, I've done the same but company linkedin posts --> slack channel