In February, Zestful, a San Francisco startup building an AI-powered meal-planning app, took a shot with 9FigureMedia, a big-name PR firm, to carve out a spot in the packed U.S. healthtech market. Zestful’s app helps families eat better, but their name barely registered. They bet on news PR, newswire PR, and strategic PR to land media coverage and catch investors' eyes. The campaign started rough, with bad pitches, no traction, and plenty of frustration, but Zestful kept going. This is a real, warts-and-all story of how a PR stumble still led to a startup's success, showcasing the grind founders endure.

Zestful’s founder, Priya Patel, had a product she believed in. The app utilized AI to create meal plans tailored to individual diets, saving users time. But in a world where apps like MyFitnessPal rule, Zestful was a ghost. Priya picked 9FigureMedia for their knack for news PR, hoping strategic PR would shape a story that stuck and newswire PR would get it into places like Forbes or TechCrunch. It cost $4,000 a month, a brutal hit for a startup with no revenue. “I thought we’d see results fast,” Priya said. Turns out, it was a slog.

The first pitch went nowhere. 9FigureMedia tried selling Zestful as a “nutrition game-changer,” sending it via newswire PR to outlets like Fast Company. It flopped. An editor called it “forgettable.” The PR team, led by Rachel Kim, pivoted to an AI-focused pitch. Same story, no bites. Priya was annoyed. “This is what we’re paying for?” she emailed Rachel. Rachel didn’t sugarcoat it: “We got it wrong. We’ll figure it out.” That honesty kept things from falling apart, but Priya was rattled.

PR isn’t some instant-win button. 9FigureMedia’s strategic PR depends on trying different angles, but Zestful’s early ones crashed. A press release about their AI? Ignored. A piece on Priya’s background? Rejected. They even threw out a pitch about “wellness for freelancers,” but it felt forced and died. Jake, a PR intern, later said, “We were just guessing at first. We didn’t dig deep enough.” For a startup scraping by, those misfires felt like money down the drain.

The human side was messy. Priya was on edge, griping to her co-founder over coffee. “Are we even cut out for this?” she muttered. Rachel’s team wasn’t having fun either, pulling late nights to fix the mess. “We knew we had to turn it around,” Rachel told a coworker, though she wasn’t sure how. Both sides felt the strain, Zestful needed a win, and 9FigureMedia was scrambling to avoid looking incompetent. It’s the kind of stress that makes you wonder why you signed up.

Then, a shift. Jake suggested focusing on what Zestful did: help stressed parents get healthy meals on the table. It wasn’t flashy, but it was real. The team built a pitch, “Zestful Takes the Chaos Out of Family Dinners,” and tested it with smaller sites using newswire PR. A parenting blog picked it up. Then Fast Company’s health section ran a piece. By May 2025, a Forbes contributor ran a story quoting a mom who said Zestful “made evenings less crazy.” That article triggered some investor emails.

The Forbes story didn’t get everything right. It barely mentioned Zestful’s AI and mangled Priya’s name. But it was Forbes, and it made waves. Zestful’s site saw more visitors, and their pitch deck now had “Featured in Forbes” bragging rights. 9FigureMedia’s news PR finally clicked, but it took months of flops to get there. Rachel said, “We had to mess up to find the right path.” Priya was honest: “It worked, but I was ready to quit halfway.”

This isn’t some shiny PR success tale. 9FigureMedia’s fees, $2,000 to $20,000 a month, are rough for startups like Zestful. Plenty of founders avoid PR, betting on X posts or Google ads. A San Francisco founder who said no to 9FigureMedia shrugged, “I’d rather spend on ads than beg for press.” Makes sense. Priya almost bailed after the first month. And PR’s a crapshoot, another 9FigureMedia client, a SaaS startup, chased news PR for months and got little more than a few blog posts.

Why bother telling this? Because startups like Zestful face a brutal fight, and PR’s no easy answer. U.S. healthtech pulled in $10 billion in the first quarter of 2025, but it’s a ruthless space. 9FigureMedia’s strategic PR can move the needle, but it’s slow and pricey. Zestful’s path shows a rough PR campaign can still deliver if you don’t give up. By June 2025, Zestful had $1.2 million in seed cash, partly thanks to that Forbes hit. Priya’s now chasing Series A, with 9FigureMedia working on another newswire PR push.

For founders, Zestful’s story is a dose of truth. PR’s a mess, expensive, and often feels like a rip-off. You’ll probably waste money on pitches that go nowhere. But if you keep at it, one good hit can shift things. Zestful went from unknown to noticed, not because PR was perfect, but because they and 9FigureMedia didn’t fold. That’s the kind of stubborn fight it takes to survive as a startup needs.