How did you get your first article about your product/company published?

We got lucky - an organization was looking to conduct interviews of CEOs and we just reached out and said we'd like to be included. They said yes. I'd try for smaller / local media organizations to start (perhaps in your city) since they may like to cover local companies. Use that coverage to then go to larger media companies.

Good project

Find a reporter/journalist who works in your field, figure out what he/she is interested in, and send info about your project that relevant to his/her interest. Do not give up after the first fail and keep trying.

Trying to get an article in the beginning is wasted energy. It's often only useful if you have a consumer product. If you do want coverage, you need to look at it from the media's perspective. They will write about you when there is a story to tell. So you need to first help them do that. No journalist - at least not a credible one - will ever write a puff piece, no matter what some PR tells you. In my experience, cold emailing very rarely works. While the other commentators here suggesting speaking to reporters in your field, I would again not bother. Reporters (especially those covering specific beats in junior posts) have got to pump out tons of articles and will have established sources already, they won't have the time to fully engage someone they don't know, so you need to make it easy for them. What I would focus on is engaging influencers in your field. I don't mean insta stars, but someone in your target audience who others listen to. They might be blogger, people well-known in their field, other business owners, or maybe even just folk with a lot of friends. If you can get these people to shout about you, that's when you'll start seeing journalists getting in touch + your users should also grow as well. [for context, my website Lockdown Loo has been covered in 100s of media stories and we got there by doing the above. Have never used a press release].

I am interested to find out as well

I would also like to add that you can try some PR firms. They will help you with contacts and logistics. For example, they will help you set up a meeting with a journalist. Do not forget to polish your story (i.e., product features as well as the names of your co-founders). You can even jot down some ideas on paper and bring it with you to the meeting. The journalist may want to keep the paper in order to prepare the story as it will appear in the press.

So I've worked in PR and media for years - the trick is to pitch the story in the right way to the right journalist at the right time. Now that's easy for me to say as I have a lot of experience - but for more detail I actually have a step-by-step pitching guide you can download here www.moderndispatches.com. There are also a range of tools - HARO (Help a Reporter Out) where you get a ton of journo requests every day so you can at least start getting your name out there, as well as the #journorequest hashtag on Twitter. Also, depending on your budget there's Response Source (owned by Cision - you can do a trial of their journo requests for free and get published in that time and I think you can use their press release service for a fee). I've also had successful results with Business Wire (but it costs a fortune). If you want to do it yourself have a read of the guide I directed you to above it talks you through it and hope you find it useful :)

Have you tried finding an established product in Fintech family, tracing how it was marketed/published and doing the same? Ex: What did founder of Mint do to get noticed by media.

@currie32 for a local side project, I researched local media outlets that seemed to have similar interests. I then crafted an 'origin story' with a call to action and sent it to representatives in these companies. This way, they could see that there was an interesting story without needing to uncover it themselves. It provided plenty of information that streamlined the interview process and ultimately allowed me to control much of the narrative of their published version.

I'd recommend publishing a press release describing your product launch/problem you're solving on PR distribution networks. Good luck!

In my previous startup, how I struck out with a media feature in a local newspaper was emailing a reporter who covered a company in the same vertical. She declined, but we kept in touch and over a year later she followed up and asked for more details. Not too long later we got our feature. That said, I would caution the allure of shiny media because most of the users that you acquire through media don't last long nor are the right ones. The "spotlight effect" is very real, and you should consider other channels to acquire users.

It's not easy, but it's worth an effort to be featured in news and content aggregators. We are still working on that :)

Would it be applicable for mobile users?

Damn, there was so much water and prehistory... But dude, you work for months, and then your brain just won't let you write short.