I think there are two sides to the startup world. The glam side: featured in TC, gets lots of early funding, and is visible in general. Sold right away, for a large amount of money. Think instagram. The other side of the coin is the army of startups that no one really talks about. These startups bootstrap, they have customers, they make money, and they create jobs. They are the unsung heroes of the startup world. They are often focused on professional verticals that are otherwise not super interesting to the general audiences of tech crunch et al. They are the companies that employ many of us.
At the end of the day this is not a beauty contest. It is about providing a valuable service to your customers.
The point is to always be strategic about why you want press and what you hope it will achieve. For some companies, TC is very relevant for acquiring customers. For others, it serves as validation for prospective investors and employees.
If, say, you're a women's fashion app, we would probably reach a small subset of your target market and it would probably be smart to have a broader strategy that reaches powerful fashion blogs.
Just on a lark, is "BioInformatics" with a strong Semantic Web angle to it, of particular interest to anyone among your group?
We do cover some health and biotech (particularly if it's something that could be consumer-facing or doesn't require like a 10-year FDA clinical trial). We wrote about Dr. Chrono, which was a YC company.