Journalists, entrepreneurs, and even some public relations professionals will tell you that the PR process is broken (buy me a drink next time and I’ll give you my rant). But can AI actually improve the situation?
Honeyjar, which will be at TechCrunch Disrupt this week as part of the Startup Battlefield 200, wants to use AI to make the expertise and judgment of the best PR experts available to everyone, including founders who don’t know where to start.
The startup’s founders, CEO Michelle Masek and CCO Nadia Jamshidi, are certainly on point when it comes to PR expertise. Both have spent decades in the field, both in internal communications roles and in agency roles. Macek most recently served as senior vice president of marketing and communications for Ev Williams’ venture firm Obvious Ventures.
When Macek described the challenges involved in “supporting the why and when of communications and marketing for 110 portfolio companies (startups in which her firm invested),” I was reminded of my own brief tenure leading marketing at an early-stage venture capital firm. Founders there were always looking for help joining TechCrunch. So I wasn’t surprised when Macek asked, “Is there a way to extend advanced level expertise to AI to actually help users (in some sense) do their communication work in the same active and skilled way that we do?”
Honey Jar is her answer to that question. Automate processes such as creating announcements, finding the best journalists to pitch to, and identifying the most promising speaking opportunities. But Jamshidi told me in a follow-up email that Honeyjar’s vision goes beyond coverage and beyond specific AI tools.
“Honeyjar can find reporters, create media lists, scan news and social, track coverage, and surface opportunities,” she said. “These capabilities are important, but they’re just part of what we’re building. The bigger idea is to unify the entire communications workflow: signals, context, strategy, decisions, timing, and execution.”
And it’s not just for founders. Macek said he realized there were “millions of unassigned correspondents responsible for communications work.”
“They don’t have the title of PR, but they are marketers, investors, authors, creators, school superintendents, and sports team leaders,” she added. “It’s incredibly horizontal, and you have to establish strategic communication. It gets circulated all the time, but very often the problem isn’t resolved.”
Honeyjar is also not trying to replace PR professionals. Macek said she and Jamshidi built the tools they wanted to use. She claimed that Honeyjar increases the effectiveness of PR firms and internal communications teams, while also allowing individual PR professionals to “acquire a third client without the cost of expansion.”
Masek said Honeyjar posted a waiting list and had 10,000 people sign up in the first 24 hours. Beta testers include Nextdoor, tech startup Coco Robotics, investor Bloomberg Beta, and agencies Mission North and Full Picture.
While this sounds promising for companies looking to get more attention, it can be a nightmare for journalists. We receive more pitches than we can respond to, many of which have already been written by AI chatbots.
When I voiced my concerns about further PR waste, Macek pointed out that while Honeyjar can draft sales emails and social media posts with customer feedback, customers actually have to press send or publish.
“We never want a world where humans are left out,” she said.
And judgment is important here as well. Macek said she and Jamshidi tried to “inject our wisdom into the honey jar and code it.” We’re now also training our products based on the judgment of other PR professionals through a broader initiative called Comms Lab.
“For us, judgment is about knowing what to do, what not to do, when to act, and how to adapt to the situation,” Jamshidi added. “It comes from understanding the company’s goals and priorities, what’s going on inside and outside the organization, and knowing what to say to whom, where, and when.”
In some cases, Honeyjar may tell founders it simply isn’t ready for press coverage, Macek said.
“We constantly hear from reporters who want to make better recommendations and hear directly from experts,” she said. “We can see a future where more trusted recommendations from sources you actually want to hear from will arrive in your inbox.”
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