Honeyjar launches AI comms platform to encode senior PR expertise
Honeyjar, a startup founded by veteran communications executives Michelle Masek and Nadia Jamshidi, is appearing at TechCrunch Disrupt as part of the Startup Battlefield 200, aiming to make senior-level PR judgment available to founders and others without comms experience. The tool automates drafting announcements, building media lists, finding reporters, tracking coverage and surfacing speaking opportunities, while the company says a human must still hit send or publish. Honeyjar says its waitlist drew 10,000 signups in the first 24 hours, with beta testers including Nextdoor, Coco Robotics, Bloomberg Beta and agencies Mission North and Full Picture, and it is training the product on other PR professionals' judgment through an initiative called Comms Lab.
If such tools cut down low-quality mass pitching, they could change how startups and the press communicate.
Journalists, entrepreneurs, and even some public relations professionals will tell you that the PR process is broken (buy me a drink sometime, and I’ll give you my rant). But could AI actually make things better?
Honeyjar, which will be attending this week’s TechCrunch Disrupt as part of the Startup Battlefield 200, wants to use AI to make the expertise and judgment of the best PR pros available to everyone, including founders who have no idea where to start.
The startup’s founders, CEO Michelle Masek and CCO Nadia Jamshidi, certainly fit the bill when it comes to PR expertise. They’ve both spent decades in the field, doing in-house communications and working at agencies. Masek recently served as senior vice president of marketing and communications for Ev Williams’ venture firm, Obvious Ventures.
As Masek described the challenges involved in “helping with the why and when of comms and marketing for 110 portfolio companies” (the startups her firm had invested in), I flashed back to my own brief stint leading marketing at an early-stage VC firm, where founders were constantly asking for help getting into TechCrunch. So I wasn’t surprised that Masek found herself asking, “Is there a way to scale the senior-level expertise into AI [in a way] that actually helps users do the work of comms in the proactive and skilled way that we do?”
#Honeyjar#Michelle Masek#Nadia Jamshidi#Nextdoor#Coco Robotics#Bloomberg Beta#Mission North#Full Picture#Obvious Ventures#Comms Lab