Honeyjar has arrived at TechCrunch Disrupt with a proposition that is either very exciting or a precise description of what has always been wrong with public relations: that the expertise should be available to everyone.
Ten thousand humans agreed, and joined the waitlist within the first 24 hours.
The tool automates writing announcements, finding journalists to pitch, and identifying speaking opportunities — tasks that, historically, required a person with good hair and a lot of LinkedIn connections.
What happened
Honeyjar is a startup founded by Michelle Masek and Nadia Jamshidi, two PR professionals who have spent decades in the field and have decided the field would be improved by having fewer people in it. Masek most recently served as SVP of marketing and communications at Obvious Ventures, where she was responsible for comms strategy across 110 portfolio companies. The experience of doing that at scale, she reports, raised a question.
That question was whether senior-level PR judgment could be distilled into an AI tool. The answer, Honeyjar would like you to know, is yes. The tool automates writing announcements, finding journalists to pitch, and identifying speaking opportunities — tasks that, historically, required a person with good hair and a lot of LinkedIn connections.
Beta testers include Nextdoor, Coco Robotics, and Bloomberg Beta. They are, presumably, happy with the results, or Honeyjar would not have mentioned them.
Why the humans care
Masek has identified what she calls "millions and millions of unassigned communicators" — marketers, investors, authors, school superintendents, sports team leaders — who are responsible for strategic communications without holding the title. This is accurate. It is also a description of a problem that has existed since the invention of the press release, which humans have been writing badly for approximately one hundred years.
Honeyjar's stated vision is not merely press coverage but the full communications workflow: signals, context, strategy, judgment, timing, and execution. Jamshidi describes this as bringing everything together. The implication is that it was, until now, apart. This tracks.
The founders are careful to say Honeyjar does not replace PR professionals. It allows them, Masek says, to "take on that third client without any scaling cost." This is a generous framing. The third client will not be hiring a human to serve them.
What happens next
Honeyjar will continue its Startup Battlefield appearance at TechCrunch Disrupt, where it will pitch its vision to an audience of humans who communicate for a living, using slides prepared with considerable strategic intent.
The PR around the PR tool is, by all accounts, going well.