Startup Honeyjar is developing an artificial intelligence platform designed to make the expertise of public relations and communications professionals available to companies and individuals without a specialized team in this field. The platform covers preparing announcements, finding suitable journalists, and identifying speaking opportunities, as well as monitoring news and social media and tracking media coverage.
The idea comes from the company’s founders, Michelle Masek, its chief executive officer, and Nadia Jamshidi, its head of communications, who spent decades working in in-house communications and agencies. Masek most recently served as senior vice president of marketing and communications at venture capital firm Obvious Ventures, where she helped provide communications and marketing advice to 110 companies in the firm’s portfolio.
From Separate Tools to an Integrated Workflow
Honeyjar’s vision, according to Jamshidi, is not limited to improving the chances of securing press coverage or producing ready-to-use copy. The platform seeks to bring signals, context, strategy, professional judgment, timing, and execution together in a single communications workflow.
The company is targeting a broader group of public relations professionals, as Masek believes that millions of people perform communications tasks without holding that job title. They include marketers, investors, writers, content creators, school administrators, and sports team leaders.
Humans Remain Responsible for Publishing
Honeyjar can draft a message to a journalist or a social media post in the client’s voice, but the client is the one who presses the send or publish button. Masek says the company does not want to remove humans from the loop, indicating that the tool provides suggestions and initial outputs rather than fully delegating control to the system.
The company is attempting to incorporate professional expertise into the product through the Comms Lab initiative, which aims to train it on the judgments and experience of more public relations professionals. According to Jamshidi, professional judgment does not mean merely knowing what to do, but also determining what should not be done, when to act, and how to adjust a message according to the company’s objectives and the circumstances surrounding it.
Why Does This Development Matter?
The platform could help small communications teams or employees who handle these responsibilities on the side organize their work and make better decisions before reaching out to the media. However, automation could also increase the volume of low-quality messages reaching journalists, a problem that already exists with the spread of conversational tools capable of writing ready-made press pitches.
The practical test lies in Honeyjar’s ability to improve the relevance and timing of messages, rather than merely increasing their number. Masek says the tool may sometimes advise a founder that they are not yet ready for media coverage, a function that requires assessing context rather than simply generating new text.
Early Adoption Signals
The waitlist received 10,000 sign-ups within the first 24 hours after it opened, according to Masek. Early testers include Nextdoor, startup Coco Robotics, investor Bloomberg Beta, and agencies Mission North and Full Picture. Honeyjar will also participate in Startup Battlefield 200 as part of the TechCrunch Disrupt event.
This interest alone does not prove the product’s ability to improve communications quality or reduce media noise; those results will depend on the quality of the data and context provided by companies, as well as the extent to which sensitive decisions remain subject to human review.