Honeyjar Brings Veteran PR Judgment to AI After 10,000 Signups in 24 Hours

Summary

As of October 12, 2026, Honeyjar was preparing to join Disrupt’s Startup Battlefield 200 after attracting 10,000 waitlist signups in 24 hours. CEO Michelle Masek and Chief Communications Officer Nadia Jamshidi, both PR veterans with decades of agency and in-house experience, founded the startup to convert senior communications judgment into accessible AI. Masek recently served as senior vice president of marketing and communications at Ev Williams’ Obvious Ventures, where she supported communications and marketing across 110 portfolio companies.

Honeyjar drafts announcements, pitches and social posts in a customer’s voice, finds journalists, builds media lists, scans news and social media, tracks coverage, and identifies speaking opportunities. Its broader system combines signals, context, strategy, timing, judgment and execution for founders and the millions of unofficial communicators among marketers, investors, authors, creators, school superintendents and sports team leaders. Beta testers include Nextdoor, Coco Robotics, Bloomberg Beta, Mission North and Full Picture. Masek says Honeyjar should augment, not replace, agencies and in-house teams, potentially helping a practitioner add a third client without higher scaling costs. Users must approve and send every output, while the Comms Lab trains Honeyjar on other PR professionals’ judgment, including when to advise founders they are not ready for coverage. The intended benefit is more credible outreach, but journalists already overwhelmed by AI-written pitches could face greater volume.