Smart in Public What Happens When PR People Stop Complaining and Start Building
What does it actually take to build an AI product for an industry that's still figuring out what AI means for its future?
Michelle Masek and Nadia Jamshidi didn't wait around for someone else to answer that question. As co-founders of Honey Jar — an AI co-pilot built specifically for PR and communications — they're in the middle of one of the most interesting experiments in the industry right now: betting that the practitioners who feel most disrupted by AI are actually the ones who'll benefit most from it.
In this episode, the Katies get into the real story behind Honey Jar including the messy, honest account of what it's like to build a comms tool while navigating a VC landscape that doesn't always understand what communications professionals actually do all day.
We cover:
🍯 Why Honey Jar exists — and what early users are saying about it (including the feedback that stung)
🤖 The hallucination problem nobody wants to talk about — LLMs are impressive and unreliable in equal measure. Michelle and Nadia are refreshingly direct about what that means for PR practitioners trying to use AI tools responsibly.
📱 Who this is actually built for — solo PR pros and early-stage founders are the underserved sweet spot here, and the case they make is hard to argue with
💰 What it's like pitching a PR tool to VCs — spoiler: investors who've never had to write a press release at 11pm have some... interesting takes on the market opportunity
🔄 The evolving role of young professionals — how the next generation of comms practitioners is already reshaping what this work looks like
"The future is applied AI for every profession." Not AI as a replacement — AI as infrastructure. The comms professionals who figure out how to build on top of that infrastructure are the ones who'll matter in five years.
We're in a moment of rapid AI-driven change, and the tools are still catching up to the vision. Honey Jar is an early bet on where the industry is going — and this conversation is a useful window into both the opportunity and the very real challenges of getting there.
Whether you're a solo practitioner trying to compete with larger agencies, a founder who can't afford a full comms team yet, or a communications leader figuring out your AI strategy, this episode has something uncomfortable and useful for you.
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