A pivot into the world of Public Relations (PR) has proved fruitful for early-stage startup Managr.
The Atlanta-based startup, which launched as a SalesTech tool in 2021, announced its PR assistant just two months ago for companies and agencies looking to get an AI-boost to their PR efforts. The platform is designed to craft releases, find potential journalists to pitch, and sift through media trends that could help a brand get its story in front of the right media outlets.
That can be crucial as brands try to strike the right balance and tone with local and national news outlets.
Founder and CEO Michael Gorodisher told Hypepotamus that the pivot has already helped Managr land big clients like the NFL team the New England Patriots and the Atlanta-based firm Babbit Bodner PR.
Moving Mangr towards the PR world was a natural progression for Gorodisher, who spent 11 years at Meltwater, a media intelligence and social listening tool for corporate reputation. He was most recently Head of Sales for the California-based company.
Gorodisher said it was the right time to pivot the company given the fact that PR teams are looking for more tools that streamline workflows.
“PR people are just now starting to adopt AI — up to 60% have now used AI in some capacity, up from like 20% earlier this year…So all in all, we felt this was the right time,” he added.
Growth In The Early Stage Startup World
We last spoke to Gorodisher in 2021 ahead of his pitch on the Venture Atlanta stage.
At the time, Managr was focused on the hot SalesTech world with its tool that helped salespeople track upcoming meetings, organize external contacts, and move those meetings into opportunities all within Slack.
Given the proliferation of new AI tools over the last 18 months, it is no surprise Managr has reworked its tech stack. Gorodisher told Hypepotamus that the platform is now powered by OpenAI GPT-4 and the team has “become well versed in prompt engineering, tuning, and being able to summarize large chunks of data.”
While the platform is growing, the team is still small but mighty. Building alongside Gorodisher is Managr’s Head of Product Ed Roberson, Head of Engineering Zach Bradley, and software engineer Bryan Thomas.
The team is backed by an impressive list of angels and early-stage investors. Atlanta-based investors Kyle Porter, David Dorman, and Tom Noonan, as well as the Atlanta Seed Company, backed Managr’s $1.5 million seed round in late 2021.
In terms of next steps for the company, Gorodisher said that following the pivot, the team is focused on converting freemium customers to paid, and raising another round of capital to “fuel growth and build up a sales team.”
