yes, you are right that it's not a pure product. publicize actually does the media outreach, and we're 100% transparent so companies can see what we'll send, who we'll contact, and more. i think the problem we tried to solve is that historically startups could either pay traditional pr firms $10,000+ a month (many which can't afford it), or founders can do PR themselves (many which don't have experience in this area or the time).
i think the current PR industry model works well for larger companies that aren't price-sensitive, but we wanted to create a PR service that minimized risk (we provide a 2 week money-back guarantee and prices are as low as $320/month) and maximized ROI for a market (early-stage startups) that I think historically was underserved.