Hey there 👋

I'm George, and here's the (super) short version of my story:

- Built a 7-figure content marketing agency for SaaS companies
- Worked with 50+ leading SaaS companies such as ServiceTitan, Toggl, Docebo, Sitecore, Guru, and NordVPN
- Helped portfolio companies of renowned investors such as Sequoia, Accel, and Bessemer Ventures
- Built and managed a team of 20-25 people
- Built a newsletter on B2B growth with 5,000+ readers
- Spoke at leading physical events in 9 different countries
- Featured in 50+ media outlets such as ProductLed, Growth Unhinged, Reforge, and Superpath
- Angel invested in 1 SaaS startup

What will you get by following me?

- Behind the scenes of running my companies
- Actionable tips on how to grow a successful B2B company
- No-fluff advice that's based on experiments and things I try out myself

How to work with me?

1) AEO Agency: Visit minuttia.com/lets-talk and submit a form request
2) Newsletter: Visit growthwaves.com and sign up for free
3) Speaking and Angel Investment Requests: Visit georgechasiotis.com and submit a form request

George Chasiotis

Good morning to everyone except the people who use AI to write comments.

Founder at Minuttia // B2B SaaS Growth // Views are my own

In my career, I’ve met two types of in-house marketing leaders:

1 — Marketing Leader

They care about their team. They want them to succeed, and they’ll stand up for them when performance slips or leadership pushes back. They have strong opinions—because they know what they’re doing. And often, that puts them in the position of having to fight for the right things with senior leadership. They’re hands-on and closely monitor trends, but they don’t make rushed decisions. They treat service providers like part of the team, and show their appreciation. They have a measured appetite for risk, and want to discover new things and innovate. 

In short, they’re not afraid to get fired. They know their worth, and they know they are competitive in the marketplace.

2 — “marketing leader”

They exist to please senior management and the board, if there is one. They couldn’t care less about their team, and they treat anyone doing well as a threat. They’ll never stand up for anyone but themselves. Their opinions blow with the wind—whatever their favorite influencer said that week. They’re not hands-on. They hide behind vague responsibilities, and don’t get any real work done. They treat service providers like shit, and rarely show appreciation. They avoid risk. Safe and easy is their default setting.

In short: these are “marketing leaders” afraid to get fired. They know they got the job through politics—not merit. And deep down, they know they won’t land the next one as easily.

If you’re the first kind, you’re my kind of marketing leader.

There are a few people who get an instant like from me. I’ll like their post first, then read it. Sometimes, I won’t even read it. These are people I support, and they support me the same way. There’s no secret deal between us. Just a real offline relationship, built on mutual respect and support for each other’s work.

I recently heard a VC say, “AEO is where the opportunity is,” and that “SEO tools are no longer interesting” from an investment standpoint.

I agree with the latter. SEO is a mature category. Tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush lead the space, with a long tail of competitors fighting for share. Depending on whom you ask, it’s still a growth category, but it’s clearly volatile and highly fragmented. So yes, SEO isn’t a category investors should be excited about.

What I don’t agree with is the idea that “AEO is where the opportunity is.” At Minuttia - AEO Agency, we recently ran a study on this emerging software category. When we looked at the origins of tools offering AI search tracking, here’s what we found:

- AEO-native: 176 tools (73.3%)
- SEO: 42 tools (17.5%)
- Adjacent (everything else): 22 tools (9.2%)

That’s 176 tools entering the arms race in less than two years (and more are coming).

In terms of the funding status, our team discovered:

- Bootstrapped: 40 tools (22.7%)
- Has Raised: 39 tools (22.2%)
- Unknown / Not classified: 97 tools (55.1%)

The 39 funded tools have raised a combined $257.9M, an average of ~$8.3M and a median of $2.5M.

A quarter of a billion dollars has already been poured into a new and unproven category. While the ceiling is still unclear, we can draw useful lessons from the more established SEO space.

SEO remains competitive (but not cutthroat) with a few incumbents and a long tail of niche players. I believe that something similar will happen to the AI search tracking category.

Here are a few things I’d like to point out based on our data and my intuition regarding the future of the category:

1 — AI search tracking—the core use case for most tools in this category—is already commoditized. They’ll need to differentiate or face a slow fade-out.
2 — Since the core use case is commoditized—and most tools lack the experience, discipline, or innovation to stand out—they’ll default to dropping their prices.
3 — Many (if not most) of these tools will go out of business, consolidate, or pivot.
4 — A handful of leaders will likely emerge, but under investor pressure to grow faster, better, and more efficiently.
5 — I doubt the opportunity here is big enough to justify IPOs. Investor interest in secondaries will likely be low, leaving acquisitions as the only realistic path to liquidity.
6 — With that in mind, I wouldn’t be surprised if some AEO leaders are acquired by traditional SEO incumbents like Ahrefs.
7 — Expect headwinds ahead—especially around quality-of-results volatility, as Kevin predicted in his 2026 outlook.

What does this mean for you as an investor?

Founders will pitch this as “the future you don’t want to miss,” but the data tells a different story: the category is already crowded.

That would be true if this were an already established category. It’s not, and there will be volatility ahead. Invest wisely.

I was looking at the results for one of Minuttia - AEO Agency’s SaaS clients. I sorted pages by conversion count and noticed something interesting.

Some of the highest-converting pages weren’t generic. They covered a use case for a specific audience. Here’s the framework we used:

Step 1 — Identify a core use case for your product
Step 2 — Find the best modifiers (e.g., tools, software, apps) and pick the most prominent one
Step 3 — Break down your target audiences for that use case
Step 4 — Create a dedicated page for each target audience + use case combination

Let’s look at an example:

1. Use case: time racking
2. Modifier: software
3. Target audiences: consultants, agencies, lawyers

There are two ways to approach the URL structure:

Option A: Topic Cluster

time-tracking-software/for-consultants/
time-tracking-software/for-agencies/
time-tracking-software/for-laywers/

Option B: Blog Post

blog/time-tracking-software-for-consultants/

Option A is harder to implement—you’ll likely need dev support—but it’s cleaner and scales better.

Option B is easier, but the slug structure is less clean—you’ll repeat keywords instead of grouping pages into folders.

Tying use cases to specific audiences is one of the simplest ways to drive qualified pipeline.

A few big business lessons for me from last year:

1 — Going brand-first instead of business-first: the logo, the website, the color palette. Get customers, serve them well, and build a couple of case studies. Then you have a business. After that, you can build a brand on top of it. Always go business first.

2 — “You don’t want the ones who don’t want to be there.” (h/t Nigel) This year, I had to part ways with certain people. Even though I was frustrated—and honestly, embittered—at first, once I stepped back, I realized that when someone wants to go (or has to), you should let them. Keeping them around isn’t good for anyone.

3 — On the other hand, the people who want to stay—and are worth it beyond personal or emotional attachments—are the ones you should keep close and reward. That’s why I offered Zacharias Xiroudakis the role of Managing Director at Minuttia - AEO Agency.

4 — Mindset and headspace are the most critical aspects of running a business. That’s something I want to work on much more this year.

5 — Ultimately, what you do becomes who you are. Choosing the right career path—whether in-house, freelance, or founder—depends on who you are as a person. (h/t Vaios) Many of my decisions were driven by the wrong reasons (often survival). I want to start doing things that are aligned with who I am at my core—and that go beyond mere survival.

Not doing this for engagement—I'm genuinely curious to learn what your biggest lessons were from last year. Share it even in private if you’d like.

Something I hear a lot these days: Companies want “visibility in chatgpt” but aren’t interested in investing in traditional SEO. I think this comes down to two main reasons:

1 — Perception Hangover

SEO’s bad reputation from the past 3 years (okay, maybe the past 25) still lingers, and it affects how companies make marketing investment decisions. I don’t think SEO professionals have done a good enough job communicating the positive impact organic search can *still* have for many companies.

2 — SEO x AEO

The relationship between SEO and AEO hasn’t been clearly communicated, especially to marketing leaders who are far from ground truth and mostly influenced by peer chatter and influencer takes. There’s real (but often overlooked) overlap between the two, and the marketing industry needs better education around it.

Visibility in AI search matters—especially for digital-first businesses with audiences using chatbots to find information and products. The truth is that good old SEO is a prerequisite for getting there. (We can argue about how much overlap there is, but there is overlap.)

Search marketers need to do a better job of communicating this, without overcomplicating it. SEO never stopped working. And if AI search adoption continues to grow, the opportunity is too big to ignore. It’d be a shame for companies to miss it and for the SEO industry to miss the opportunity to benefit from it.

“You look calmer and more composed,” my sister told me. Amazing what a few days off can do for you.

Professional athletes understand the importance of rest and recovery. So why do so many of us digital folks neglect it? Pushing ourselves to the limit rarely gets us closer to our goals. But it can bring us to the brink of collapse. (I don’t know about you, but that’s certainly been true for me.)

So why are we so stubborn about accepting a simple truth? Rest is one of the best performance boosters we have. For me, it always came down to guilt and weakness.

Letting go and going off the grid felt like weakness. Like I shouldn’t need that. Needless to say, that mindset hasn’t served me particularly well. And then there’s guilt. The guilt of even having the luxury to relax and forget about work for a while.

Look, running a business is tough. It can absolutely wear you down. Because it’s not just the hours you log, it’s the work outside of work that’s mentally exhausting. The endless hours thinking about work, the sleepless nights, the unproductive conversations... now toss in a well-deserved vacation, and somehow, you’ve still got a mess in your head.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, for high achievers, it shouldn’t. I took some time off over the holidays—ironically, forced into it by a bad flu—and when I came back on January 2nd, I was, as my sister put it, calmer and more composed. And I’d add: happier, too.

I won’t give you the “it’s a marathon, not a sprint” line because honestly, I don’t think it’s either. It’s a long series of sprints, and between each one, we need time to recharge for the next. That’s the real long game. Winning it isn’t just about how fast you run, but how well you rest and come back stronger for the next one.

In the last 6 years, I’ve worked with 50+ SaaS companies. Everything from early-stage to scale-ups, unicorns, and public SaaS. Here are 8 things I’ve learned about SaaS marketing:

1. If you’re selling marketing services to a SaaS with ~50 employees, and you're speaking directly with the CEO—because there’s no marketing leader—move away. You’ll be micromanaged, second-guessed, and follow someone else’s plan instead of leading.

2. Most marketing isn’t evidence-based. Instead, it’s based on influencer and peer opinions or the digital echo chamber that is the internet. Great if you’re shaping opinions (rare), not so great if you’re absorbing them (common).

3. There’s a lot of ego in SaaS. Everyone knows everything and thus has strong opinions about things. Very few teams have the humility to accept that they don’t know what they don’t know, seek help, and actually let someone help them.

4. Most SaaS companies treat marketing as a business activity, not as the company’s identity. This makes all the difference when it comes to how marketing is approached, teams are built, and budgets are allocated.

5. The basics still work (exceptions apply). More often than not, SaaS companies chase silver bullets and hacks, while neglecting the fundamentals. This partly stems from #2 and creates a myopic view that causes companies to miss growth opportunities based on hearsay.

6. SaaS marketing ISN’T the opportunity it used to be. If you’re selling services and think that adding ‘B2B SaaS Marketing’ to your profile will drive business because SaaS is hot, you’re in for a surprise. SaaS was hot when I started Minuttia - AEO Agency back in 2020; it’s not anymore.

7. SaaS marketing looks very different for a vertical SaaS, technical SaaS, marketplace, or a SaaS company with a PLG motion, versus one with an SLG motion. Some things are common, but the nuances make all the difference.

8. It’s far easier to join a SaaS company as an employee than as a service provider. Having said that, after you get the case studies and validation, entering SaaS companies as a service provider can become easier.

I could go on and on with this post. But I’ll save the rest of the list for another post.

Am not doing this for engagement. If you’ve worked with SaaS companies, do you agree or disagree with what I shared?

The way people search for solutions has changed. We’ve gone from a simple, linear journey (Point A to Point B) to a fractured and unpredictable one.

AI search (e.g., ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity) is only a part of this journey. This corner of the internet is still in its infancy. And it will get more complicated as agents perform tasks on behalf of all of us. They’ll become the web’s second user. (We’re the first.)

A while ago, we got a lead from ChatGPT. When we asked what drove them to our website, they responded:

“We were looking for SaaS agencies with a Greek founder, and your name came up first.”

That search surprised me, and opened my eyes to a bigger truth: unless we ask (e.g., through self-reported attribution) or dig into the ‘why’ behind key actions, we’re just guessing. And most assumptions about the customer journey are wrong.

That’s why it’s critical to get closer to the real questions people ask when they search, evaluate, and explore software.

The problem with most visibility tracking is that it’s overly focused on commercially oriented questions. That’s only one part of the equation. Many of our clients at Minuttia - AEO Agency gain visibility and referral traffic from information-seeking queries.

Right when the marketing echo chamber cancelled information-focused content, AI search brought it back to the surface through citations and referral traffic data. But how do you go about building an understanding of the new customer journey that translates into relevant prompts and product evaluations? Here’s how I think about it:

Step 1 — Topics
Step 2 — Topical Prompts
Step 3 — Product Evaluation Attributes
Step 4 — Product Evaluation Prompts

I know some of this may sound abstract, so here’s a quick example:

Say you’re a search-as-a-service company offering embedded, user-facing search for websites or apps. Then, here’s how this would look:

Topic:
Vector and Hybrid Search

Topical Prompt:
What are the challenges and potential solutions when scaling a vector search index for millions of documents?

Product Evaluation Attribute:
Vector Datatype and Indexing Support

Evaluation Prompt:
Evaluate {your company} on the platform's capability to ingest, index, and efficiently retrieve various vector embedding formats with high dimensionality

Steps 1–2 help track visibility and citations; Steps 3–4 give you sentiment data.

Apply this process across every topic you want to rank for. It’s the closest you’ll get to ground truth in the AI search layer of the customer journey. It’s not going to be 100% accurate, but it’s far better than shooting in the dark or making assumptions that won’t lead you anywhere.

I want to share a few things about one of our clients at Minuttia - AEO Agency. They’re a vertical SaaS in a cutthroat category, yet they’ve become a category leader with 9-figure ARR.

Their content program is massive—it covers everything you can imagine, and then some. It’s also mature at this point. At least when it comes to organic and AI search, they’ve covered most of the ground. (If you’ve done marketing for a vertical SaaS, you know getting there isn’t as tough as it sounds.)

At this stage, most companies would shift to maintenance mode—doing plumbing work as their content inventory grows. But that’s not what they’re doing as they’re hungrier than ever. That’s why I’m sharing this with you. You might find something useful, or at least get inspired to raise your own bar.

So, here’s what they’re doing:

1 — Mapped every keyword under the sun in a project they called ‘keyword universe’
2 — Added every single missing keyword into the human content creation pipeline
3 — Developing a signal-based update system for their existing content inventory*
5 — Running content updates with a human in the loop for specific content types
6 — Adding content updates for all other content types to a human content creation pipeline
7 — Exploring opportunities for AI content (w/ human in the loop) outside their ‘keyword universe’
8 — Identifying opportunities for video creation based on existing content (repurposing)
9 — Identifying opportunities for video creation based on non-existing content (net new)
10 — Identifying and acting on social listening (e.g., Reddit) opportunities

*This system is built on AirOps

To be clear, I’m not saying you should do all of this. That’s a massive brand with unlimited resources, after all. But the fact that a company like this stays hungry, despite already covering so much ground, should be a lesson to every brand that’s still catching up.

There are, and always will be, unleveraged opportunities, low-hanging fruit, and out-of-the-box initiatives for those who can’t stop growing.

One of Minuttia’s client blogs grew 4x in 2025. Here’s the context, what we did, and how that growth translates into business impact.

Context: 

- Technical B2B SaaS
- Dual growth motion (PLG + SLG)
- Mature, competitive category
- Strong brand built through a large open-source community

The advantage of working with a product like this is that the established brand lifts almost everything we do—content, SEO, and AEO included.

On the input side… 

- 50 new content pieces
- 6 content updates

… these led to:

- ~250 organic clicks on weekdays from Minuttia-produced content
- 4M+ organic impressions since the start of the engagement
- Many targeting commercial intent terms (e.g., alternatives, tools, reviews)
- #2 Visibility Score in AI search for product-related topics
- #2 Share of Voice in AI search for the same topics
- #1 for Citations, with most citations coming from Minuttia-created pages
- New accounts created (PLG) directly attributed to Minuttia’s work
- Attribution from both Google search and AI search traffic

We track all this using two proprietary reports:

1 — a Looker Studio dashboard covering Minuttia-produced content
2 — internal software for tracking AI search visibility

Building a successful content strategy for a technical audience isn’t easy. Software engineers—our target audience in this engagement—are highly analytical and have no patience for sales-y, shallow content. Add in the need for code snippets and technical accuracy, and things get even more complex.

Minuttia - AEO Agency’s team is doing an outstanding job, and the client is very happy with the results so far. Now, we’re focused on expanding our top performers and uncovering new opportunities to grow both organic and AI search visibility. Huge shoutout to Milica, Adrian, and the rest of the team involved in this engagement—well done.

Building in public is still one of the most reliable channels marketers have. But there are cases where it just doesn’t work, or where you’ll have to pull back:

1 — You’ve raised money, and your investors don’t like LinkedIn revenue charts

This one’s common. Most VC-backed companies are cautious about what they share publicly, especially revenue-related data. Bootstrapped companies, on the other hand, have more freedom (and less to lose) when building in public.

2 — You’re IPO-bound, and legal wants everything tight

Even though IPOs are rare these days, companies heading that way tend to lock everything down. Once public, you’ll face serious restrictions on what can be shared, especially anything financial.

3 — You don’t want to feed your competitors

Totally fair. The more you share, the more intel you give away. But in most cases, the upside of visibility and trust outweighs the risk of being copied.

4 — You’re in a heavily regulated industry

If you’re in biotech, healthtech, or finance, you know the drill—building in public comes with legal landmines. This doesn’t apply to something like a project management tool, but if you’re regulated, be cautious.

5 — You’re in big corp mode

Big companies optimize for downside protection. Smaller companies chase upside. Unless you get executive buy-in, building in public probably won’t fly, and might even get you in trouble.

Companies like lemlist, Tally, VEED.IO, and RB2B have seen massive growth through building in public. Each plays the game differently, but the common thread is consistency and transparency.

From what I’ve seen, building in public accelerates growth. It’s one of the first things I ask about when evaluating angel investments or when talking to prospects for Minuttia - AEO Agency. You don’t have to do it, but if you can, and do it right, it works.

Since it’s the beginning of the year, I thought it might be helpful to share how I structure my annual goals. Take what’s useful and ignore the rest.

I live by a simple personal vision statement:

Be healthier, happier, wealthier, wiser while having fun and helping others.

That’s the foundation for my daily activities and the goals I set each year. Each of these buckets…

- Health
- Happiness
- Wealth
- Wisdom
- Having fun
- Helping others

…has measurable goals. I set the bar high, which means I don’t always hit every target, and that’s fine. It’s part of the process.

One of my Happiness goals, for example, is swimming a certain number of days each year. You might say that swimming belongs under Health, but for me, it’s more about feeling happy than being fit.

Ultimately, every goal should ladder up to an overarching pillar from your personal vision statement. The way I see it: your personal vision is who you are; your goals are how you become that person.

One thing to keep in mind: all goals should be measurable. “Be healthier this year” doesn’t mean anything unless you define what that looks like. Set goals that hold you accountable at the end of the year, or whatever review cycle you follow.

A framework like this makes everything simpler and more focused. It becomes your compass—your center of gravity—keeping you aligned with who you want to be and how to get there.

Hey, I'm Ziv 👋 

I create, I lead, and I strategize.
*Big fan of the Oxford comma.

Ziv Gidron

🚨 BREAKING 

Early reports indicate U.S. forces have boarded the sanctioned oil tanker Marinera — formerly Bella 1 — in the North Atlantic.

What we know:

• The vessel, pursued by the U.S. Coast Guard since December 21, is approximately 200 nautical miles south of Iceland.

• Russia has dispatched a submarine and naval vessels to escort the tanker.

• U.S. P-8 submarine hunter aircraft and special operations assets have been positioned in the UK and Iceland.

• The tanker hastily reflagged to Russia and painted a Russian flag on its hull mid-chase.

Why it matters:

This could mark a high-seas confrontation between U.S. and Russian assets. The Marinera is part of the "shadow fleet" sanctioned for transporting Iranian crude linked to Hezbollah and the IRGC.

This follows the U.S. capture of Venezuelan President Maduro on January 3 and seizure of two other tankers under Operation Southern Spear.

Developing story. Follow Windward for updates.

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