GTM for Early Stage SaaS | Co-founder @ Datapad | SaaS Growth Advisor | Reforge | 1x Exit |

I’m a marketer, 2x entrepreneur with 1x exit, and helped companies to go from 0 to 8 figures.

My achievements:

- Built 2 VC backed startups with one exit

- Built a 7 figure productized marketing agency

- Became a mentor in top accelerators such as: 500, Plug and Play, Techstars

- Got to work with the portfolio companies of amazing investors such as A16z, Craft Ventures, YC

- Built a podcast with 20k downloads in a year-figure

- Transformed my body more times than Christian Bale ☺️

John Ozuysal

SEO and AEO agencies are dead

I replaced my $15k/mo agency with Claude Code.

Here is what my agent does:

- Creates content strategy around topics such as "ultimate guide to xyz" or "what is xyz" - zero defendability for AI search 

- Optimizes each post with [some made-up name] framework

- Found my ICP in 5 seconds, even though I couldn't figure it out for a year 

[screenshot of the flow] - I have no idea what any of this does. Neither does the person who built it.

We used this agent for 6 months, and below are the results from the AI search

[screenshot of Google Search Console]

And yes, we are tracking AI search from GSC, so all the AEO tools are unnecessary

I spoke with a CMO of Series B B2B SaaS last week about their AEO

He was furious.

"ChatGPT is telling people we're too expensive for small teams." - not correct at all

We pulled up the sources AI was citing.

Competitor blog posts. Reddit threads from 2021. A review site that hadn't been updated in 18 months.

His first instinct?

"We need more PR. More brand mentions. More visibility."

No. You don't.

That's not your problem.

Your problem is you never created content that answers the questions buyers are actually asking.

Best tools in your category. Alternatives. Comparisons. Use cases by company size.

You left that to competitors and review sites.

So now they're the source. Not you.

You're not invisible. You just handed the microphone to everyone else.

Early-stage companies have the opposite problem.

AI genuinely doesn't know they exist yet.

PR and brand mentions actually matter there.

But for you?

Create the content that answers buyer questions.

Become the source AI cites.

Stop letting competitors control your narrative.

TLDR: Assess your current situation before you invest in any AEO-related activity

---

If you want us to build a free AEO roadmap for you, apply from the link on my profile

Your buyers trust ChatGPT more than your sales team.

That's not an insult. That's just how people make decisions now.

They ask AI for recommendations. They get a shortlist. They do follow-up questions. By the time they land on your site, they've already decided whether you're a contender.

But here's the problem:

Most B2B SaaS companies have zero control over what AI says about them.
AI is citing outdated competitor blog posts. Old Reddit threads. Review sites that haven't been updated in over a year. And it's confidently presenting that information as if it's current.

I've seen AI tell buyers a product is "too expensive for small teams" based entirely on a competitor's comparison post from 2022. Completely inaccurate. But that's what the buyer heard.

So how do you take back control?

You become the source.

Step 1: Identify the 20-30 buying questions your ICP is asking AI right now. Turn your paid search keywords into questions.

Step 2: Ask those questions yourself. Look at what AI cites. What source types? Who gets mentioned?

Step 3: Fill the gaps. If AI cites a listicle, get on that listicle or create a competing one. If it cites a forum thread, go give a real, transparent answer. If it cites a video, make one.

Step 4: Optimize your help center so it answers every specific feature, integration, and use case question a buyer could ask in a follow-up.

Do this consistently for 6 weeks, and you'll see the shift.

The brands that control their AI narrative now will own their category later.

I think AI search visibility trackers are useless 

Why? 

Because I keep seeing AEO case studies with screenshots of the search console

I guess we are all missing something because my GSC is not giving me AI search visibility data 🤣 

Sad thing is, some of these posts are getting 500 comments

We are running an AI search sprint free for 3 SaaS companies

👇

We're opening up 3 free pilot slots to show you exactly where you stand on AI search and what to do about it.

Here's what you'll get:

- A full AI search audit of your brand vs your top competitors

- Your 30-day AI search content strategy + the brand mentions you need to build

- Your first revenue-focused content — written and ready to publish

We hand-pick the companies. We're not looking for volume. We're looking for fit.

That means Series A B2B SaaS. $1M+ ARR. A category worth owning. And a team that will actually execute on what we hand them — because we're not interested in doing great work that sits in a Google Doc.

Q2 2026 cohort has 3 spots.

If you think you're the right fit, apply from here: https://tally.so/r/442j4A

I haven't been to a graveyard in years.

Turns out I didn't need to, I just needed to open LinkedIn.

People here love the Kill Channels:

RIP Email. 

RIP Agencies. 

RIP Content. 

RIP Thought Leadership. 

RIP Ads.

At this point, everything's been declared dead at least 100 times.

And yet... somehow they all keep showing up to work on Monday.

Haven't invested in AEO yet? 

Don't start with content 👇

Start with a diagnosis.

Before creating any content, figure out whether the issue is visibility, representation (citation control), or both.

Later-stage companies usually already have visibility. The risk is how they’re being represented.

 AI search often pulls from competitor blogs, old Reddit threads, reviews, and third-party posts that don’t reflect the company’s current narrative.

The first step is to identify the URLs influencing AI answers and audit them for accuracy.

In parallel, build earned content quickly so AI systems learn from the company’s own materials, not someone else’s.

Earlier-stage companies typically have a visibility problem and a representation problem.

Start by mapping the prompts you want to win, then identify which URLs currently influence those prompts (often listicles and Reddit threads).

From there, focus on earned visibility by participating in those conversations and getting included where influence already exists.

Once there’s more budget, expand into creating content designed to compete for broader, category-level prompts.

We just increased AI search visibility for a B2B SaaS client by 100% in 30 days.

Want to see how we did it?

You can't. The case study doesn't exist. I made it up.

But you'd have believed it, right? Because you've seen 15 posts this month saying almost exactly that.

Here's the problem: a lot of people claiming to grow AI search visibility are backing it up with Google Search Console screenshots.

It does not tell you how often your brand appears in AI-generated responses. 

It does not tell you what AI systems say about you. It does not measure anything that would reasonably be called "AI search visibility."

Posting a GSC screenshot as proof of AEO results is either a misunderstanding of how this works or a deliberate misdirection aimed at people who don't know the difference.

If someone is showing you clean dashboards and confident attribution, ask them which tool produced it and how it works.

If the answer is a Google Search Console screenshot, walk away.

4 types of competitor-focused content I use to generate pipeline for SaaS

👇

1. Competitor vs You

You must own this story. If a prospect types “[competitor] alternative” into Google and only sees their page, you already lose. Create clean “You vs Competitor” pages that talk in revenue, churn, onboarding time, not vague feature lists. Show how you reduce risk, cut time-to-value, or lift expansion revenue.

2. Competitor alternatives

These people are in market now. They already pay for a tool. They just hate something about it. Create list posts like “7 alternatives to [competitor] for remote CS teams” and rank for those terms. Include your product in the list, show screenshots, add simple pricing context, and link to a focused trial or demo page. This brings high-intent trials fast.

3. Competitor comparisons

Big brands fund your pipeline. Use their demand. People search “[competitor A] vs [competitor B]” every day. Write posts and pages like “[A] vs [B] vs [You]” and speak to a specific ICP: “best for product-led teams”, “best for agencies”, “best for low-ACV SaaS”. You ride their brand search while positioning your product as the right fit for a clear segment.

4. Competitor use case content

Show how to do a key job in competitor tools, then show the simpler version in your product. “How to build a QBR dashboard in [competitor]” → then you show it takes 9 steps there and 3 in your app. If a competitor cannot support that use case, say it clearly and own the gap. This is where many of your best switch deals come from.

----

If you want us to generate a free AEO report, check the link on my bio !

Your competitors keep showing up in ChatGPT.

You don't.

Here's what nobody in the "AI SEO" space is saying clearly enough:

The AI doesn't care that your landing page ranks #1 on Google.

When someone asks "What's the best [your category] tool?" — ChatGPT isn't reading one page and picking a winner. You can be a source, but this is not the same as being "visible."

It's pulling from everywhere. Forums. Video platforms. Review sites. 

Knowledge bases. Third-party articles.

Then it stitches all of that together into a single answer.

Your competitor shows up in a roundup article. They're recommended in a forum thread. Someone made a walkthrough video about them. 

Their knowledge base answers a niche feature question.

That's 4 mentions across 4 different source types.

This is the game now. You have to build citation layers, stacking your brand's presence across the source types that AI models actually pull from.

Here's how to start:

- Take your best converting-value paid search keywords or highest converting organic keywords, or even better, ask your customers how they searched for you.

- Ask Claude to turn this into buyer prompts. For each prompt, check what is being cited, and what kind of sources? Whose mentioned?

- Then build your owned content and earned content strategy based on this information.

- If the AI is pulling from a listicle comparing your competitors, go create your own listicle and also get included in that one. 

- If it's citing a forum thread where someone asks about your category, go give a real, helpful answer from your actual team. If it's referencing a video walkthrough, make one.

Match the source type that's already winning the citation. Don't guess. Mirror what's working.

Treat it like a proper experiment. Pick 10questions to intervene on. Leave 10 untouched. Track the results over 6 weeks.

This is exactly how we run AEO experiments at House of Growth - AI Led Growth Agency

Companies running this playbook are seeing AI-referred traffic convert at dramatically higher rates than traditional search. 

And most of your competitors still think this is "too early" to worry about.

I see people bragging about creating blog posts with Claude code for AEO

Sad thing is, they are still creating blog posts such as:

- What is [topic]

- Ultimate guide to [topic]

You clearly have no idea how AEO works, otherwise you wouldn't create these and call them "AEO" focused posts

Why you don’t show up in AI search?

Here’s the simplest answer:

You have no content.

And nobody knows, mentions, or talks about your brand.

That’s it.

AI systems don’t “discover” brands magically.

They reflect what already exists on the internet.

Once you accept this, everything else makes sense.

Only then do details start to matter:

Entity optimization
Query fan-outs
Topical authority etc..

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

Last week, I spent three nights in Athens (Greece) for a series of events we had planned. My days were a bit crazy, but I wouldn’t change a single thing. During these three days, I had:

- SaaStock Local event
- 1x dinner with 10 marketers
- 2x one-on-one breakfasts

And those were just the scheduled ones—there were several impromptu meetups as well. As I process these moments, I realize two things: 

1 — How much I enjoy organizing these things and building community around people. It’s one of the few parts of the job that doesn’t feel like work, and I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of it. Being around people and creating the conditions for good things to happen makes me feel happy and content.

2 — How much people need community and in-person interaction these days. Obviously, when we organize a dinner or host an event, not everyone there is a friend or partner. Some people we’re meeting for the first time. And yet, you’d be surprised how open people are about professional things and personal ones. 

This shows me how much we need real interaction in our industry (and beyond). People want to talk things through. Share ideas. Vent frustrations. I think they open up because they feel heard, and because the person across from them isn’t judging them. They’re going through the same shit.

For me, that’s beautiful. It’s something all of us need so much these days. 

So yeah—we’ll keep organizing these events and dinners. I’ll keep pushing for community and real human interaction. Sure, there’s a business benefit. But I’ve never organized anything, thinking about the upside. And almost every time, the business benefit follows. 

After all, people can sense who’s real and who’s just trying to move them to “Opportunity” in their CRM. Fuck that. I like being around people and connecting with them. That’s who I am, and I’m not changing it.
 
Thank you to everyone who met with me while in Athens or who introduced themselves and said hi. In no particular order:

Vaios Constantine Zina George Nick Daphne Zacharias Armodios Yannis Mattina Angelos Konstantinos Vasileios Georgios Antonis Aria Benoît

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

To be clear: just because you write AI comments on my posts doesn’t mean I’m going to get back to your DMs.

I might regret saying this, but we're looking for a Lovable expert (agency or freelancer). Demand for Minuttia - AEO Agency's free AEO report is growing fast. Improving our Lovable-built software is now above my pay grade, and I don’t have the time to give it the care and attention it deserves.

If you have anyone you'd recommend, feel free to tag them here. Otherwise, if you're an expert yourself, you have my permission to spam my inbox. Just please don’t email or call my cell—that’s a surefire way to lose the job and get blocked.

Here we go with another webinar. This one starts in exactly two hours, and we already have 166 people signed up (as of writing).

We’re hosting this webinar with Maven and have already tested the presentation in another session that had ~90 attendees last month.

We’re discussing everything we know about gaining visibility in AI search, particularly ChatGPT.

I say “everything we know” because there are still many unknowns in this space.

At the end, we’ll give attendees something valuable, as we do in all of Minuttia - AEO Agency's webinars.

Enough teasing. The webinar is free, so if you don’t have plans today, I’ll see you there.

Here’s the registration link: https://lnkd.in/eM9z8Z4c

Who would expect that letting go is the way to find inner peace? Those who know me know how intense I get about the goals I set and the things I want to achieve. And of course, I’m not the only one.

We fight, fight, and fight. We put in the hours and think that if we obsess over something, it will come, and it will come faster. But that’s not how it’s worked for me—not just in business, but in life more broadly.

The more I pushed for something, the further away it seemed. And of course, that made me want it more, so I’d push harder, fight more, and feel even more frustrated when I didn’t get there. The key word here is “want.” I’ve started replacing “I want” with “I expect.” And I don’t stress over it.

Because wanting, by definition, creates a negative state of lacking something, of not having. Which then turns into searching, chasing, grasping. It’s counterintuitive, but once I started shifting from wanting to expecting, good things started happening.

Have I put in more hours? No. Have I spent more time thinking about the problem? No. Have I reached the outcome without torturing myself over it? Yes.

We should cut wants from our lives and stop being servants to them. Expect things to happen, but don’t lose sleep over them. Yes, we fight for what matters. We put in the hours because we enjoy the process. But we don’t serve our wants.

The more we want, the deeper we fall into the maze of chasing. And that’s what makes us miserable, feeling incomplete when, in reality, nothing’s stopping us from being fulfilled and content. Letting go in business, relationships, and almost every part of life, is the answer.

Last month, three different SaaS companies reached out with slight variations of the same problem. I won’t call it a “trend” (not enough data), but these interactions point to an issue more companies might be facing.

AI entered the mainstream in November 2022 with the launch of ChatGPT. What followed was a honeymoon period—still ongoing for many companies and service providers—where AI was hailed as the holy grail of GTM and the answer to every growth problem.

Many companies fell for the promise of AI and used it to deploy sloppy content strategies (and beyond). No editing. No humans in the loop. Just "good prompting" and a publishing cadence mimicking The New York Times. But what follows the AI content honeymoon is a bad hangover for many companies.

1 — Google search traffic is declining
2 — AI search visibility and traffic aren’t improving
3 — Sign-ups, leads, and pipeline are all on a downward trend

All while the CEO or CMO insists that “AI is the thing” and must be used everywhere. Marketers are forced to follow mandates they don’t fully buy into. In trying to comply (and keep their jobs), they make reckless choices—sometimes causing irreparable damage. 

AI-generated content is tempting. I get it. Just paying for a tool with no humans, no expensive workflows? Who wouldn’t want that? But the problem isn’t AI, it’s how companies deploy AI-first strategies.

The most successful AI content strategies I’ve seen—and helped deploy through Minuttia - AEO Agency—are far more complex. They:

1 — Target keyword patterns that qualify as scalable opportunities
2 — Use structured, often complex workflows (e.g., in AirOps)
3 — Inject proprietary data or insights (e.g., interview quotes)
4 — Always include humans in key parts of the workflow
5 — Deploy slowly and carefully, before anything breaks
6 — Rely on APIs and automation, not just basic prompting

I know many providers and tools promise AI-driven utopia on the cheap. I’m not buying it. In my experience, AI-first strategies aren’t shortcuts or silver bullets, despite what many claim. Be careful. Get help. Skip the shortcuts. Use AI responsibly.

So many companies die in obscurity. I don’t feel bad for the ones that haven’t nailed the product. But the ones with a great product who lag in marketing? Damn, that’s such a shame.

A client we worked with over three years ago came back last week. I want to share what we achieved together, what happened since, and why stories like this deserve more open discussion.

It’s a B2B SaaS company in an established category with several direct and indirect competitors, including tools from overlapping software categories. The company has a dual growth motion strategy: an established product-led (fully self-serve) approach, and a sales-led (demo-to-close) motion.

It’s a category leader and was acquired in 2022. The acquisition—poorly matched, in my opinion—led to slashed operational costs, blanket headcount reductions, and decisions that actively sabotaged the business.

Needless to say, we were part of the cost-cutting—despite the fact that (in our client’s words) we were generating ‘11–12 demos per day.’ After Minuttia - AEO Agency’s services were paused, the acquirer began publishing ~100 AI-generated content pieces per month. This resulted in:

- Low-quality content with inaccuracies and misleading information
- Customer complaints about misleading claims (e.g., missing features)
- Traffic dropped to 1/4 of previous levels
- Sign-up and demo volume declined sharply

We did a lot of meaningful work for this client: from ultra-successful, use-case-specific topic clusters to regular net-new content and key updates. Here’s what that looked like in practice:

1 — Content from 2021–2022 still drives traffic (four years later)
2 — During our engagement, our client was generating 11–12 demos per day
3 — Current search rankings are still tied to content we created 4 years ago
4 — Built practical, hands-on assets (like templates) that drove business

More importantly, we did something our client valued even more: even after the engagement paused, we remained available to support the team on anything they needed. And all that during a really tough time for our own company. That’s how you build not just mental availability, but real trust and lasting relationships.

Now that internal circumstances have changed—and there’s a strong chance we’ll work together again—our client immediately thought of our team to help fix their marketing.

Losing a client always sucks. What’s worse is that you often have no control over the outcome, like in this story. But what really matters is how you show up during and after the engagement. That’s what determines whether they’ll think of you when it’s time to start again.

Our approach to content strategy has changed a lot over the past three years, primarily in the following five ways:

1 — Objective
Companies used to think short-term, expect immediate results, and define success mainly by their ability to generate search traffic. This has started to change as companies understand that diversifying traffic sources is essential. Instead of short-term ROI, companies are beginning to value long-term relevance and steady momentum. Building mental availability is more important than just going viral once and then returning to obscurity.

2 — Brand Voice
Companies used to follow a polished, safe brand voice that tended to be jargon-heavy and sounded like it was written by AI. (In many cases, it actually was.) Companies are realizing that human voices—internal and external—are the brand voice. Instead of being buttoned up, they’re becoming more humane, more outspoken, and grounded in a consistent, clearly human POV.

3 — Distribution
Companies used to disregard distribution. In most cases, distribution was equated with Google search. Algorithms dictated strategy, and attention was mostly rented—not owned. Companies are realizing they need to think about distribution first, use humans as megaphones, own attention, and focus on a few key places instead of trying to win everywhere.

4 — Structure
SEO mainly drove structure. The content was long-form by default and text-heavy. The value was backloaded, and one piece was essentially one distributable asset. That, too, has started to change. Companies now realize that structure needs to be channel-specific, content should be atomic by default, skimmable by design, and front-loaded with value.

5 — Product
Lastly, companies were operating under the assumption that the product should always be featured. Features were the holy grail of product marketing. There was always a CTA, and the narrative was we, we, we. The product was treated as separate from the brand. Today, companies understand they should feature the product only when it makes sense. They focus on demonstrating value first, include a CTA when relevant, and speak through the voice of the customer rather than their own. The product is no longer separate from the brand—it’s an extension of the company’s POV.

These are some of the things we notice at Minuttia - AEO Agency. Not doing this for engagement—I'm genuinely interested in the changes you see. If you have any specific examples of companies, even better. Thanks for contributing.

Inspired by: Josh Lowman

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