08-08-2025
Why Your Company Isn't Showing Up In AI Search Results
Kyle Arteaga is CEO of The Bulleit Group. He helps founders get seen in AI search by building visibility in the model's memory.
Search used to start with Google. Now it often begins with prompts on AI platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude, and half the time, your company's name isn't in the answer. Not because your company isn't strong, but because the models haven't read about you. GEO, or generative engine optimization, flips the script on what drives visibility: It's no longer keywords or backlinks. It's whether you're being talked about with authority in places that matter.
Here's the thing: Most large language models don't crawl your site in real time like search engines do. They regurgitate what they remember from their training data. This could include media, transcripts, investor decks, analyst notes and podcast episodes. If you're not part of their memory, you're invisible. And invisibility kills momentum.
At my company, we help founders stop hoping to be discovered and start showing up in AI-powered answers. Just last month, a founder of a powerful AI platform asked us the right question: "How do I get ChatGPT to surface us when customers are looking for what we do?" He had the traction. He had the product. However, he lacked visibility in the model's memory—its corpus. I've seen this story on repeat across dozens of early-stage companies.
Founders used to treat public relations like the evil queen's mirror in Snow White: something to tell them they looked good to the outside world. But that's changed. The smartest leaders I know, especially in deep tech, now understand that narrative isn't a vanity metric. It's how you recruit, fundraise and establish category leverage in the public eye. The data supports it. And so does my inbox. Narrative is a growth engine and a risk reducer. It shapes how you're discovered, how you're trusted and how you're remembered—not just by people, but by models that surface you to them.
Think of it as presence compounding: The more places you show up in trusted language, the more those signals accumulate across models. That is text-based authority. And it is the only SEO that matters now.
LLMs generate answers based on what they have read—their corpus. That is just a fancy word for everything they have been trained on: press, blogs, transcripts, product documents and investor decks. If your company is not in that pile of training data, the model will not remember you, and will not surface you when it matters.
You don't need more blog posts. You need more people mentioning you.
That means:
• Getting quoted by journalists, not ghostwriters
• Showing up in podcasts, roundups and market maps
• Publishing with structure so that models can parse you
And most importantly, you need a system to keep that flywheel moving.
The Visibility Flywheel
Start with one sharp point of view. Publish it on a third-party site with real domain authority, such as Forbes or Fast Company, where your target audience is likely to be found.
Then:
• Rework it for your Substack, newsletter or blog.
• Turn it into native posts on LinkedIn (no links, just clarity).
• Say it out loud on a podcast—yours or someone else's.
• Cut a transcript, post it to YouTube and build a blog post from it.
• Slice it into short-form for social, newsletters and decks.
You're making the same point, but it takes different shapes. Now your voice travels—and the models start to remember.
And don't overlook platforms like Reddit, Hacker News, HackerNoon, Quora, Discord and Stack Overflow. Participating in virtual events and webcasts also extends your reach. These formats often produce transcripts or recaps that feed back into AI models. Showing up there doesn't just raise awareness in the moment—it builds memory in the corpus. These may not be polished PR channels, but they are part of the web's semantic layer—real questions, real answers and model-ingested memory.
Appearances at industry events or on executive webcasts, especially those hosted or distributed on high-authority platforms like YouTube or trade association websites, also create lasting visibility. Visibility in these forums reinforces trust and discoverability, especially for technical and early adopter audiences.
Checklist: How To Build Founder Visibility In LLMs
• Get third-party coverage and be featured in expert roundups.
• Use structured language in your owned content. Structured language refers to writing content in a format that is easy for AI models to interpret. That includes using clear headers and consistent terminology, and making direct connections between your company, category and key differentiators—especially in places with high domain authority or schema markup.
• Make appearances on podcasts and in written guest features.
• Answer real questions—not just SEO queries.
• Engage in high-signal community platforms like Reddit, Quora, Discord and Hacker News to appear in authentic, model-ingested dialogue.
If your name doesn't appear in the model's answer, people won't be talking about it in meetings. Again and again, we're seeing it happen: A startup gets mentioned in enough credible places, and suddenly venture capitalists start reaching out preemptively—not just to express interest, but to offer term sheets before the founder even opens a round. Visibility isn't just about getting found. It's about shifting leverage at the moment it matters most. $1 million in credibility beats $10 million in paid awareness every time.
Want to raise funds? Show up in the LLMs' corpus. Want to hire? Own the category label. Your visibility now impacts more than discovery—it shapes belief.
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