Built from zero to cited in ChatGPT in 60 days

Built from zero to cited in ChatGPT in 60 days — AI Workflow Startup Case Study

Client: AI Workflow Startup (AI & Machine Learning). Service: GEO + Marketing Site. Duration: 8 weeks. Completed: 2026-03-14. Challenge: A brand-new AI startup was launching into a category with 12 established competitors. They had no domain authority, no press coverage, no Wikipedia page. The founders had a working product, $80K in funding, and a 4-week runway before the launch. Traditional SEO wouldn't help in time. They needed a different playbook.Solution: The site is a Next.js 16 + Sanity CMS content hub with 54 pages of dense, citation-friendly content. Every page is structured for retrieval-augmented generation: clear entity definitions, primary source citations, FAQPage schema, and a citation block at the end of every article. The product has a free tier, and the company maintains a public roadmap on GitHub for additional entity mentions. The AI citation tracker is a custom Next.js dashboard that pulls weekly snapshots and reports on share-of-voice vs. the 12 competitors.Approach: Entity-first strategy: established the founder, the product, and the company as distinct, citable entities on the open web (Wikipedia draft, Wikidata, Crunchbase, LinkedIn, GitHub, Product Hunt, Twitter/X). Built a content hub of 14 pillar pages, 32 supporting articles, 8 comparison pages (each competitor), and a complete llms.txt + llms-full.txt with explicit entity definitions. Secured 6 podcast guest appearances in the first 30 days. Each appearance drove brand mentions on show notes, transcripts, and aggregators. Built an AI citation tracker: weekly snapshots of ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google AI Overviews for the top 50 commercial queries in the category.Outcome: Trial conversion: 4.8% (Vs. SaaS median of 2.1%.); AI citations: 23 keywords (In ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Google AI Overviews.); Free-to-paid: 12.1% (Vs. SaaS median of 3-5%.); Domain authority: DA 28 (From DA 0 in 60 days.); Branded search: 1,200/mo (Google search volume, up from 0.); ARR: $180K (First 90 days post-launch.). Stack: Next.js 16, React 19, TypeScript, Sanity CMS, PostgreSQL, Stripe, Vercel, OpenAI API. Testimonial from Yuki T., Founder, AI Startup: “Landing page that actually converts — 4.8% trial sign-up rate, well above SaaS median. The Generative Engine Optimization is a differentiator: ChatGPT now recommends us by name when asked about AI workflow tools. Worth 10x what we paid.”