The category sentence does not exist.
If you cannot say the job in one line, the engine will say it for you, badly.
AI startups · category, evals, and early consensus
AEO for AI Startups: How to Get Cited by ChatGPT
Getting an AI startup cited by ChatGPT starts with a clear category sentence, a page for the job you do, and a few serious mentions, because the model will not invent authority you do not have. Austin Heaton runs that work for AI companies whose buyers already research tools inside AI.
Short answer: AEO for AI startups gets your product named when buyers ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or Google AI Overviews which tool to use. Austin Heaton works with seed to Series B AI companies as one senior owner: the category sentence, job pages, crawlable docs and a tracked prompt list. Cevro, an AI support product, went from 0% to 28.3% ChatGPT visibility across 10 tracked prompts in 8 weeks.
One senior owner12+ years in searchLas Vegas based, works worldwide
Example of a useful answerWhat AI tool should a team use for this job?
A useful answer names a category, a few products, and a reason. An early startup wins by being the clearest page for one job, not by claiming to be the market leader.
Category pageJob pageA real mentionThe AI search problem
Your buyers live in AI, and your site still reads like a launch post.
The reader is a founder or the first marketer at an AI company. The buyer is a practitioner who asks ChatGPT which tool to try, then asks a colleague to poke holes in the answer. You are often creating a category, which means the engine has no stable description of you and will borrow one from a neighbor.
Early sites fail in a specific way. The homepage is a vision. The docs, if they exist, are blocked. There is no page that says who the product is for this quarter. The model repeats whatever a launch thread said, including the wrong job.
Cevro, an AI customer-support product for iGaming, is the published AI-product study on this site. It is not a seed-stage consumer app, and it is not relabeled as one. Many AI startups do not have a public case study yet. The method does not require pretending they do.
Launch coverage expires.
A funding mention is not a product description. Six months later the model still quotes it.
Eval and docs pages are the proof, and they are hidden.
Technical buyers trust a concrete eval or a doc more than a hero line. Crawlers often cannot see them.
You sound like every other AI wrapper.
Identical adjectives make you interchangeable. A specific customer and a specific job make you citeable.
What Austin does
What Austin does for an AI startup
A small set of pages and mentions that teach engines the category you want, without fake leadership claims.
Category and job prompt map
The prompts practitioners use, including "is this just a wrapper on" questions you would rather not hear. Those belong on the map.
One category page and a few job pages
Who it is for, what it does, and what it does not do. Written so ChatGPT can lift the paragraph.
Docs and eval access
A check that the technical proof is fetchable. If the proof is private, it is not used as a public claim.
A handful of serious mentions
Fewer, better descriptions on sources practitioners read. Not a burst of identical guest posts.
Disambiguation
Lines that separate you from the neighbor the model keeps confusing you with.
A tight citation readout
Ten to twenty prompts, tracked. Pricing depends on scope. A startup does not need a hundred-prompt theater.
How it works
How an AI startup engagement runs
Narrow on purpose. The failure mode is publishing twenty pages before the category sentence is true.
Write the category sentence with the founder
One job, one customer, one boundary. If the founder will not say it on a call, it does not go on the site.
Publish the pages that carry that sentence
Homepage, one category page, the job pages that match pipeline.
Make the technical proof readable
Docs, examples, and any public eval. Open them to crawlers.
Earn a few matching mentions
Then sample ChatGPT and the other engines on the prompt list.
Prompts buyers already ask
Prompts AI startup buyers ask
Shapes, not a live transcript.
What tool should we use to do this job with AI?
What winning looks like. The answer needs your category sentence and a reason that is not "cutting-edge."
How is this different from doing it inside the model we already pay for?
What winning looks like. A page that answers the wrapper question directly is more citeable than a vision post.
Is this safe to put company data into?
What winning looks like. Point to the security page you actually have. Do not invent a certification.
Who is this for, a developer or a business team?
What winning looks like. The first line picks one. Trying to be both in the same sentence gets you skipped.
Published proof
AI product proof published on this site
Cevro is AI customer support for iGaming operators. That is the published AI-product study. It is not a claim about every AI startup.
Figures are copied from the case studies already published on this site.
AEO compared with traditional SEO
AEO versus traditional SEO for AI startups
A young site will not outrank the whole category on head terms. It can own the prompt that describes its actual job.
| Buying job | Traditional SEO | AEO for this industry |
|---|---|---|
| The ambition | Rank for a huge head term. | Be the cited answer for one job. |
| The page | A launch post. | A category page with a boundary. |
| The proof | Implied traction. | Docs, examples, and mentions that exist. |
| The risk | A certification you do not have. | A security page that says only what is true. |
| Success | A spike from a directory. | Named on the practitioner prompts you chose. |
Questions
AI startup questions
What is AEO for AI startups?
It is the work of getting ChatGPT and other engines to describe your product for the job you actually do, using a clear category page, fetchable docs, and a few matching mentions. It is part of the AEO service.
Do you work with Series A and Series B AI startups?
Yes. This engagement is built for seed to Series B AI companies: a founder or first marketer, a product buyers research inside AI, and a category engines do not describe well yet.
Series A and B teams usually add comparison and alternatives pages once the category sentence is stable. See AEO agencies for AI startups compared.
We are pre-Series A. Is it too early?
It is too early for a large content program. It is not too early for a category sentence and a page engines can quote. Buyers in AI categories already ask AI for tools. See AEO for seed-stage startups.
Should an AI startup hire an AEO consultant or an AEO agency?
Choose a consultant when you want one senior owner, speed and a short prompt list. Choose an agency when you need large parallel capacity across many channels.
Austin does the work himself. A large retainer built on blog volume is a poor fit for a company that does not yet have a stable description. More: AEO agency vs AEO consultant and working with Austin as your AEO consultant.
How fast will ChatGPT or Perplexity start citing us?
A page they can already fetch can be rewritten and reindexed on a short cycle. Mentions take longer. Cevro's published ChatGPT visibility move, from 0% to 28.3% on 10 prompts, was measured over 8 weeks and is not a promise for a different company.
What proof is an AI product, specifically?
Cevro, AI customer support for iGaming, went from 0% to 28.3% ChatGPT visibility across 10 tracked prompts in 8 weeks. That is the AI-product study on this site: read the Cevro case study.
What does an AI startup AEO engagement include?
- A category sentence written with the founder
- A category page and the job pages that match pipeline
- Docs, examples and evals opened to crawlers
- Disambiguation from the product engines confuse you with
- A few matching mentions
- A citation readout on 10 to 20 tracked prompts
How is the engagement scoped?
Pricing depends on scope and is shared on a call. Early teams usually start with one product and a short prompt list.
How do we start?
Bring the one job you want cited and the neighbor product engines already confuse you with. If the fit is there, the scope is set on that call. Book a Call.
BECOME THE COMPANY AI RECOMMENDS.
Your next qualified lead starts with an answer.
Get more citations. Compete for the prompts that matter. Become the top choice in your category.
Book a Call