A non-technical founder built Searchable to help brands appear in AI search tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity. After launching two weeks ago, the startup hit $250k annual recurring revenue in six days and reached a $40 million valuation in 100 days by recruiting technical co-founders Sam and Aria from Y Combinator startups.
So this happened recently. Our business got valued at $40 million just 100 days into the business. And in the next 2 minutes, I'm going to tell you a little bit about the business and how it happened. What I wanted to do was actually help businesses to start appearing in ChatGPT and Claude and Perplexity and getting their businesses found in the new age of search. So 100 days ago, I had the idea. I thought I needed a really strong brand name. And so I actually bought Searchful.com, which was crazy expensive at the time, decided to go all in on building the best brand in this new space, which everyone is calling AEO or GEO, which is answer engine optimization or generative engine optimization. My background is helping brands grow. This is the new age of helping brands grow. So the last 100 days, I went to San Francisco to network with developers because I'm non-technical, and so I was like, I need really strong technical co-founders to build this business. Did loads of networking and met Sam and Aria, who were both working in Y Combinator startups at the time. Both had incredible experiences in building amazing technology and also had a really deep interest in AEO and were posting about it online at the time. They then fly to London. We're working 60, 70, 80-hour weeks. So what we're building with Searchable is a tool that will help brands get themselves to appear in ChatGPT. Think about it, when was the last time that you Googled anything? Like, I ChatGPT everything now. When you log into Searchable, it will tell you what you're appearing for in ChatGPT, and it will show you which prompts are getting what visibility. You can look at your visibility report, and then the Searchable agent, which is the craziest thing I have ever seen, is hooked up perfectly to your Google Analytics, your Google Search Console. It's trained on SEO. You can then upload your profile to it so it knows everything about your brand, and it can help you to determine what you need to fix on your website, what content you need to create to actually expand your traffic. The last 100 days have been crazy. Did a soft launch of the product 2 weeks ago. We got $250K of annual recurring revenue in the first 6 days. Honestly, it was mind-blowing. We just launched the business properly and the revenue has been insane. The feedback from customers has been amazing, hundreds and hundreds of new customers. We have hired 3 more engineers, we've hired a product lead, we've hired a marketing team. We are going at this thing 100 miles an hour. I'm going to share everything as I always have with my businesses here, and if you want to try Searchable, I will give you a free visibility report so you can check how your brand is performing. Just comment Searchable and I will send you the link so you can check out the tool.
