launchbox

SEO for Founders – It Still Matters

Table Of Contents

The 3 Roles SEO Can Play in Your Startup Growth

Google is changing. AI search is taking over. But search is still the biggest compounding channel, and you can still take advantage.

We’re in a strange moment.

AI-generated answers are starting to reshape how people find and trust information. But search isn’t going away. It’s just evolving.

Founders who adapt early can build lasting leverage that can help scale their growth. Meaningful results can be seen in a few months, and long-tail impact can last years.

I see three ways SEO still plays a critical role in your startup’s growth:

1. SEO as Acquisition

Classic SEO is about being found when people search.
That hasn’t changed. But the form of the results has.

  • In Google, you’re fighting for the top 3 spots.
  • In ChatGPT or Perplexity, you’re fighting to be cited in the answer.
  • In both, you’re rewarded for clarity, structure, and credibility.

When someone searches:

“best CRMs for real estate teams”
or
“how to track habits with ADHD”

You want your product or insight to appear in the answer — not just the link list.

✅ Build pages and posts that directly answer those queries.
✅ Structure them clearly (titles, subheads, lists, links).
✅ Include your unique insight, experience, or data.

Search is still about intent. That hasn’t changed. What’s changed is how direct the answers have become. Make sure both you and your startup are part of that answer.

2. SEO as Proof of Life

Early-stage startups are under scrutiny. Everyone is searching:

  • Investors
  • Potential hires
  • Press
  • Customers

They’re checking if you’re legitimate, if you have presence, and if anyone is talking about you.

Google and AI models answer those questions by looking at:

  • Your site structure
  • Your content footprint
  • Your mentions across the web

That’s why even a few strategic pieces of content, published under your brand or your name, can matter make a difference.

Share insights and deep-dives related to your field:

  • A founder blog post explaining the market shift you’re betting on
  • A product teardown showing how you solve a real pain
  • A “how we think about [X]” piece that future users will search for

It’s not a volume thing anymore. Now it’s signal. In an environment where people can churn out mountains of AI driven content, exceptional thinking, design, and experience will stand out.

When Google and AI can “see” that you exist, understand what you do, and trust your domain, you show up more often — in both traditional and AI-powered results.

3. SEO as Authority

AI search is citation-driven. Google is authority-driven. Both reward earned trust.

Authority used to mean: high domain rating, backlinks, and rankings.

Now it also means:

  • Being referenced in AI results
  • Being linked in summaries
  • Being talked about in communities, tweets, forums, and niche media

That means you need:

  • Original ideas or data – You can’t just copy/past other people’s ideas, you need to contribute something original.
  • Clear, useful writing – Focus more on solving problems and providing value, less on keywords. You shouldn’t ignore keywords, but writing articles for the sake of them is not the best way.
  • Some light distribution effort (think founder-led guest posts, podcast appearances, community contributions) – Get connected with people, work together with them to help everyone succeed.

Google and AI are hungry for trusted sources, so this is an opportunity to become one. We don’t have the luxury to hide behind a brand anymore – now founders need to build personal brands alongside their corporate brands.

The Change is in Quality and Quantity

SEO today isn’t stuffing keywords into blog posts. It’s about building a discoverable signal that tells the world that you know what you’re talking about, and that you’re solving a real problem.

SEO still works, but it requires more thought. Here’s a starting checklist that you can hit in the first 30 days to get a foundation for growth.

  • 3–5 pages that explain what you do and for whom
  • 3–5 posts that answer real problems you solve
  • Your name and your startup name on credible sites

This is how you win get found through search, whether the user types into Google or prompts an AI.

More reading.

What SEO Should Founders Do?

SEO for Founders Part 2: What Should a Founder Actually Do for SEO? Even at the early stage you can do things that matter in SEO. As a founder, your…

Let's go for launch.

We deliver design tasks within 48 hours. All plans come with unlimited stock photos and music. If we miss a delivery you'll get a free week for every day we're late.

Good. Fast. Affordable. You can have all three.

Move fast
Ignite
$ 7999
one time
pay once. win forever.
First time launching? Get everything you need to validate and raise in less than 30 days.

If your pitch deck and brand don’t receive positive feedback from at least 3 investors or advisors, we’ll work on it until they do.
  • Branding
  • MVP UI/UX
  • Pitch Deck
  • Landing page
Let's goooooooooo!!!

$7999

Let's goooooooooooooooooooo!!

First time launching? Get everything you need to validate and raise in less than 30 days.

Pay once, win forever.

  • Branding
  • MVP UI/UX
  • Pitch Deck
  • Landing Page

If your pitch deck and brand don’t receive positive feedback from at least 3 investors or advisors, we’ll work on it until they do.

For busy startups For multibrand orgs

Sustain growth with monthly plans. Senior level design for 1/2 the price of a junior.

Launch
$ 4999
per month
8 Day no-card trial!
Move fast, break molds. Build a stand-out brand, scroll-stopping assets, pitch decks and thoughtful product designs that get traction. 
  • Unlimited Design
  • Branding
  • Pitch Decks
  • UI/UX
  • Social Templates and Ads
  • Packaging
Let's do amazing things.

Sustain growth with monthly plans. Senior level design for 1/2 the price of a junior.

Scale
$ 6999
per month
8 Day no-card trial
Replace managing a team with a simple subscription. All of the quality, none of the complexity.If we don't save you $50K over 6 months, you get a month free.
  • Everything from Launch +
  • Unlimited brands and products
  • 3 Designs at a time
  • Animated explainers and MOAs
  • Unlimited stock video and music
  • Priority Execution
Time to build.

Need a Website?

Make any design into a page or template for $500 a page.

Q&A

You might have questions. We might have answers.

You can! But a senior designer can command $30K a month. Also, depending on your needs, they may not be able to do all that’s required. Fractional design partners like LaunchBox bring a range of skills and and a lot of experience for an affordable monthly rate.

Good question. This depends a lot on you, but we can do a lot if we work well together. For example, it’s reasonable for us to deliver a brand, website, merch, presentations, and print/packaging in a month.

No, there are no refunds, but you can pause, cancel, upgrade or downgrade your subscription any time. We also offer a risk-free no-card-needed trial so you can test LaunchBox for yourself!

The source files are yours, and you will have access to them during the entire subscription.

We produce video and animation using Blender and Resolve. We build sites in Framer, and Wordpress. We design using Affinity Designer and Figma. We can also adapt to your needs.

You add tasks to a shared Trello board and we’ll deliver on the task within 48 hours. Tasks are updated and links are added to the board. The board holds everything. We provide task templates so you can see a roadmap for most project types when creating tasks.

Short heading here

You can always book a call and we can talk.