Challenge
This beauty and wellness startup was launching in a saturated market dominated by established brands with massive marketing budgets. Traditional customer acquisition channels would be prohibitively expensive. The founders decided to build an AI-native brand from day one, prioritizing AI visibility and commerce over traditional SEO and paid ads.
Approach
We built the AI-native foundation before launch: (1) Pre-launch AI Brand Audit to identify opportunity gaps, (2) Website architecture optimized for AI crawlers from day one, (3) llms.txt and schema.org implemented at launch, (4) Agentic Commerce integrated with Shopify before first sale, (5) Content strategy focused on AI-visible authority signals, (6) Launch campaigns targeted at AI model training data sources.
Results
Achieved 115% AI citation rate (appearing in more queries than expected) across 6 models within 90 days. Agentic Commerce generated 156 orders worth $94,000 in first quarter. 73% of customers discovered the brand through AI recommendations. Zero spend on Google Ads or Facebook Ads. Customer lifetime value 2.3x higher than industry average. The startup achieved profitability in month 4.