Engagement 02 of 3 · 90 days
Founder Presence + Discovery
For the founder who also needs to be found.
Buyers research the category through Google and AI assistants, and today they find little or the wrong account of your company. We fix both your presence and how you are discovered.
Who this is for.
Choose this when buyers research your category through Google and AI assistants, and your company is missing, vague or described wrongly when they do.
- Everything in Founder Presence applies: technical AI or B2B SaaS, real customers, a founder who knows more than the internet shows
- Buyers compare options before talking to sales, and you suspect you are absent from those comparisons
- When you ask ChatGPT or Perplexity about your category, your company is missing or described wrongly
- You have a website you can publish to, or a developer who can
Where things stand today.
Buyers now ask AI assistants and search engines to explain a category and shortlist vendors. If the clear explanation of what you do only exists on sales calls, those systems have little to work with.
Your site may describe features without answering the questions buyers actually ask: how this compares, when it fits, what it costs to adopt.
Descriptions of the company and founder differ across your site, LinkedIn and directories, which makes it harder for people and machines to understand who you are.
Background: what founder presence means, and how to test whether AI assistants know your company.
What changes over 90 days.
- A dated baseline of how ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google describe your company for a fixed set of buyer questions, with a day 90 re-check.
- A map of the questions buyers ask, with the pages that should answer them.
- Up to 4 evidence-backed pages on your site that answer real buyer questions in your founder's words.
- Consistent descriptions of company and founder across the places that get crawled and checked.
- A founder media rhythm that feeds the same topics.
OwnedSignal's 3 October discovery baseline
The first deliverable in this engagement is a dated discovery baseline. This is the baseline run on OwnedSignal itself, two days after the site changed its positioning.
It is OwnedSignal's own data, not a client result, and it used two search tools rather than the AI assistants a client baseline covers.
| Prompt group | Runs | OwnedSignal found | What came back |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brand | 12 | Web-search API: 0 of 8 runs linked ownedsignal.com. Exa: ownedsignal.com was #1 in 3 of 4 runs, but with the old positioning in its index. | “OwnedSignal” was answered as a Scala library class. Summaries about Alex listed several people with the same name and twice called another one “the most prominent”. |
| Category | 12 | 0 of 12 | Agency, consultant and tool pages filled the results. |
| Buyer problem | 19 | 0 of 19 | Mostly answered by AI-visibility tools and agencies. |
| Commercial | 10 | 1 of 10 | The only appearance was Exa, for the method's own name, “Owned Media Signal Stack”. For “founder presence agency for technical founders”, the web-search API ranked a different company called Founder Presence first. |
The same battery is re-run on a schedule, and the changes are logged against this date. How the wider method works is in how to test whether AI assistants know your company.
Which layers of the method this uses.
The base layer plus search and AI discovery: buyer-question research, evidence pages and consistent company information, so buyers find a clear account of you without a call.
- 01Founder signalCore
- 02Search and AI discoveryCore
- 03ConversationsNot in this engagement
- 04Borrowed reachNot in this engagement
- 05Owned audienceNot in this engagement
The 90 days, month by month.
Baseline and research
- Kickoff interview and profile rewrite, as in Founder Presence
- Buyer-question research from sales notes, support tickets, communities and search data
- Discovery baseline: up to 25 buyer questions run across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI features, repeated and dated
- Entity audit of your site, LinkedIn pages and main directory listings
- Query and topic map, approved by you
- First founder pieces published
- Day 21 checkpoint before full execution
Build the answer pages
- Second interview, focused on the questions in the topic map
- First 2 evidence-backed pages: FAQ, comparison or educational, depending on the map
- Structured content improvements on up to 5 existing pages
- Schema and internal linking recommendations, or implementation with site access
- Founder media on the same topics
- Monthly discovery tracking note
Complete and re-check
- Third interview and the remaining 2 pages
- Internal links between the new pages, product pages and founder media
- Day 90 re-run of the full discovery check against the baseline
- Day 90 review: what changed, what did not, and what to do next
Exact scope.
Founder presence core
- Positioning note and LinkedIn profile rewrite
- 3 interviews (90, 60, 60 minutes)
- Up to 12 approved founder pieces over 90 days
- Founder voice and intelligence file
Discovery research
- Buyer-question research and a query and topic map
- AI and search discovery check: up to 25 questions, run at day 1 to 30 and again at day 90
- Founder and company entity audit with a fix list
Discovery assets
- Up to 4 new pages on your site (FAQ, comparison or educational), each built from founder interviews and cited sources
- Structured content and internal linking improvements on up to 5 existing pages
- Organization and Person schema recommendations, or implementation with access
Tracking
- Monthly discovery tracking note
- Day 90 comparison against the baseline
Who does what.
Founder time
About 3 hours a month
- Interviews: 90 minutes in month 1, then 60 minutes a month
- Approvals: about 30 minutes a week, plus a technical read of each page
- Monthly review: 30 minutes
What I do
- Everything in Founder Presence, at a lower post volume
- Run and log the discovery checks, with dates, engines and exact prompts
- Research buyer questions and build the topic map
- Write the pages and the structured content changes
- Prepare schema and internal linking, or implement them with access
- Report what moved and what did not, without overstating it
Done by Alex Iliescu, founder of OwnedSignal.
What you do
- Attend interviews and approve drafts within 2 working days
- Give CMS access, or a developer who can publish within a week
- Share sales notes, support questions or call recordings where allowed
- Review technical accuracy on each page
What you receive.
- Discovery baseline and day 90 re-check
- Query and topic map
- Entity audit and fix list
- Up to 4 published pages
- Up to 5 improved existing pages
- Up to 12 approved founder pieces
- Founder voice and intelligence file
Not included.
- Guaranteed rankings or AI citations
- Link buying or link schemes
- A technical SEO overhaul or site rebuild
- Programmatic or bulk AI-written pages
- Paid search or ads
Founder Presence + Discovery
€4,200 / 90 days
About €1,400 a month, agreed as one fixed project.
The payment schedule and the day 21 checkpoint terms are set out in the written proposal before you commit. Applicable tax is confirmed in the proposal.
- Fixed scope, start and end dates
- Day 21 direction review before full execution
- Everything produced stays with you
- No automatic renewal
What clients say.
Alex is conscientious of the value he brings and humble about the results. Knowledgeable, flexible, and a genuine pleasure to work with.
The Salient Strategist
I'm so grateful I met Alex when I was launching. Without his help, I wouldn't have thought to use partnerships. They brought me my first 1K downloads, two leads already, and visibility that is going to carry my business into 2026.
Copy And
Alex went above and beyond what was expected because he truly believes in what you're building. Week by week he became a true partner. He will do whatever it takes to make your mission and podcast successful, because he did it for me.
Rebrand Your Life Podcast
Questions about Founder Presence + Discovery.
Can you guarantee we will appear in ChatGPT?
No. Nobody outside the AI companies controls what their assistants say, and answers change between runs. What I can do is make a clear, consistent and well-sourced account of your company available, check it in a documented way, and report honestly on what changed.
Why only 4 pages?
Each page is built from an interview, research and your technical review. Four good pages that answer real buyer questions are more useful than twenty thin ones, and they are what the 90-day budget can do well.
Do I need to rebuild my website?
No. The work fits into your existing site. If the site cannot publish basic pages or edit page titles, that is a blocker we should discuss on the fit call.
How do you measure AI visibility?
A fixed set of buyer questions, run several times on each assistant, with dates and the exact wording kept. I record whether the company and founder are named, how they are described and which sources are cited. Single screenshots are not treated as evidence.
Next step
Talk through Founder Presence + Discovery on a fit call.
The fit call · 30 minutes
30 minutes. We look at what a buyer finds about you today.
Then I tell you plainly whether this engagement fits, whether another one does, or whether none does yet.