Authored by Jeffrey Herzog, Founder and CEO of Avenue Z and US50 Judge
Paid Search, Paid Social, Events: these traditional tech startup marketing tactics are getting more expensive by the day. Classic SEO is slower than most startup runways and losing efficacy. ROI is declining. This creates a painful go-to-market gap for founders and founding teams (CMOs especially) between what they spend and the growth they actually see every quarter.
I’ve been founding companies since 1998, through the birth of Search, Social, eCommerce, and now AI Search and the Creator Economy. Today, working closely with tech startups, I see a clear pattern in what actually moves the needle. The teams that are actually gaining ground in 2026 have two things in common: they are engineering visibility inside AI answers and they are steadily building earned media authority. Most of what is working sits on top of those two pillars.
Two Tactics. No Debate.
Every few years there is a new “must-have” channel. By the time it hits the conference circuit, it is usually crowded and short-lived.
This cycle looks different. When you study the companies that are quietly compounding attention, pipeline and valuation, you keep seeing the same two levers:
- They show up inside AI-generated answers when customers search for what they do.
- They earn consistent, credible coverage and commentary in the outlets their buyers already read and trust.
Call them AI Search and modern PR. On their own, each can move numbers. Together, they form the backbone of the strongest startup marketing plans I am seeing this year.
Why the Old Playbook Is Wearing Out
Talk to ten founders and you will hear the same story on repeat.
Paid Social still delivers in specific pockets, but auctions are more expensive and targeting is weaker than it used to be. You can still rent attention, but building durable demand that way is harder.
SEO is not dead, but it is not the whole front door anymore. Blue-link rankings matter, yet more of the highest intent attention is now captured inside AI answers before anyone clicks a result.
Events, sponsorships and brand campaigns can help, but they are hard to scale with Seed and Series A budgets.
So the real question becomes: where can I invest that creates a compounding advantage, not just another month of impressions?
AI Search: Where High-Intent Demand Is Going
When your buyer types a question into an AI assistant, they are not asking for ten options. They are asking for a recommendation and a clear next step.
Answer engines give them a single summary. A few brands and sources are cited. Everyone else is invisible.
That reality changes the game. You are not just trying to climb from position nine to position four. You are trying to make sure you are in the answer at all.
The teams that understand this are treating Answer Engine Optimization like a real discipline. They are:
- Mapping the actual questions their buyers ask at each stage of the journey.
- Publishing clear, structured, verifiable content that directly answers those questions.
- Making it easy for AI systems to see who they are, what they do and why they should be trusted.
- Checking how they show up across major AI interfaces and closing gaps on a regular cadence, not once a year.
When a startup becomes one of the default names an answer engine returns for its category, you feel it. Inbound demand is warmer. Sales calls start with “we keep seeing you mentioned” instead of “who are you again.”
PR: From Logo Slide to Performance Channel
At the same time, PR has moved from “nice to have” to something much closer to a performance channel.
AI models lean heavily on trusted editorial sources when they form an answer. So do your buyers. When your company is quoted in respected outlets, shows up in analyst notes or contributes a useful perspective on your space, you are shaping human perception in the moment and building a track record that machines can validate.
The PR programs that work in 2026 have a different feel. They are built to:
- Establish clear expertise around a specific problem or category.
- Put real people from your company into the conversation with grounded, non-generic commentary.
- Create a steady rhythm of mentions, quotes and features that signal relevance over time.
Founders who run PR this way see the impact everywhere. Prospects arrive better educated. Partners are more willing to take the first meeting. Candidates often know who you are before you reach out.
In a world where anyone can publish a blog post, third-party validation has become a real conversion driver.
What This Looks Like Inside Real Companies
If you zoom in on startups that are punching above their weight on visibility, three patterns show up again and again.
First, they lead with category questions, not just product pages. They do not start with feature grids. They start with the questions that define their space. If you are in B2B payments, for example, that might mean honest, well-structured answers to “how do enterprise teams consolidate payment platforms,” “what does good reconciliation actually look like” or “when does it make sense to build versus buy.” These pieces are factual, current and transparent about tradeoffs. They are built to be cited.
Second, they make founders and executives reliable sources. Leadership does not hide behind the logo. The CEO, CTO or CMO becomes a recurring voice on a small set of topics that matter to the market. They respond quickly to media requests, share specific points of view and avoid thin, promotional quotes. Over time, reporters know who to call when a story breaks in that space. AI systems also notice whose names keep showing up next to credible explanations. Trust compounds on both fronts.
Third, they keep search, comms, and product in one loop. Search data shapes which questions they answer and which narratives they lean into. Media feedback influences what they publish on their own channels. Product teams listen to the questions that keep surfacing in both places and adjust roadmap and messaging accordingly. That loop is what turns “more visibility” into a better strategy instead of more noise.
How to Rebuild Your Plan Around AI Search and PR
If you are a founder who wants to tilt your marketing plan toward what is actually working right now, you do not need a hundred-point playbook. You need a sequence.
1. Start with an honest audit
Search for the ten to fifteen questions your ideal customer would ask about your problem space. Then look at how you show up in:
- Major AI assistants.
- The key trade publications and newsletters in your category.
- Traditional search results.
If your brand is mostly absent, you have your starting point.
2. Build a small, citable content foundation.
Choose a short list of core questions you want to own and create one excellent, up-to-date answer for each. Favor clarity over clever copy, evidence over claims and clean structure over length. Make authorship obvious. Make sources visible. You want humans and machines to have reasons to trust what they are reading.
3. Turn leadership into steady sources, not occasional spokespeople.
Pick two or three topics your leaders can speak on better than most and commit to those lanes. Show up consistently through targeted media opportunities, your own channels and the right industry stages. The goal is not to have a take on everything. The goal is to be the obvious voice for a few important things.
4. Don’t play catch-up, hire the advantage.
There is no time to assemble this capability in-house from scratch. Effective AI visibility and modern PR now depend on knowing the right algorithms, the right editorial standards, and the right editors – access, execution, and experience you simply won’t get from a single internal hire. Find an AI-accelerated PR and AEO team that already lives in these systems every day and can plug your brand into the right surfaces, faster.
From there, you can layer in a more formal PR calendar and more detailed measurement. The key is that AI visibility and earned authority are no longer fringe experiments. They are the frame your other tactics sit inside.
The Teams That Move Now Will Be Harder to Catch Later
We are still early in the shift to AI-mediated discovery and in the way editorial credibility gets priced into those systems. That window will not stay this open.
Founders do not need another list of “hot channels.” They need a plan that lines up with where attention is actually going and how trust is actually formed.
Right now, that plan has two clear pillars: make it easy for AI systems to find, understand and cite you when your customer asks a question, and make it easy for humans to see that credible people already trust you.
The startups that do both in 2026 won’t just be more visible; they’ll already be gaining ground by the time the next wave of tactics goes mainstream. For startups, AI Search Ads are already waiting on the horizon.
