A few ideas about SEO change how founders approach it.
After burning through $91,000 in ad spend with zero results, I discovered this counterintuitive strategy that led to 12x growth in just 7 months. Here's the full story and how you can replicate it.
The Counterintuitive Truth
In SEO, the best practitioners often do less, not more.
The lesson: the market doesn't care about your roadmap. It sounds simple. It's incredibly hard to execute.
What I've Learned From 43 Companies
Across 234 angel investments, including Anthropic, a few patterns in SEO come up again and again.
The founders who handle SEO well understand that customer feedback is the only metric that matters.
Why Most Approaches Fail
Many common approaches to SEO are flawed at the root.
The root cause is usually one of three things:
Copying what big companies do without understanding why they do it. What works for Google doesn't work for a 10-person startup.
Over-engineering the solution when a simple approach would work better. I've seen teams spend six months building something that could have been done in two weeks.
Ignoring the human element. Technology is the easy part. Getting people to actually use it is where the real challenge lives.
The Numbers Don't Lie
The gap between companies that take SEO seriously and those that don't is usually clear.
Investing early in SEO can be the difference between raising your next round and running out of runway.
One of my portfolio companies went from struggling to profitable in under a year after they finally got serious about this. The founder told me later that they wished they'd started sooner.
This connects to broader themes around retention strategies, content marketing, viral loops, referral programs, growth hacking that I've been thinking about a lot lately.
Final Thoughts
There are no shortcuts in SEO, but there are smarter paths.
The strongest teams treat SEO as a competitive advantage, not a checkbox. They invest in it early, measure it obsessively, and never stop improving.
If you're just getting started with SEO, don't be intimidated. Everyone starts somewhere. The key is to start with the right mindset and the right framework, and then execute like your company depends on it. Because it probably does.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q:Can I implement all of these at once?
I'd strongly recommend against it. Pick the 2-3 items that resonate most with your current situation and focus there. Trying to do everything simultaneously is a recipe for doing nothing well.
Q:Are these recommendations still relevant in 2026?
Absolutely. While specific tools and tactics change, the underlying principles remain consistent. I update my thinking regularly based on what I'm seeing in the market and across my portfolio companies.
Q:Which item on this list has the highest impact?
It depends on your stage and context, but in my experience, the items near the top of the list tend to have the broadest applicability. That said, sometimes the less obvious items create the biggest breakthroughs for specific situations.
Q:How do I know which items apply to my situation?
Start by honestly assessing where your biggest bottleneck is right now. The items that address that specific constraint will give you the highest return on your time and energy.