#01 Scaled to $1M ARR Year One with AI SEO (4 Pillars Drive 95% Leads)

José Velez is the founder of Reach, an SEO and AI search optimization company that went from $0 to $1M ARR in 12 months. What do you do when your VC-backed startup fails? José shut his down at the start of 2025, wrote one LinkedIn post, and a year later his new company was helping Series A and B startups beat unicorns in Google, ChatGPT and Perplexity. But in an industry racing to automate everything, why does one of the leading AI search companies still have humans write every word? Expect to learn how one viral LinkedIn post validated a business in a week, why the first customers came from reputation rather than outbound, how a free Looker Studio dashboard became a newsletter flywheel, the 5% of SEO and AEO work that drives 95% of results, what entity consensus means and why LLMs care about it, how to justify human-written content against AI-only agencies undercutting on price, why Reach is fully in person in Lisbon and New York, what percentage of deals actually close without meeting face to face, José's three-part plan to build a unicorn and much more… ========== Connect with José:   / zevelez   Connect with Leon:   / leonwosko   Want to have human writers create content for your LinkedIn personal brand? Check out our offer on https://www.publicative.com ========== Chapters: 00:00 Intro 01:18 Why Reach blew up: the viral post vs. the marathon of execution 03:21 The unscalable beginning: owning the outcome end to end 05:30 Using your network and reputation to close the first customers 06:39 The website as your biggest asset + the lead magnet flywheel 09:32 Why the website looked like a game 11:19 The 5% of SEO/AEO work that drives 95% of results 11:28 Pillar 1: Technical SEO 12:19 Pillar 2: Owned content 13:03 Pillar 3: Earned mentions and building LLM consensus 14:36 Pillar 4: Community engagement, Reddit and review sites 19:33 Content that drives leads: answer first, scientific approach 26:52 How Reach uses AI without letting AI write the content 28:12 Beating unicorns with Series A/B clients 29:51 AI evals, feedback loops and solving attribution 31:41 Who writes the final copy? 34:48 Do clients pay a premium for human writers? 37:24 Why Reach is fully in person in Lisbon and New York 42:03 Does in-person help close deals? 44:26 The plan to become a unicorn: talent density, direction, execution 51:17 Outro ========== Human-Led Growth is the podcast where B2B tech and AI founders share how they turn human trust into revenue through reputation, relationships and measures AI cannot automate. Hosted by Leon Wosko, founder of Publicative.com. ========== Music licensed through Soundstripe. Code: W7BFOD9PJT6SNXMC