The case at a glance
- Month 1 revenue: $4K — two clients at $2K/mo each
- Pricing: $2K/mo → $3K/mo, raised before adding a single capability
- Current: $17K MRR, which implies five or six active accounts
- Client roster: 2 YC companies, 1 enterprise doing $1B+ in revenue
- Best client result: #2 most-cited source in Google AI Overviews for their main category keyword
- Failed attempts first: 1 automation tool, plus early hires banned on arrival
Stack isn't disclosed, and there isn't much to disclose: an aged Reddit account, a drafting doc, and a weekly rank check. Capital at risk, near zero.
He spent two years on an AI writing product that ran on free-tool traffic until AI search dried it up. Chasing the "ChatGPT cites Reddit" thesis, he hired people to post — they got banned almost immediately. He learned to engage for real, pushed Reddit to 25% of that product's customers, then tried to build a posting tool. The tool died in a ban wave. That failure was the insight.
What he's actually selling: Google AI Overviews real estate
The product isn't the Reddit post. The product is a Google-indexed page sitting on a domain Google already trusts more than the client's blog. Long-form hand-written reviews, independent editorial control, plus a brand subreddit buildout that ranks the way any subreddit ranks — fully inside Reddit's rules. He's quietly assembling off-domain search property and billing it as content marketing.
The mechanism works because the platform's hostility is the pricing power. Reddit nukes automation on sight, so the supply of operators who can post there and survive stays permanently tiny. Every other channel got flooded the month a wrapper shipped. He picked the one surface where the AI wave increased demand and couldn't increase supply, then narrowed to two ICPs he has personal receipts in: generative-AI products and dev tools. The vertical he tried without firsthand experience — personal finance — missed, by his own admission.
He didn't escape AI by finding work machines can't do. He found a platform that punishes machines, then rented his hands into the gap.