Builder's Growth Lab

What does it actually take to grow a SaaS company through content marketing when AI is reshaping search as we know it? In this episode, Charlie sits down with Brendan Hufford, head of marketing at Grow Sprints, to dig into the strategies that actually move the needle and the ones that don't.

Brendan's path to marketing is anything but typical. A former teacher turned web designer turned SEO consultant, he now helps SaaS companies escape what he calls "checkbox marketing," the trap of going through the motions without a real strategy behind them. His framework centers on three pillars: discoverability, relationship, and viral loops.

The conversation gets into the current state of SEO in an AI-driven world. Brendan is refreshingly direct: organic traffic is down across the board, but the audience that does show up is more targeted than ever. His answer is to stop chasing top-of-funnel volume and start investing in down-funnel content that speaks to people who are actually ready to buy.

For early-stage companies wondering where to start, Brendan's advice might surprise you. Skip traditional SEO for now and focus on partnerships and customer-driven content first. He also shares his own marketing tech stack, including how he uses Claude and other AI tools, and why the key to winning with AI is what he calls "winning like stupid," meaning just actually implementing the tools while everyone else debates them.

Whether you're building your first content strategy or rethinking an existing one, this episode is packed with practical, honest takes from someone who's been in the trenches.

Most founders building AI products are ignoring a $700B+ market sitting right in front of them: government contracts.

In this episode, Charlie, Conor, and Mallory sit down with Maurice Harari, co-founder and CEO of BidLab, to break down how small and mid-sized businesses can actually compete for and win government RFPs. Maurice shares how his company evolved from a hands-on consulting operation into Bid Banana, an AI-powered platform that matches businesses to relevant bids, estimates ROI, and cuts the time it takes to write a winning proposal.

We get into why most people use AI wrong when writing RFPs (and how that tanks their win rate), the story of a client who bet his last $5,000 on a government contract and walked away with a multi-million dollar deal, and what human oversight actually looks like inside an AI-assisted workflow. We also cover the hosts' takes on OpenAI's Pentagon deal, Jack Dorsey's 40% layoffs at Block, and why 2026 is shaping up to be the year of the AI agent.

If you've never thought about government contracting as a distribution channel, this episode will change that.

Most AI companies are not losing on product. They are losing on positioning. And Josh Lowman says they are solving the wrong problem entirely.

Josh runs Goldfront, a category design studio in San Francisco, and has worked with over 150 companies including Uber, Qualtrics, and Robinhood on one thing: helping companies stop competing inside a crowded category and start owning a new one.

In this episode, Charlie, Conor, and Mallory sit down with Josh to unpack why AI companies all sound the same and what to do about it. Mallory joins fresh off a trip to the Philippines, Conor is deep in building AI-powered content systems, and Charlie is in the middle of validating agent capabilities in Campaign Pilots. 

Busy week for the BGL crew.

Josh breaks down his framework for diagnosing broken positioning, explains the difference between category design and traditional positioning, and shares moves founders can make right now without a big brand budget.

If you build AI products and feel like you are doing everything right but still not breaking through, start here.

Connect with Josh: https://www.goldfront.com/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshlowman/

Andy Crestodina has spent 25 years building Orbit Media into one of the most respected content marketing agencies in the game. No paid ads. No outbound sales team. Just organic content that generates 900+ leads a year.

In this episode, Andy breaks down exactly how he does it and why his approach still works even as AI reshapes search. We dig into what actually matters for SEO right now, how to create content that ranks on Google AND gets cited by AI models like ChatGPT, and why backlinks and deep research still beat shortcuts.

We also get into AI personas, custom GPTs for content audits, the real data on ChatGPT traffic vs. Google traffic, and why Andy thinks human-written content still has a serious edge.

Plus: the crew reacts to OpenAI acquiring OpenClaw, what it means for builders, and our latest experiments with AI agents in real workflows.

If you're an AI founder or builder trying to get users without burning cash on ads, this one's for you.

Hosts: Charlie Hernandez, Conor Douglas, Mallory Loar 

Guest: Andy Crestodina, Co-Founder & CMO, Orbit Media

OpenAI just opened up advertising inside ChatGPT, and the BGL crew breaks down what it actually means for builders, marketers, and AI companies. Conor shares his take from the paid media side, covering CPMs, attribution challenges, and what he's telling his clients. Charlie and Mallory weigh in on trust, discovery vs. purchase intent, and whether ChatGPT ads can compete with Google and Meta for real conversions.

The team also covers this week's biggest AI news, including Anthropic's co-work plugins rattling SaaS stocks, OpenAI's new Frontier enterprise platform, and SpaceX acquiring xAI. 

Plus, the hosts get into Super Bowl ad reactions, Winter Olympics highlights, and a wild rental car story from Breckenridge, Colorado.

Whether you're running paid ads for your AI product or just trying to understand where the attention is shifting, this episode gives you practical context to make smarter growth decisions.

Inside VC with Robert Harari 🎙️

We just dropped Episode 37 with Robert Harari, a VC since age 17 and co-founder of Raisy, an AI platform that connects founders with investors using behavioral data.

What you'll learn:

→ How to craft cold emails that actually get VCs to respond (traction, team, product in that order)

→ The real difference between venture capital, angel investors, and family offices, and which one your company actually needs

→ Why most AI companies shouldn't chase VC funding (and what to do instead)

→ How Raisy uses AI to track investor sentiment and match founders with the right backers

→ Robert's framework for evaluating whether you're building a new technology or just a new business (and why that distinction matters for fundraising)

Why this matters for AI builders:

Robert breaks down venture capital without the mystery. No fluff, just tactical advice on how to approach investors, what they're really looking for, and how to know if VC is even the right path for your AI product.

If you're building in AI and thinking about raising, this episode will save you months of wasted outreach.

www.buildersgrowthlab.ai

We hit record and talked about what's actually on our minds this week: our canceled Breckenridge trip that makes our heart hurt, building CampaignPilots in public and what we're learning from sharing the journey, NFL bets we missed (and why we're still thinking about them), Sunday scaries as founders, how we actually approach networking without being cringe, and the mental health side of building that nobody wants to talk about on LinkedIn. No structure, no script.  

Just three founders being honest about what it's really like right now.

https://buildersgrowthlab.ai/

Jon Cheney, Chief AI Officer and CEO of GenAIPI, joins the show to break down how he scaled from solo consultant to an 8-person AI services firm and what AI founders can steal from his playbook. We dig into his framework for customer acquisition in the critical first 60 days, how he landed free media coverage by pitching local news stations, and why building relationships with journalists beats paid ads. Jon also shares his take on AI agents going autonomous by 2026, why he thinks concerns about an AI bubble are overblown, and the one thing most founders get wrong: jumping into AI tools before they have a plan. If you're shipping an AI product and struggling to get traction, this episode is packed with tactical, immediately useful advice.

https://genaipi.org/

Jon's Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joncheney/

Guest: Silvia Oviedo Lopez, Former Pinterest & Canva Leader, Now Building Stealth AI Startup

Silvia spent two decades scaling Pinterest to 450 million users and leading AI-powered content discovery at Canva. Now she's building a stealth AI startup and just published her 2026 trend report.

We dive into why the big consumer AI breakthrough still hasn't landed, where the real whitespace is for founders, and how B2C/B2B boundaries are collapsing. Silvia breaks down what AI-native operations actually look like, the difference between AI that helps us think versus AI that just automates tasks, and why craft is the new scarcity.

She shares the real growth levers that worked at Pinterest, how community can become a moat, whether founders should still care about Google SEO or focus on AI answer engines, and what "unicorn hires" look like in 2026.

We also explore leadership through what Silvia calls "The Emotional Recession." Why are founders burnt out from holding ambiguity, not doing too much? How do you balance speed with thoughtfulness? What should you look for in investors when operators are becoming the new power players?

Packed with tactical insights from someone who's scaled global platforms and is doing it again in stealth mode.

https://buildersgrowthlab.ai/

In this episode, Mallory Loar pulls back the curtain on her fundraising journey: raising nearly $800K for her app.

She breaks down how she leveraged her network to get in front of angel investors, why early-stage investors bet on founders over ideas, and the brutal truth about fundraising as a female founder in tech (spoiler: less than 3% of VC funding goes to women-led startups).

What you'll learn:

• How to raise capital before building anything (and when you actually should)
• The difference between pitching angels vs. VCs, and why speed matters
• How to build an investor pipeline and tailor your pitch to each person's background
• The harsh feedback loop of fundraising and how to stay resilient through rejections
• Why bootstrapping as long as possible often beats raising too early
• Gender bias in VC funding and what it takes to overcome it

Plus: The hosts dive into the rise of "vibe coding" tools in 2025, why talking to a human will become a premium experience, and predictions for OpenAI acquisitions in the year ahead.

Perfect for AI founders wondering if (and when) they should raise money, and how to actually do it without traction.

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https://buildersgrowthlab.ai/