SEO’s Collapse, Job Hunt Grind & Cone King Bob

Oct 4, 2025

The conversation dives into the decline of traditional SEO, questioning if AI Engine Optimization can rescue traffic woes. The hosts tackle the relevance of the T2D3 growth model in the era of fast-paced AI startups and their dubious revenue claims. The tech job market is brutally competitive, with tips for candidates buried under heaps of applications. Board members are described as quietly disengaging as growth slows, and the trio humorously critiqued LinkedIn faux pas, making for a lively discussion on the state of modern business.

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INSIGHT

ARR Needs Context, Not Blind Trust

ARR as a single rule-of-thumb is dead because revenue composition now varies wildly across business models.
Investors must inspect margin, retention, and whether revenue is pass-through or proprietary to judge value.

INSIGHT

Fast AI Growth Can Be Mostly Pass-Through

Many AI startups report huge ARR-like numbers that mostly pass through third-party compute or marketplace GMV.
That skews unit economics and can make hyperfast growth meaningless without margin clarity.

ADVICE

Write Content For LLM Recommendations

Create definitive comparative listicles and keep them updated to rank in LLM recommendations.
Use short text chunks and tables so models can easily extract and cite your content.

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AI may be rewriting the playbook for growth, but it’s also leaving behind some of the old startup gospel. CJ and Kyle (with Ben jumping in) dig into what happens when the “rules” no longer fit — from dead frameworks and disappearing SEO traffic to board members quietly checking out.

Is T2D3 Dead? Did AI Kill It? The “triple-triple-double-double-double” path to $100M ARR worked in the old SaaS world. But what happens when AI companies blow past $100M in less than a year — often with questionable margins and pass-through revenue?

SEO Down 20–40%: Is AEO the Savior? Google traffic is tanking. ChatGPT is rewriting recommendations. Is “AI Engine Optimization” the new growth channel, or just SEO with a different wrapper?

The Brutal Tech Job Market CS grads face unemployment rates double those of art history majors. With 5,000+ applications going nowhere, does anyone get hired without networking or Loom videos anymore?

Is Your Board Quiet Quitting? When growth slows and AI isn’t your story, some VCs go ghost. From missing intros to pushing for M&A, boards are quietly exiting stage left.

Business Blunders

* Hospital Bed LinkedIn Photos: Hustle so hard you end up in the ER (and still post about it).

* The @Company Non-Tag: Execs copy-paste updates but forget to actually tag anyone. Peak passive-aggressive LinkedIn.

* Ramp’s Y-Axis Crime: A 0.4% bump in weekend meals turned into a chart that looked like the apocalypse. Two burritos never looked so big.

Pricing in the Real World: Bob’s Barricades It’s not Bob, it’s Happy — and he’s quietly running a barricade rental empire. Fifty cents per cone, thousands per site, tens of millions a year. The most Florida business model you’ve ever heard.

Something We Tried This Week Kyle runs a test with Typeform — what worked, what didn’t, and what it says about the state of survey tools today.

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