Simon Wilhelm

Co-Founder @scailetech. Ranking Brands in Chatgpt, Perplexity & Google AIO. Generated €20m+ Lead Value via AEO. Stop Building for Blue Links. Win the Answer.

[Simon Wilhelm @Simon_LeanderW]

Test v2 on your own category → https://t.co/9ixMuPtt5v

[Simon Wilhelm @Simon_LeanderW]

just wrapped the AEO Hackathon in Berlin with +60 marketing leaders.

we brought together @OpenAI, @HubSpot, duwerk and us (SCAILE ) to hack real AEO strategies together. the energy was insane.

katrin & lili (co-founders @ duwerk) broke down what proper AEO strategy actually looks like.
jennifer & glenn showed how to find the queries your brand is (and isn’t) showing up for.
i shared how SCAILE thinks about content production with AI.
@TilmanResch opened up his entire codex setup to inspire everyone.

what really stood out? seeing so many non-technical marketers fully in the mix.
that’s real proof of how fast AI adoption is happening on the marketing side.

for SCAILE it was extra special ; we launched v2 the night before and let +50 marketers stress-test it live throughout the day.

huge thank you to all the clients, participants and co-organizers.
it was an absolute blast ❤️

who else is feeling the AEO shift?

[Simon Wilhelm @Simon_LeanderW]

Impossible Cloud came to us invisible in AI search. We rebuilt how they get cited. Result: 1,000%+ organic traffic, and they now outrank AWS, Hetzner and Google in AI answers for their core queries. Niche infra beating hyperscalers. Want the playbook? Drop your domain.

[Simon Wilhelm @Simon_LeanderW]

3 places LLMs actually pull citations from, ranked by how badly most brands ignore them:

1. Reddit
2. YouTube
3. Cited/academic content

Reddit and YouTube alone drive 48% of AI citations. Your homepage isn't on this list. Which one are you sleeping on?

[Simon Wilhelm @Simon_LeanderW]

3 places LLMs actually pull citations from, ranked by how badly most brands ignore them:

1. Reddit
2. YouTube
3. Cited/academic content

Reddit and YouTube alone drive 48% of AI citations. Your homepage isn't on this list. Which one are you sleeping on?

[Simon Wilhelm @Simon_LeanderW]

Germany builds the best products on earth. AI doesn't know they exist. A Mittelstand champion can do 300M+ in revenue and get zero ChatGPT citations for its own category. The moat is real. The visibility is zero. Who's fixing this? DM me.

[Simon Wilhelm @Simon_LeanderW]

Most AEO/GEO content is written in English, for American markets, citing American companies.

When a German manufacturer asks an AI who the best supplier in their sector is — they get American results.

The European AI search gap is real. It's a competitive window that won't stay open long.

European companies that move now own their category before the Americans notice it exists.

[Simon Wilhelm @Simon_LeanderW]

SEO isn't dying. It just stopped being the thing that wins. 60% of AI Overview citations come from URLs that aren't even in the top 20 organic results. You can rank #1 and still be invisible in ChatGPT. Where are you actually getting cited? Drop your domain.

[Simon Wilhelm @Simon_LeanderW]

@Polymarket If Robotaxis can maintain near-zero at-fault rates at scale, it completely changes the insurance, liability, and urban planning math. That’s when things get really interesting.

[Simon Wilhelm @Simon_LeanderW]

Something I'm learning building in this space:

The hardest sell in GEO isn't the product. It's the timeline expectation.

People hear "6 to 14 days to first AI citation" and think we're exaggerating. Then they see their brand appear in ChatGPT 9 days after we start.

The shift in AI search is moving faster than anyone expected. Including us.

[Simon Wilhelm @Simon_LeanderW]

The biggest GEO mistake: optimising your homepage.

Your homepage is not where buyers look for answers.

Buyers ask specific questions. "What's the best cloud storage for regulated industries?" "Which payment solution works for care facilities?"

GEO is about answering those exact questions at scale.

Find the specific questions your buyers are asking AI right now. That's where your content needs to be. Not your about page.

[Simon Wilhelm @Simon_LeanderW]

Most GEO content is written in English, for American markets, citing American companies.

When a German manufacturer asks an AI who the best supplier in their sector is — they get American results.

The European AI search gap is real. It's a competitive window that won't stay open long.

European companies that move now own their category before the Americans notice it exists.

[Simon Wilhelm @Simon_LeanderW]

@pmitu true for features. less true for distribution and brand, that stuff only compounds the longer you're at it

[Simon Wilhelm @Simon_LeanderW]

@garrytan been finding this exactly. simple tasks i still just do myself, faster than prompting it. the more moving parts the more it actually earns its keep

[Simon Wilhelm @Simon_LeanderW]

@thdxr lol the indulgence is the feature. i've had it generate edge-case scenarios i'd never have written by hand and a couple actually caught real bugs

[Simon Wilhelm @Simon_LeanderW]

@PeterDiamandis The hard part isn't the tech, it's who decides what "trustworthy" means. That's the gap nobody's solved.

[Simon Wilhelm @Simon_LeanderW]

We fit €500K ARR a while ago. Wanted to introduce the team that got us here.

CTO: Julius Betzler — built 3 companies from 0 to 1 before this one
CPO: @augustGutsche — obsessed with product since his first semester at uni
Founding Engineer: Dora Pruteanu — top 1% CS at TUM
Head of GTM: Niccolo Casamatta — quit a six-figure IB job to be here

Building this team was harder than hitting the number.

The goal: own content production for AI Visibility in regulated, brand-sensitive markets.

Heads down. See you at 1M.

[Simon Wilhelm @Simon_LeanderW]

A cloud storage company came to us completely invisible against AWS, Azure, and Google in AI search.

We deployed 500+ AEO-optimized pages engineered specifically for LLM ingestion.

60 days later: #2 most visible cloud storage brand in AI search. Appearing alongside the hyperscalers for every high-intent query.

Then they asked us to roll it out to 3 more markets.

Armin Rachwalik (Director, Impossible Cloud): "We are now the #1 source for the most relevant questions our ICP asks in ChatGPT."

[Simon Wilhelm @Simon_LeanderW]

"SEO is dead" is lazy. It's not dead, it's invisible. 60% of AI Overview citations come from URLs that aren't even in the top 20 organic results. You can rank #1 and still not exist in the answer. Where's your domain showing up in ChatGPT? Drop it below.

[Simon Wilhelm @Simon_LeanderW]

SEO is a 6-month bet. GEO shows up in 6 to 14 days. We published 100,000+ pages over 18 months to prove it, and the gap isn't close. If you're still waiting on SEO to compound, you're funding your competitor's head start. What's your time-to-first-citation?

[Simon Wilhelm @Simon_LeanderW]

We analysed 500+ AI citations to find out what actually gets your brand mentioned by ChatGPT, Claude, and Google AIO.

Here's what the data showed: 👇🏼

60% of AI Overview citations come from URLs not in the top 20 organic results.

Your SEO rank doesn't predict your AI visibility.

Two completely separate games.

48% of AI citations come from Reddit and YouTube.

Not your website. Not your press releases.

Communities and conversations are where LLMs look first.

We took Impossible Cloud from zero to outranking AWS, Hetzner, and Google in AI search.

The playbook:
— Data lake: CRM + sales calls + community questions
— Content structured to answer, not just rank
— Distribution on the platforms LLMs actually pull from

6 to 14 days to first AI citation.

Most companies are still optimising for blue links.

The companies winning in 2026 are optimising for the AI answer.

That's GEO. Generative Engine Optimization.

And it's early enough that getting in now is still a massive advantage.

- - - -

I'm Simon. Co-founder of SCAILE.

We build the content engine that gets companies cited by AI — ChatGPT, Claude, Google AIO.

Drop/DM your domain below and I'll tell you exactly where you're invisible.

[Simon Wilhelm @Simon_LeanderW]

Most companies optimizing for AI search are doing it wrong.

They're trying to rank in ChatGPT the same way they tried to rank in Google.

More pages. More keywords. More content.

That's not how AI citations work.

48% of AI citations come from Reddit and YouTube. Not your website. Not your blog. Not your press releases.

Communities win in AI search. Not content farms.

The brands showing up in ChatGPT answers right now aren't the ones with the biggest content budgets. They're the ones people actually talk about online.

That's the game.