The Shortlist/B2B startups
The 5 best GEO agencies for B2B startups
Published Sep 2, 2026
More and more buyers ask ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini for a shortlist of tools before they ever open Google. And Google itself is pushing AI Overviews and AI Mode hard, so a ranking is no longer the same as being found. If you are a B2B startup, the risk is that a model answers your category for months before you notice you are not in the answer.
Five agencies that do this work for startups, from $1,500/mo to $10,000+/mo.
At a glance
The shortlist, ranked
| # | Agency | Best for | Base | Entry price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Radyant | Funded B2B startups from roughly Series A that want one senior team for pages, outside coverage and conversions | DACH, delivering across Europe | From €7,000/mo |
| 2 | House of Growth | Early-stage B2B software companies that need Reddit, YouTube and earned mentions done properly | Europe, remote | Not published |
| 3 | Generate More | Early-stage B2B tech companies that want a senior operator rather than an agency team | Finland, working across the EU, UK and US | Not published |
| 4 | Embarque | Pre-seed and seed companies that need to start somewhere real on a small budget | Remote, global | Four tiers from $1,500/mo (one service) to $10,000+/mo (eight or more) |
| 5 | Graphite | Startups already at Series B and beyond that want a large partner with a research team | United States, remote | Not published |
Methodology
How this was put together
We started with agencies that publicly sell AI Search, AEO or GEO work and name at least one client that was a startup at the time of the engagement.
Everything comes from public sources: the agency's own site, its published cases, its published research, its published pricing. Where an agency publishes nothing on a point, we say so. Self-reported percentages are marked as stated by the agency rather than presented as fact, because several agencies in this segment publish figures that would be remarkable if anyone audited them.
Stage matters more than rank here. Two of the five are wrong for a pre-seed company, and each entry says so, along with where it is the stronger pick.
The agencies
Every entry in detail
#1
Radyant
- Best for
- Funded B2B startups from roughly Series A that want one senior team for pages, outside coverage and conversions
- Base
- DACH, delivering across Europe
- Entry price
- From €7,000/mo
- Terms
- 12-month commitment with an opt-out after 6 months. Fixed-scope projects from €10,000
An AI-native organic growth agency running SEO, AI Search and digital PR as one thing rather than three. That matters at this stage. You are picking the few claims everything else will rest on. Then you have to get them said twice: on your own pages, and somewhere outside them. Digital PR is in-house next to content and technical work. Radyant also publishes its own research into how the answer engines behave, so you can read the method before you buy it.
Where it is stronger
- Own pages, outside coverage and conversion work sit in one team, so the two tracks that get you named do not get split across vendors
- Publishes both citation-level client results and its own research into how retrieval works
- Pricing and contract terms are published, including the six-month opt-out, which is unusual at this end of the market
- Most of the published case set is startups and scale-ups rather than enterprises
Where it is not
- The €7,000/mo entry price rules it out below roughly Series A. For a pre-seed company this is the wrong entry on the list
- Europe-focused. A US-only go-to-market is better served by a US team
- Full-service scope is more than you need if you only want a one-off diagnostic
Services
- AI Search optimisation across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Copilot and Google AI Mode
- Digital PR
- SEO strategy and technical SEO
- Content production
- Programmatic SEO
- Conversion rate optimisation and attribution setup
Published proof
- Planeco Building: AI Search citation rate doubled from 55% to over 110%, and first place in AI Search visibility in its competitor set
- Heyflow: 3× MRR pipeline in six months, and first place in AI Search visibility for its category
- Heyflow: 593 brand mentions earned from YouTube in three months
- deeploi: organic leads up 250%
- ToolSense: 10× leads from SEO over two years
- Planeco Building: 5× lead growth, from 45 to 225 leads a month, and a 247-page programmatic cluster
- Publishes original research including a query fan-out study on branded search, a persona study and a software prompt study
#2
House of Growth
- Best for
- Early-stage B2B software companies that need Reddit, YouTube and earned mentions done properly
- Base
- Europe, remote
- Entry price
- Not published
- Terms
- Recurring agreements with no long-term lock-in
An AEO-first agency built for this stage, and the service mix is the reason to look: owned content, brand mentions, YouTube and Reddit together. Community sources get pulled into answers a lot, and they are somewhere a young company can realistically win in months, because nobody is defending that ground. Their published outcomes are stated in pipeline rather than visibility, which is rarer than it should be.
Where it is stronger
- Reddit and brand-mention work as core services, not add-ons
- Reports pipeline share and closed deals, which is the strongest framing there is
- No long-term lock-in, which matters when runway is the constraint
- The client base is genuinely early-stage rather than enterprise
Where it is not
- No published pricing at all, so you cannot size a budget before a call
- No published research into how retrieval behaves
- Does not say who staffs the account or at what seniority
- No enterprise or regulated references, so it does not grow with you indefinitely
Services
- AI Search and SEO strategy
- Long-form content and on-page optimisation
- Brand mention building
- Reddit marketing
- Paid search and landing pages
Published proof
- Warmly: 33% of pipeline attributed to AEO
- Team-GPT: a six-figure enterprise deal closed via AI Search
- Rows: 100k organic sessions per month
- Jamie: 74 high-intent topics captured in LLM answers
- States 100+ companies worked with, including Warmly, Rows, Team-GPT, Relay.app and Permify
#3
Generate More
- Best for
- Early-stage B2B tech companies that want a senior operator rather than an agency team
- Base
- Finland, working across the EU, UK and US
- Entry price
- Not published
A very small Finnish shop, effectively its founder plus fractional specialists, working on SEO and AEO for B2B tech and software. At startup stage that shape has a real advantage: you get the person who has done it before, not an account manager passing your brief down. The client list is small and credible, and the published outcomes are stated in meetings rather than traffic.
Where it is stronger
- The smallest team here, so the person you meet is the person doing the work
- Reports sales meetings rather than sessions, which is the right unit at this stage
- Fractional staffing model, so you can buy a few days a month rather than a retainer
- Founder was a CMO before running the agency, so the conversation starts at strategy
Where it is not
- No published pricing, so you cannot size a budget before a call
- Capacity is the hard limit. This does not scale with you past a certain point
- No digital PR or earned-mention service
- Small published evidence base, and no original research
Services
- SEO and AI Search visibility
- Answer engine optimisation across ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews
- Technical SEO and AEO
- Content engineering
- Social search optimisation
- Fractional expert staffing
Published proof
- Named clients including ONEiO, Visual Components, Art of Procurement and Platform 6
- States that a B2B tech client reached 22× more website visitors and 10× more sales meetings inside a year
- Client testimonials citing roughly 3× traffic growth in three to six months
- Founded by Lari Numminen, previously CMO at Sievo
#4
Embarque
- Best for
- Pre-seed and seed companies that need to start somewhere real on a small budget
- Base
- Remote, global
- Entry price
- Four tiers from $1,500/mo (one service) to $10,000+/mo (eight or more)
The budget entry point here, and the only option genuinely open to a company with no funding to speak of. The tiered model is honest about what a small retainer buys: one service, five to eight content assets a month. The service list has grown to include programmatic SEO, Reddit and LLM work. Treat the headline case figures with care. They are self-reported and very large.
Where it is stronger
- By far the lowest entry price here, published as clear tiers
- A large published case library for a shop this size
- Recognisable early-stage software clients
- Programmatic SEO and Reddit available at a startup budget
Where it is not
- The self-reported percentages are extreme enough that you should ask for the underlying numbers
- One service at the entry tier is not a GEO programme, it is a start
- No published research and no citation-level outcomes
- Does not say who staffs the account or at what seniority
Services
- SEO strategy and consulting
- Content production
- Link building
- Technical SEO and programmatic SEO
- Reddit marketing
- AI and LLM SEO
- Conversion rate optimisation
Published proof
- Named clients including VEED, Riverside, Flick, MentorCruise and UXCam
- 34+ published case studies
- Five-star average rating on Clutch and Google
- States a 1,600% year-on-year revenue increase for MentorCruise and an 833% MRR increase for Instatus. Both are self-reported and not independently verified
#5
Graphite
- Best for
- Startups already at Series B and beyond that want a large partner with a research team
- Base
- United States, remote
- Entry price
- Not published
One of the better-known names in B2B software growth, working with companies like Webflow, n8n and Hinge Health. AEO now sits next to SEO and performance marketing as one of three service areas. They also publish real research on how AI is changing search, and they name a Chief AI Officer and data specialists on the team. It is the established choice: large enough to staff several workstreams, and less specific than the specialists above about what it will actually do on your account.
Where it is stronger
- Publishes genuine original research on AI Search, which very few agencies at any size do
- A named internal research team rather than a services page
- Scale and track record, and the least risky option if your board wants a recognisable name
- Deep software-category experience across many engagements
Where it is not
- No published pricing and no published contract terms, so you cannot size it before a call
- No published client outcome stated in AI citations or AI visibility
- Says little about who staffs an engagement day to day, beyond leadership names
- No earned-mention or digital PR service named in-house
- US-focused, and generally out of reach for the earlier stages this list covers
Services
- Answer engine optimisation
- SEO strategy and execution
- Performance marketing
- Content strategy and production
Published proof
- Named clients including Webflow, n8n and Hinge Health
- Publishes original research on AI's effect on search, including a study titled "AI is 4x-5x Bigger Than You Think"
- Names a Chief AI Officer and data specialists on the team, and describes an internal AI research team
- Long-established growth agency with an extensive published body of SEO and content work
Where the budget goes at this stage
Two things have to be true before a model will name you. Your own pages have to say clearly and specifically what you do, because that is what a model reads when it decides how to describe you. And someone outside your site has to say it too, because models look for a second source before they put a company in an answer. Most startups have the first half half-done and the second half not at all.
So the split matters more than the order. Run the ten questions a buyer would actually ask about your category through ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot, and write down which URLs are cited under the answers. If they are mostly third-party sites you are missing from, the budget leans towards outside coverage. If they are your own pages but you are not named in the text, it leans towards making those pages sharper. You need both tracks either way. The diagnosis tells you the split, not which one to skip.
One more thing, and it is free. Your clarity is an asset that loses value every time you add a category claim. A startup describing itself three different ways on three pages is teaching a retrieval system that it cannot be summed up, and that is far more expensive to undo later than to avoid now.
Reading the price range honestly
Published entry prices here run from $1,500/mo to about $10,000/mo. That is close to a sevenfold spread for services described in similar language. The spread is real, and it mostly buys two things: how senior the people doing the work are, and whether outside coverage is included or only mentioned.
At the bottom of the range you are buying execution against a plan you supply. At the top you are buying the plan, senior people to argue with about it, and a team that can go and earn coverage for you. Both are fine purchases. Mixing them up is the common mistake. A seed-stage company buying a $1,500 content tier and expecting citations will get neither, and a Series A company buying a $7,000 retainer with nobody internal to own it will waste most of it.
Three of the five publish nothing about price. That is not a quality signal in either direction, but it does mean extra calls before you can compare anything, and it is worth weighing when runway is measured in months.
Who we left off, and why
We left out agencies whose only evidence of AI Search capability is their own writing about AI Search. It is the most crowded corner of this market, and how confidently an agency writes about GEO says very little about whether it has moved a client's citations.
We left out AI visibility monitoring tools. Several are genuinely useful at startup budgets, and a few hundred a month for a baseline across models is the cheapest sensible thing you can buy here. But they are tools, and ranking them next to service firms hides the fact that you probably want one of each.
We also left off agencies with no named client that was a startup at the time of the work. Enterprise experience does not transfer down cleanly. At enterprise the constraint is approval. At a startup it is that nobody has written about you yet. Those need different work.
FAQ
Questions buyers actually ask
- What does GEO cost for a B2B startup?
- Of the agencies here that publish a number, entry prices run from $1,500/mo for a single service to about $10,000/mo for a full programme. €7,000/mo buys a senior European engagement across several workstreams. Fixed-scope projects start around €10,000. A realistic figure for a funded startup that wants citations rather than just content is $4,000 to $7,000 a month. Below roughly $2,000 a month you are buying execution capacity, not a strategy. Three of the five publish nothing at all.
- Is it too early to work on AI Search before Series A?
- It is rarely too early to get the cheap things right, and it is usually too early to hire an agency. Write pages that say what you do in the words buyers use, and keep them consistent. Get listed on the review and comparison sites in your category. That costs almost nothing and it is most of the early win. A retainer starts to make sense once you have a repeatable motion worth amplifying and someone internal with time to own the relationship.
- Why does a smaller competitor get named instead of us?
- Usually because they are easier to describe and someone else has already described them, not because they are better. A retrieval system works out what a company is, then looks for a second source that agrees. A focused competitor with one clear claim, repeated on review sites and in community threads, is a safer thing to name. A company with overlapping claims and proof that only lives on its own site is not. Company size and page count are not inputs.
- How long until a startup sees AI visibility change?
- Expect one to two quarters for a steady, measurable shift, and be sceptical of anyone promising faster. Retrieval indexes refresh on their own cycles, and earned coverage takes time to land and longer to get picked up. Track a set of prompts over weeks rather than one prompt over days. At startup scale the week-to-week noise on a single question is bigger than any real movement.
- Should we hire an agency or a first in-house SEO?
- At seed stage an agency is usually better value, because you need several skills at once, technical, content and outside coverage, and none of them full time. The maths flips somewhere around Series B, when the volume justifies a dedicated owner and the agency's best use becomes specialist support rather than the whole function. What does not work at any stage is an agency with nobody internal on the other side. The strongest predictor of a wasted retainer is that nobody in the company owns it.
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