Derek Francis.
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AI product launch and category strategist

I help AI companies launch products that buyers remember and chatbots can't stop quoting.

Seven years filing stories for Reuters. Five more building brands for AI, analytics, and fintech companies. Now I engineer launches that buyers repeat and AI answer engines quote back: the category language, the narrative, the audience, and the visibility inside ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI answers.

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Marketing Docs, Mostly Automated. Trip on AI. Hallucinations sold separately. 244 playbooks, expert personas, and prompts, organized by goal. Copy one into ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini and get to work.

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Derek Francis, AI product launch and category strategist

Derek Francis · AI product launch and category strategist

Known side effects

12 yrs

From the Reuters newsroom to AI go-to-market

73K

Newsletter subscribers built from zero at 20%+ engagement

No. 1

US and India search ranking for a brand-new category term

$1.5M+

Pipeline influenced through content tied to sales stages

Fresh field notes

All field notes →

4 min trip

Code Is Cheap. Distribution Is the Moat.

Vibe coding collapsed the cost of building software. The AI companies that win from here will own three scarce assets: a category phrase, an audience, and a place inside the AI answer.

  • Building an AI product is now fast and cheap, so every launch competes in a flood of similar products.
  • Three assets stay scarce: the phrase buyers use for your category, an audience you own, and your presence in AI answers.
  • Start building distribution on the same day you start building the product.
Start the trip →

4 min trip

SEO, AEO, GEO: When Your Buyer Asks a Machine First

A plain-English guide to search engine optimization, answer engine optimization, and generative engine optimization, and the six moves that get an AI product into the answer.

4 min trip

The 90-Day AI Product Launch Plan

A week-by-week plan for launching an AI product to B2B buyers: positioning, naming, the launch narrative, AI answer visibility, a warm audience, launch week, and the 30 days after.

What I'm on

01

Launch narrative

Positioning, naming, buyer use cases, and a story your sales team can carry into a CFO meeting on day one.

02

AI visibility (AEO and GEO)

How ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI answers describe your brand today, and the content architecture that shapes what they say tomorrow.

03

Owned audience

Newsletters, executive voices, and employee advocacy that compound every week, so each launch starts with people already listening.

Receipts

All receipts →

Exhibit A · Payments and AI

No. 1 Search ranking for the category term in the US and India

Taking a brand-new category term to No. 1 in US and India search

How a two-word term chosen by leadership became the top search result in two markets, backed by a positioning playbook, answer engine architecture, and a social engine that reached 338K organic impressions.

Exhibit C · Enterprise AI and analytics

73K Newsletter subscribers, grown from zero

Zero to 73,000 newsletter subscribers for an enterprise AI firm

How a steady cadence of AI and decision science explainers built a LinkedIn newsletter to 73,000 subscribers at 20%+ engagement, alongside a CEO thought leadership platform.

MDMA · Marketing Docs, Mostly Automated

Trip on AI. Hallucinations sold separately.

Free AI playbooks for every marketing job. Hundreds of playbooks, expert personas, and prompts, organized by what you are trying to get done, plus my AI Product Launch Kit. Copy one into ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini and it walks you through the work.

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Black and white portrait of Derek Francis

Who's behind the counter

Newsroom discipline. Mildly unhinged delivery.

At Reuters I interviewed CEOs on deadline and learned that a story lives or dies on its first line. In marketing I used the same habit to build a newsletter from zero to 73,000 subscribers, take a brand-new category term to No. 1 in US and India search, and tie content to more than $1.5 million in pipeline.

Now I'm building two AI products of my own in public, including a scanner that measures how often AI answer engines mention a brand.

Read the origin story