How AI Search Changed the Game.

Jenna Hannon, co-founder of Hatter, joined the AI for Founders podcast to talk about what's actually happening in search right now and what most brands are still getting wrong.

The conversation covered a lot of ground: how AI-powered tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews have fundamentally changed how people find answers, why the old SEO playbook isn't enough anymore, and what the new discipline of AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) actually looks like in practice.

It also got personal. Jenna shared the path that took her from Uber Eats to co-founding an AI search agency, and why that background shapes how Hatter thinks about content, visibility, and what it really means to show up for your customers.

Here's what came out of that conversation, and what it means for your search strategy now.

SEO and AEO Aren't the Same Game. Here's the Difference.

Let's be clear about something: traditional SEO isn't dead. If you rank well in Google search, you're still more likely to show up in AI-generated answers. The fundamentals still matter.

But the way you measure success, and the way you act on it, has completely changed.

How you measure: In traditional SEO, you tracked rankings and clicks. In AI search, those metrics don't tell the full story. What matters now is your probability of being cited when someone asks a relevant question. 60% of Google searches already end with no clicks. When an AI Overview appears, click-through rates drop to just 8%. Your content can be doing its job (earning trust, shaping answers) without ever generating a pageview. If you're only measuring traffic, you're flying blind.

How you act: This is the bigger shift. In the old model, you optimized for algorithms, technical signals, backlinks, and metadata. In AI search, you're training the models. LLMs learn from what's published, cited, and referenced across the web. That means your job is to create content that clearly communicates who you are, what you do, and what makes you different, in language that's direct, specific, and structured enough for AI to actually use.

Most B2B brands show up in AI search results just 1% of the time. That's not a technical problem. It's a content problem.

The brands winning in AI search are the ones creating content that answers real questions with real authority, such as FAQ pages, structured explainers, and tight 40-to-80-word answer blocks that AI engines can pull directly into a response. They're earning mentions on Reddit, G2, and industry publications because those are the human references LLMs are trained on. And they're tracking AI visibility to understand where they're winning and where they're not.

Hatter's Approach: SEO and AEO, Together

Most agencies still treat SEO and AEO as separate problems. Hatter builds them into a single strategy from the start.

The model pairs AI-powered tools for tracking, content, and optimization with a dedicated senior strategist who knows your business and your buyer. No account shuffling. No generic playbooks. Every strategy is built around your ICP and designed to move customers from first search to final decision.

Here's what that looks like in practice:

• AI visibility tracking across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google, so you always know where your brand stands
• Custom SEO and AEO strategy built around your business, not a template
• Content that covers the full buyer journey, structured to rank in search and earn citations in AI answers
• High-quality output with human review on every piece, no AI slop shipped to your site

Hatter was built by Jenna Hannon, who scaled Uber Eats to $1B, and Peter Holc, former product and engineering lead at Deliveroo. Clients include Runway, Swimply, Column Five Media, and Transcend.

Human in the Loop: Expertise Matters

Jenna’s clear about AI. AI helps with pattern recognition, content drafts, audits, and monitoring. But it can’t replace human insight.

• Marketing is about standing out. That takes context you can’t automate yet.
• AI works best with what it already knows. Humans push past that.
• Your strategist knows what makes your business unique and what your customers care about. That’s how you earn attention and trust.

From Uber Eats to AEO: Jenna’s Path

Jenna’s journey isn’t linear. She grew up in Calgary, studied journalism at USC, worked in music licensing, but found it boring. Kite surfing changed her track. Through it, she met Bill Tai, a VC, and Melanie Perkins, who was building Canva when no one believed in the idea. Canva is now worth $40 billion.

At 22, Jenna called Tai and asked to shadow him in San Francisco. He said yes. That kick-started her tech career. She joined Uber in 2016 to work on Uber Eats when it was still a wild experiment. Back then, the team was filling cars with sandwiches during lunch for people to order through the app for delivery.

She left Uber in 2020, then worked as a fractional CMO for tech companies, before co-founding Hatter with Peter Holc, former product lead at Deliveroo and Microsoft.

LinkedIn: The Outreach Channel

All of Hatter’s business development happens on LinkedIn. No ads or outbound spam. Jenna shares what she learned each week. Then she posts it.

• Her strategy: what did I learn this week about our customers or industry that others will find useful? Post that.
• Her second post ever, a story about Uber, hit 1,500,000 views. Most posts didn’t. She kept posting anyway.

LinkedIn grows slow. Unlike Twitter or Instagram, where posts blow up or flop fast, LinkedIn posts gain momentum days after publishing. You don't feel like a failure if a post doesn’t take off right away.

There’s a bigger lesson, straight from Uber. Most companies struggle with marketing because they try every channel at once. Uber used two main channels. Two. One working channel is all you need to build something big.

Actionable Takeaways for AI-Driven SEO

Here’s what works, from Jenna’s client work and the podcast:

• Don’t drop traditional SEO. If you rank well in search, you’re more likely to show up in LLMs. The basics still matter.
• Write for questions, not just keywords. LLM users ask specific questions. Build FAQ content that answers what your customers are really asking at every stage.
• Use structure. Clear headings help AI find and cite your content. Pages with structured data are up to 40% more likely to get AI citations.
• Answer nuggets work. Write tight 40- to 80-word blocks that answer a question directly. AI engines pull these for citations.
• Get cited for real. Aim for mentions on Reddit, G2, GitHub, and industry sites. LLMs learn from human references.
• Track your AI visibility, not just rankings. Watch your brand’s share in AI answers, sentiment, and which pages get cited most.
• Refresh your best content every 90 days. Stale content loses value in AI training data and drops in citations.

Your Next Steps in AI Search

AI search is here and growing fast. AI-driven sessions jumped 527% from January to May 2025. Visitors from ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity convert better than standard organic traffic. Brands showing up in AI answers win trust before visitors ever reach their site. Miss out and you hand momentum to competitors.

If you’re not sure where your brand stands in AI search, start now. Hatter offers a free AI Visibility Analysis. See how your brand appears in the big AI platforms and where you can improve.

To hear the full story, including more about "service as software," the Uber Eats journey, and what most companies still get wrong in content marketing, check out the AI for Founders episode here.