About First Mention Labs

We exist because of one question.

When a buyer asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Google about your category — does your brand get named?

Most companies do not know the answer. The ones that do are winning pipeline before a sales call ever happens.

Founded by two operators who spent a decade on opposite ends of the same problem: getting found, and getting bought.

Search stopped being ten blue links. Most agencies never noticed.

For twenty years, the job was simple to describe. Rank on page one. Buy the clicks you could not earn. Wait for the form fill.

Then the research phase moved. Buyers stopped scrolling results and started asking questions — to ChatGPT, to Perplexity, to Gemini, to the AI summary sitting above every Google result they still see. By the time most buyers reach your website, the shortlist is already built. And it was built by a model that either mentioned you, or did not.

That is the moment that decides the deal. Not the landing page. Not the retargeting sequence. The first mention.

We built First Mention Labs to own that moment — across search engines, AI answer engines, and the founder voice that trains both.

What we build for
Being ranked is no longer the same as being recommended. We build for the second one.

Four rules we do not break.

01

Strategy first. AI for execution.

Every agency now has the same tools. Tools do not produce differentiated positioning, and they never will. We decide the angle, the architecture and the argument. Then we use AI to move faster on the parts that deserve speed.

02

Visibility that does not convert is a vanity metric.

Impressions, rankings and follower counts are inputs. Pipeline is the output. If a channel cannot be traced back to revenue within a quarter, it does not survive our reporting call.

03

The founder is the moat.

Competitors can copy your feature set in a sprint. They cannot copy a decade of your judgment, delivered in your voice, in front of the exact people who buy. That asset compounds and it cannot be outspent.

04

Systems beat campaigns.

Campaigns end. Systems accumulate. Every asset we build is designed to keep earning — ranking, getting cited, getting quoted — long after the month it shipped in.

Two operators. No layer between you and the work.

You will not be handed to an account manager who forwards your questions to someone else. The people who built the system are the people who run it.

Jahid Hussain, Co-Founder of First Mention Labs

Jahid Hussain

Co-Founder — Search & Growth

Ten years making brands findable at the exact moment of intent.

Jahid has spent more than a decade at the intersection of two things most agencies still treat separately: getting found, and getting bought.

His work spans technical SEO, Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), and paid acquisition on Google and Meta — the full path from a buyer's first question to the moment they convert. He has engineered organic growth for companies in SaaS, e-commerce, healthcare, real estate, education and local services, and delivered results for clients across four continents.

The methodology changed when search did. As ten blue links gave way to AI-generated answers, Jahid rebuilt his entire approach around a single diagnostic question: when someone asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Google AI Overviews about your category, does your brand get named? That question became First Mention Labs.

He has trained thousands of marketers and business owners worldwide and runs corporate training programs on search visibility and AI-era discoverability for in-house marketing teams. His philosophy has not moved in ten years: strategy first, AI for execution, every decision tied back to revenue.

  • 10+ years in search and performance marketing
  • Clients across India, the US, UK and UAE
  • Corporate trainer on GEO and AI-era discoverability
  • SaaS, e-commerce, healthcare, real estate, education, local services

“Ranking is a scoreboard. Revenue is the game.”

Sandeep Rawat, Co-Founder of First Mention Labs

Sandeep Rawat

Co-Founder — Content Strategy

Six years turning founder expertise into a point of view buyers follow.

Sandeep has spent six years building in the content space — first as an agency operator, then as a specialist in founder-led B2B content.

He built and scaled a short-form content agency to six figures, then went on to work with some of the leading B2B LinkedIn agencies before starting his own practice. Along the way he has worked directly with 30+ founders on the three things that decide whether founder-led content works at all: positioning, voice, and strategy.

Most LinkedIn ghostwriting fails for the same reason. It produces content that is technically correct and completely interchangeable — the same five frameworks, the same recycled insight, the same voice every other founder in the category is using. Sandeep's work starts one level earlier, at what a founder actually believes and can defend better than anyone else in the market.

At First Mention Labs, he leads the founder-led content and messaging practice, helping founders turn hard-won expertise into a point of view that builds authority and pulls demand toward them.

  • 6 years in content strategy and operations
  • Scaled a short-form content agency to six figures
  • 30+ founders coached on positioning and voice
  • Background with leading B2B LinkedIn agencies
  • Leads founder-led content and messaging at First Mention Labs

“A voice you can copy was never a voice worth having.”

Search creates the demand. The founder earns the trust.

Most companies hire these two functions separately, from two different vendors, with two different reporting lines. The SEO team optimizes for a keyword. The content team writes for engagement. Nobody owns the buyer.

We built the company around the handoff instead.

Search and GEO put you in the conversation — in the results, in the AI answers, in the shortlist a buyer builds before they ever contact a vendor. Founder-led content decides which name on that shortlist feels like the safe, obvious, credible choice.

One without the other leaks. Visibility with no voice gets compared on price. Voice with no visibility only reaches the audience you already have.

Step 01

Found

Technical SEO, topical authority clusters and structured data that make you legible to search engines and citable by AI models.

Step 02

Named

GEO monitoring across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and AI Overviews, so you know exactly when and how your brand gets recommended.

Step 03

Chosen

Founder-led content that converts recognition into trust — and trust into inbound conversations you did not have to pay for.

Built on operating experience, not theory.

10+ yrsCombined operating experience in search and content
30+Founders coached on positioning and voice
4Continents served — India, US, UK, UAE and beyond
Multi-croreAd budgets managed across Google and Meta
1000sMarketers trained on SEO, GEO and AI-era visibility

Every number here came from running the work, not reselling it.

A deliberately small roster.

01

Direct access, always.

You talk to the operators. Strategy calls, escalations, mid-month questions — same two people, start to finish.

02

We say no more than we say yes.

We take on a limited number of engagements because the work compounds only when it gets real attention. If we are not the right fit, we will tell you on the first call.

03

Reporting that a founder can actually use.

Rankings, AI citations and pipeline sourced — in one view, monthly. No 40-slide decks that hide the number you actually care about.

04

We build assets you own.

Content, architecture, positioning and systems stay with you. Nothing about our engagement is designed to make you dependent on it.

Find out whether buyers can find you.

Book a 30-minute visibility audit. We will show you where you are invisible — on Google, in AI answers, and on LinkedIn — and what it would take to fix it.

No pitch deck. No 12-month lock-in on the first call.