Authority Infrastructure for a Founder in AI Disinformation Detection
Client:
AI founder of disinformation detection platform
Field:
Disinformation Detection + AI
Service:
Identity Consulting
The Challenge
S01
A post-seed company building an AI platform for disinformation detection, founded by someone with genuine authority in the field and no consistent public output. The pieces went out. They landed. And then nothing happened with them, because nothing had been built to catch them.
Then an investor’s audit found something worse. The company was structurally absent from AI-generated searches in its own category. People looking for exactly what the company did were being shown competitors. Who wins when the best thinking in a category is the hardest thing to find?
The Approach
S02
I came in as fractional editorial director and GTM partner, and started with foundations rather than output.
The Identity Bible ran to 45 pages - voice, positioning, ICP, content pillars, and a framework for how narratives actually travel that we called Seeders and Spreaders.
Then the system. An eight-stage editorial workflow built on a 40/40/20 split between us, designed to hold a weekly rhythm without flattening his voice. Structural feedback first, polish last. The founder adopted that sequence himself after noticing that polishing before structure doubled his revision time.
Around fifteen substantial pieces followed. One on meme warfare during a live international conflict. One on how narrative holds a coordinated campaign together. One on how violent content gets optimised the way advertising is. A Q&A trilogy with an ex-FCO figure, an ex-BBC figure, and a sitting industry-body president. Each one shipped with a full adaptation pack - Substack Notes, a LinkedIn announcement, a quote card, an ICP riff post.
Eight months in, I ran a data-led audit of every piece and reoriented the calendar around the two formats that actually performed: moment-anchored and data-anchored.
The rest was the infrastructure the writing needed in order to mean anything commercially. A new website built and handed to the COO. Interactive intelligence reports. A BD activation module and a full GTM partnership proposal.
The line that organised the whole engagement:
“A discoverability problem, not a product problem.”
The Insight
S03
Publishing is not a strategy. A founder who writes well and publishes consistently still has nothing if there is no machine underneath converting attention into pipeline. The writing was never the missing piece - the structure around it was.
THE
OUTCOMES
Deliverables and External Results
45-page Identity Bible covering voice, positioning, ICP and content pillars
Eight-stage editorial workflow and operating system, built for weekly cadence
15 substantial published pieces, each with a full multi-asset social pack
38% average newsletter open rate, above B2B benchmark, sustained across every piece
The meme-warfare piece: 17,000 LinkedIn impressions, 430 Substack views, 13 new subscribers
Top piece 766 views at 39% open; average around 570 views per piece
New website built on Webflow with HubSpot and Analytics, handed to the COO
Interactive intelligence reports, including one publicly released investigation - the one client story cleared for open use
BD activation module, GTM partnership proposal, and expanded scope quoted twice
Coverage and mentions for the company in The Times, The Telegraph and The Guardian
A company-wide content strategy now in daily use, built on the company’s own proprietary platform data - internal findings outsiders can’t access, turned into content and viewpoints only the company could hold
Internal Shifts Behind the Scenes
Stopped treating publishing as an act of faith and started seeing the mechanism
Let go of the instinct to polish before the structure was settled
Gained a running order he didn’t have to hold in his head
Found a way to keep his own voice while publishing to a rhythm
