Mimos

What do they actually do

Mimos builds an Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) product for regulated companies. It identifies high‑intent AI prompts where a company should be cited by engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini, generates brand‑aligned answers, bundles required disclosures and claim checks for faster compliance review, and pushes approved content and structured data to the customer’s CMS to publish changes quickly Mimos YC profile.

They also offer a service to build, host, and publish ChatGPT Apps for businesses, giving clients a direct presence inside ChatGPT’s app ecosystem tryMimos homepage.

Mimos is early‑stage (YC S25) with a small founding team and reports 5 paying customers across finance, proptech, and wealth management; the company claims early usage delivered about 2× higher AI citation rates versus baseline content (company‑reported) Mimos YC profile.

Who are their target customer(s)

• Marketing/Growth leaders at regulated companies (finance, wealth, proptech): Their content is not consistently selected as the cited source in AI answer engines, and they struggle to attribute AI citations to revenue.
• Compliance and legal reviewers at regulated firms: Review cycles are slow and manual because drafts lack clear provenance, required disclosures, and claim checks packaged for quick approval.
• SEO and content teams: They can’t reliably identify which high‑intent AI queries to target or implement the page/structured‑data fixes that increase the odds of being cited by AI engines.
• Engineering/CMS owners: Publishing compliant content with correct formatting and metadata is manual and error‑prone, with too many handoffs across teams.
• Product/partnerships owners seeking presence inside ChatGPT and similar app surfaces: They lack bandwidth and expertise to build, host, and publish ChatGPT Apps as a new distribution channel.

How would they acquire their first 10, 50, and 100 customers

• First 10: Run hands‑on, time‑boxed pilots with CMOs, compliance leads, and SEO owners at regulated firms, proving citation uplift and faster approvals using packaged drafts, provenance, and CMS pushes; source pilots via YC/VC intros and direct outreach Mimos YC profile.
• First 50: Codify pilot scope and SLAs into a repeatable offer, hire 1–2 SDRs to target similar regulated accounts, and productize two key automations (CMS connector and compliance packaging) while using early pilots as case studies to speed procurement.
• First 100: Add channel partners (CMS vendors, compliance consultancies, SEO agencies) and a productized ChatGPT App entry package; introduce light self‑serve onboarding and standardized success playbooks so smaller accounts can adopt with minimal founder involvement tryMimos.

What is the rough total addressable market

Top-down context:

Mimos touches three markets: SEO/AEO tooling (~$74–75B in 2024), AI search engines (~$16.3B in 2024), and compliance/GRC software (~$30–36B in 2024–25), with ChatGPT’s large user base making app distribution strategically relevant Grand View SEO Grand View AI search Mordor compliance TechCrunch ChatGPT users.

Bottom-up calculation:

Model AEO as a regulated slice of SEO plus a small fraction of compliance and AI search tooling. Example mid‑case: 20% of SEO spend from regulated verticals (~$14.9B of $74.6B), 5–10% of compliance budgets for content review ($1.5–$3.6B of ~$30–36B), and 10–20% of AI search on AEO/monitoring ($1.6–$3.3B of ~$16.3B). Summed, this yields roughly $18B–$22B in combined TAM today Grand View SEO Grand View AI search Mordor compliance.

Assumptions:

• A meaningful share (15–25%) of SEO spend in regulated sectors will shift toward AEO to be cited by AI answer engines.
• Only a small portion (5–10%) of compliance/GRC budgets is addressable for marketing content provenance, disclosures, and review tooling.
• 10–20% of AI search ecosystem spend will go to tools/services that help sites get cited (AEO, monitoring, attribution), with growing interest in ChatGPT‑app distribution.

Who are some of their notable competitors

• Yext: Enterprise answers/knowledge‑graph provider that targets AI/LLM visibility and studies how LLMs choose citations. Overlap on making brand content the cited source; less focus on compliance‑packaged publishing or ChatGPT App builds Yext AI citations.
• Conductor: Enterprise SEO platform positioning AEO features that surface AI‑query opportunities and automate content. Similar goal on AI visibility; not centered on compliance packaging or ChatGPT App publishing Conductor AEO.
• Semrush: Broad SEO and market‑intelligence suite with AI visibility/LLM‑optimization guidance and citation tracking. Strong monitoring; does not package content with provenance/claim checks or offer ChatGPT App publishing Semrush LLM optimization.
• BrightEdge: Enterprise SEO platform with AI‑driven recommendations and automated optimizations for traditional search and AI overviews. Focused on large‑scale SEO automation rather than compliance workflows or app publishing BrightEdge.
• ChatGPT‑app development agencies (e.g., Intuz, LeewayHertz): Service firms that build, host, and publish ChatGPT apps. Compete with Mimos’ app offering, but typically do bespoke builds and don’t combine AEO plus compliance‑packaged publishing Intuz list.