SpeedyBrand uses generative AI to create SEO optimized content

Image credits: Endai Hoedel/Getty Images

While working at Vetan, a startup that helps small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) manage employee payroll, Ranti Dev Sharma realized that small and medium businesses often lack the tools to thrive online through organic sales. The cost of hiring an agency is over budget, and creating content is expensive – both in terms of time and money.

“A great online presence is crucial for e-commerce stores like Shopify and Woo, as online traffic is the foundation of their business,” Sharma told TechCrunch in an email interview. But existing content marketing solutions are not perfect and require SEO expertise. Companies need multiple SEO tools and hire content strategists, writers, and agencies to outsource their content marketing.

So Sharma co-founded it with Jatin Mehta and Ayush Jasuga Speedy Brand, which aims to deliver “high quality” and affordable SEO content to small and medium businesses using generative AI. SpeedyBrand announced today that it has raised $2.5 million in a funding round led by GV (Google’s investment arm) and Y Combinator that values ​​the company at $15 million after money.

Powered by generative AI, the SpeedyBrand platform can create customized SEO-optimized content — including websites and social media posts — for brands. Brands first choose the theme. They then ask the platform to generate text and suggest images that might be appropriate for the type of content they are creating.

From the SpeedyBrand dashboard, the created content can be edited and further customized before it is published to different channels. The analytics component allows brands to track the performance of their content once it is published.

“The economic slowdown requires cost-effective marketing solutions,” Sharma said. “Speedy is well positioned to help businesses by providing affordable solutions.”

But there is reason to be wary of technology.

First, generative AI, no matter how good, can wreak havoc. Thanks to a phenomenon known ashallucination“Sometimes AI models confidently form facts. As a result of biases and other imbalances in their training data, text-generating AI can go wild.” Toxic and greatly degrading comments.

In another potential trademark problem, generative AI has been shown to plagiarize copyrighted works. One Stady It found that ChatGPT’s indirect predecessor, GPT-2, could be required to “copy and paste” entire paragraphs of its training data.

Then there is the matter of artificial intelligence spamming the Internet. As James Vincent of The Verge wrote recently pieceGenerative AI models are changing the web economy – making it cheaper and easier to create lower-quality content. Newsguard, a company that provides tools for vetting news sources, did just that exposed to Hundreds of ad-supported websites with generic-sounding names and containing misleading information created using generative AI.

Sharma stresses that SpeedyBrand is not a content grinder — and that it takes steps to mitigate any toxic content the platform’s artificial intelligence may generate. SpeedyBrand’s AI can be customized to match the brand’s tone and create “plagiarism-free” content, as it claims, and incorporate feedback from content edits to improve future productions.

To what extent is all this true? Hard to say without third party scrutiny. But brands no doubt eager to jump on the generative AI train seem to be embracing SpeedyBrand.

The company, which has a team of six, has about 50 paying clients and more than 1,000 users. The annual recurring revenue is $100,000, and Sharma expects it to reach $1 million next year.

That’s pretty impressive considering the competition. You encounter SpeedyBrand interpolated, which recently came out of the blue with $65 million in investment capital. startups like movieu, copier, Copy. ai, Cellscale, jasper, omniki And Reggie.AIt also uses generative AI to create (ostensibly) better marketing copy, images, and even videos for ads, websites, and emails.

It is a large and growing market. Statista reports 87% of current AI users are already using or considering using AI to improve email marketing. last a report It predicts that the generative AI market will be worth more than $110 billion by 2030.

on condition Almost half From SMB owners who handle content marketing themselves, there is a stronger incentive within this group to adopt tools that can — at least on the surface — save you time, money, and massive headaches.

“Speedy saves the company’s marketing workforce many hours of marketing hustle – from strategy to content creation to publishing,” Sharma said. “Speedy and their team give them hours of work every day so they can focus on the core of their business.”

With the proceeds from the funding round, SpeedyBrand plans to release additional text and image creation tools.