Building the 'third way' with 'AI second'
Everything about starting a company has changed (for the better).
FOMO.ai Investors, Advisors, and Friends.
This weekend, I was sent two articles that so perfectly articulate who we are and why we made the decisions we made, I had to share them with you.
At its core, FOMO.ai is a hybrid business.
We built our process first using our human team, then automated it, then began productizing it. From day one, we’ve been focused on generating real revenue while increasing the percentage of automated effort each quarter.
That model - services first, automation layered second, and productization third - is exactly what the essays below describe.
(The author, Nathaniel Naddaff-Hafrey, was a founder-in-residence at Google, and GM of Google Labs).
If you look at our current investor deck (DM me for access), (where we show growth measured both in revenue and percentage automated), you will see that we are straight out of AI2 thinking! Our deliberate capital strategy of raising carefully, with control intact, and preserving optionality is textbook Third Way.
So what does this look like in market for us?
The last two quarters have given us proof points at the largest scale yet:
A Q2 whale opportunity: After asking their agency, “What do we do about AI Search?” they waited five months for nine pieces of content and no strategy. In the first 40 days of our pilot, we delivered hundreds of assets that have started to move the needle. That pilot is now very likely becoming a full-time engagement starting in October.
Two more whale opportunities in Q3/Q4: Both are long-time clients of known agencies (big names, fancy offices, steakhouse lunches). Both CMOs are fed up. They came to us because we could sit across the table, show them the roadmap, and then quietly go build what they needed. Yawn to the incumbents.
Agencies themselves: Several are now asking us to white-label—sometimes even for the same brands where we’re running pilots. Proof that the market recognizes what we’ve built.
SMBs: Once we crossed enough of the automation tipping point, we could package our solution into a <$500/month offering that generated $82k in September.
Our structure makes this possible.
For large brands, we run pilots as set budgets with flexible allocation. No change orders, no upsells, no nickel-and-diming. Each period, we deliver more than the last, because as AI scales inside our workflows, clients get more for the same spend.
This is what AI Second looks like in practice:
Trust precedes tech. Clients buy the human relationship, then benefit from automation compounding in the background.
Cashflow funds R&D, letting us experiment and productize without over-raising.
Domain expertise guides automation, giving us defensible moats incumbents can’t match.
And it’s precisely why we (unknowingly) followed The Third Way in capital strategy: raising carefully gave us independence. We can grow, acquire, or join something bigger, but always from a position of strength.
Why this matters now
The stable marketing playbook of the last 15 years is broken. Clients don’t articulate it as “AI Second” or “The Third Way.” What they say is:
My traffic is way down. My Google ads are rising in cost.
My audience is using ChatGPT more and more.
Don’t let me miss out on AI.
Help me feel the efficiency gains without losing the human touch.
Be ahead of me, so you can bring me along.
Deliver more for the same spend.
That is FOMO.ai’s exact model. And it is working.