Derek Francis.
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AI product launch and category strategist

I help AI companies launch products that buyers and AI answer engines remember.

I spent seven years filing stories for Reuters, then five building brands for AI, analytics, and fintech companies. Today I turn that craft into launches: the category language, the narrative, the audience, and the visibility inside ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI answers.

Explore the free AI Marketing Lab →

241 playbooks, expert personas, and prompts, organized by goal. Copy one into ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini and get to work.

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Derek Francis, AI product launch and category strategist

Derek Francis · AI product launch and category strategist

12 yrs

From the Reuters newsroom to AI go-to-market

73K

Newsletter subscribers built from zero at 20%+ engagement

No. 1

US and India search ranking for a brand-new category term

$1.5M+

Pipeline influenced through content tied to sales stages

Latest from The Launch Desk

All essays →

4 min read

Code Is Cheap. Distribution Is the Moat.

Vibe coding collapsed the cost of building software. The AI companies that win from here will own three scarce assets: a category phrase, an audience, and a place inside the AI answer.

  • Building an AI product is now fast and cheap, so every launch competes in a flood of similar products.
  • Three assets stay scarce: the phrase buyers use for your category, an audience you own, and your presence in AI answers.
  • Start building distribution on the same day you start building the product.
Read the essay →

4 min read

SEO, AEO, GEO: When Your Buyer Asks a Machine First

A plain-English guide to search engine optimization, answer engine optimization, and generative engine optimization, and the six moves that get an AI product into the answer.

2 min read

Why I'm Building in Public

A former Reuters correspondent and B2B marketer starts vibe coding two AI products and writing about every step. Here is the plan, the reasoning, and what readers of The Launch Desk will get.

What I work on

01

Launch narrative

Positioning, naming, buyer use cases, and a story your sales team can carry into a CFO meeting on day one.

02

AI visibility (AEO and GEO)

How ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI answers describe your brand today, and the content architecture that shapes what they say tomorrow.

03

Owned audience

Newsletters, executive voices, and employee advocacy that compound every week, so each launch starts with people already listening.

Selected results

All case studies →

Payments and AI

No. 1 Search ranking for the category term in the US and India

Taking a brand-new category term to No. 1 in US and India search

How a two-word term chosen by leadership became the top search result in two markets, backed by a positioning playbook, answer engine architecture, and a social engine that reached 338K organic impressions.

The AI Marketing Lab

Free AI playbooks for every marketing job.

Hundreds of open-source playbooks, expert personas, and prompts, organized by what you are trying to get done, plus my AI Product Launch Kit. Copy one into ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini and it walks you through the work.

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Black and white portrait of Derek Francis

About Derek

A reporter's discipline, applied to AI launches.

At Reuters I interviewed CEOs on deadline and learned that a story lives or dies on its first line. In marketing I used the same habit to build a newsletter from zero to 73,000 subscribers, take a brand-new category term to No. 1 in US and India search, and tie content to more than $1.5 million in pipeline.

Now I'm building two AI products of my own in public, including a scanner that measures how often AI answer engines mention a brand.

Read my story

The Launch Desk

Launch smarter, every week.

Field notes on category creation, AI search visibility, and the launches that work. Written by someone who has done the work, for founders and marketing leaders shipping AI products.