Tibo says Outrank hit $300k+ MRR in a "dead" SEO market
Two years after everyone said the category was finished, he is posting the numbers and the comparables.
Tibo says he started an SEO tool two years ago while the loudest narrative was that SEO was dead, that ChatGPT would kill Google, and that Ahrefs and Semrush already owned the market. He built it with a Ukrainian co-maker he had never met in person. He says Outrank now does $300k+ MRR (monthly recurring revenue).
today Outrank does $300k+ MRR
if a market is crowded, it means it's validated
His argument is not just his own number. He lists the rest of what he calls the worst startup idea category, Semrush sold to Adobe for $1.9B, Ahrefs at roughly $150M ARR with zero investors, and Profound raising $180M at a $1.8B valuation this week. His read is short. If a market is crowded, it is validated.
What the product is actually for now
The more interesting line is what Tibo says the tool does today. He says SEO is not dead and that it got them $3m+ with Outrank because it is the best tool right now to get cited in LLM answers. That is the same buyer with a different job. The customer still wants to be found, the surface moved from a results page to a chatbot answer, and the tooling followed the surface rather than dying with it.
Margins are not untouchable either. In a reply, Tibo says they are accepting to shrink them a bit with a launch meant to provide higher-quality backlinks. Worth noting that is a founder describing his own trade-off, not a disclosed P&L.
The general version of the point
Josh Pigford made the unglamorous case on the same day, without numbers. His line is that multiple businesses can and should exist solving the same problem, and that it is exceedingly rare for any launch to leave every other similar business with no reason to operate.
The business read. "Crowded means validated" is the oldest advice there is, and the new twist is that AI made a lot of founders write off whole categories on vibes rather than on customer behaviour. Tibo's counter is one founder's MRR claim, self reported and unaudited, so treat the $300k as his figure rather than a fact. The comparables he cites are the part that does not depend on trusting him.
multiple businesses can (and should!) exist solving the same problem.