Ignite Startups: The Startup Giving Brands an Edge in AI-Powered Search with Max Sinclair | Ep213

Ignite: Conversations on Startups, Venture Capital, Tech, Future, and Society

Max Sinclair is the founder and CEO of Azoma, an AI SaaS company helping global brands win in AI-powered search. A former Amazon product lead, he helped launch Amazon Business in the UK, led search and browse for Amazon Singapore, and headed EU Grocery before jumping into founder life. With deep experience across e-commerce search, item data quality, and now answer engine optimization (AEO), he offers sharp, battle-tested insights into how AI is reshaping product discovery, growth, and go-to-market for enterprise brands. In this episode, he discusses leaving a fast-track Amazon career to join Entrepreneur First, building one of the earliest AEO platforms before the market believed, scaling to seven-figure revenue on inbound alone, and why he thinks today’s bloated media agencies are squarely in AI’s crosshairs.

In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

00:01 Meet Max Sinclair & why AI search is breaking marketing rules

00:28 Max’s Amazon journey: Amazon Business UK, Singapore search, and EU Grocery

01:54 Leaving Amazon for Entrepreneur First and betting early on LLMs in search

03:28 Going contrarian: selling “answer engine optimization” before anyone cared

04:38 SEO vs AEO: how LLMs change the playbook for winning in search

05:04 What “answer engine optimization” actually means for brands

05:50 Taking the plunge: advice for operators thinking about quitting big tech

08:01 Inside Entrepreneur First: matching commercial and technical founders

10:08 Surviving the “too early” phase and riding the AI search inflection

12:14 Are we at product–market fit? How Max thinks about enterprise PMF

14:54 Scaling mostly on inbound: 40–50% monthly growth with no outbound

16:48 The content strategy behind Azoma’s pipeline (and getting over cringe)

18:11 Under the hood: how Azoma simulates ChatGPT-style queries and optimizes answers

20:03 What it looks like as a customer: winning recommendations in answer engines

20:31 The next 1–2 years: hiring spree, category creation, and owning “answer engines”

22:34 Hiring in Europe vs the US and why firing is much harder in the EU

24:42 Remote vs in-person: why Max wants hubs, not fully-remote everywhere

25:29 Long-term bet: AI agents eating legacy media agencies and services

27:21 Funding philosophy: profitable but still going for a big, signaling Series A

29:13 Bold product moves and the rise of “ChatGPT commerce” (Shopify, Walmart, etc.)

30:05 Hot takes on AI in e-commerce: no AI SDRs, human-led customer success

31:18 Hardest negotiation as a founder: convincing ex-founders to join the mission

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