You just closed a round. The board expects growth metrics in 90 days. Your marketing lead says they'll "figure out this AI visibility thing" and hire someone.
From my experience working with 50+ funded startups, that decision will cost you two quarters. Not because in-house is wrong. Because the math doesn't work on venture timelines.
TL;DR
- In-house GEO hire: 6-9 months before meaningful output
- Agency with playbooks: results in pipeline within 60-90 days
- The real cost isn't salary. It's two board meetings with nothing to show.
- Agencies bring scenarios they've already solved at other companies
The Board Doesn't Wait
Here's the timeline nobody tells you about when you hire in-house:
The salary looks similar on paper. The outcome couldn't be more different.
What You're Actually Paying For
An agency that's run 30+ GEO campaigns has already solved your problems at other companies. They know which citation formats work for developer tools. Which authority signals matter for cybersecurity. Which content structures get picked up by Perplexity vs ChatGPT.
Your in-house hire will figure this out eventually. They'll run the same experiments the agency ran two years ago. They'll make the same mistakes. They'll discover the same insights.
The question is whether you can afford to wait while they learn.
And here's the uncomfortable truth about what actually shows up in board decks versus what actually drives pipeline:
What looks good in your board deck rarely matches what actually converts. See our AI Visibility for Board Decks analysis for the full breakdown.
⚠️ The Hidden Cost
Every quarter without AI visibility is a quarter your competitors are building citation authority. In emerging categories, the first company AI models learn to trust often keeps that position for years. You're not just losing time. You're losing territory that gets harder to reclaim.
What Agencies Bring That Hires Can't
A new hire starts at zero on all three. An agency brings them fully loaded.
The Bottom Line
If you have 12+ months and no board pressure: In-house can work. Hire smart, give them runway, let them learn.
If you raised money and need to show growth: Agency first. Get the playbooks running, show results to the board, then decide if you want to build internal capability alongside.
The real calculation: Two quarters of "still ramping up" costs more than any agency retainer. Your board cares about metrics, not org charts.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yuval Halevi
Helping SaaS companies and developer tools get cited in AI answers since before it was called "GEO." 10+ years in B2B SEO, 50+ cybersecurity and SaaS tools clients.