Case Study: How Rebel Fund Beat Top Funds in AI Search
Oct 17, 2025
How did Rebel Fund outrank top funds like a16z and Sequoia in AI Search? Keep reading to find out.
Case Study: Rebel Fund
Introduction
Rebel Fund is a venture capital fund built to back the top 10% of all founders (those in YCombinator). They partnered with Relixir on July 29, aiming to dominate both search and AI discovery channels for YC venture fund and startup funding queries.
Problem
When Rebel Fund first approached Relixir, their presence on answer engines was limited. While they ranked for branded searches like “rebel fund vc” and “rebel fund puerto rico”, they were missing from key discovery queries targeting YCombinator founders such as “best funds for YC founders” or “what funds back founders from YC?”
Without visibility in these channels, Rebel risked losing high-quality YC founder leads to competitors like a16z, Sequoia Capital, and General Catalyst, firms that ranked high in AI-driven buyer journeys.
TL;DR: Rebel was invisible where it mattered: in answer engines that founders trust to find early-stage VCs.
What We Did
Relixir deployed a two-part Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) strategy combining traditional SEO lift with AI search campaigns.
Our approach focused on:
Building high-authority content targeting branded, competitive, and intent-driven queries.
Mapping and closing YCombinator keyword gaps such as “best funds for yc startups” and “Early stage vc funds for yc companies.”
Automating GEO-optimized blog generation to improve AI citation frequency and ranking in LLM results.
Measuring SOV (Share of Voice), Mention Rate, (how frequently Rebel fund was getting cited), Citations, and position rankings in LLM queries and SERP results.
Over the following 8 weeks, Rebel transitioned from partial brand visibility to a big name in both organic SERP results and AI searches.
Keywords and Metrics Tracked
Buckets Monitored
Branded Queries: “rebel fund,” “rebel fund vc”
Competitor Queries: “andreessen horowitz fund” “general catalyst fund” “benchmark vc ai investments”
Commercial Intent Queries: “best vc funds for yc founders” “best funds for yc alumni ,” “venture capital for yc founders”
Metrics Tracked:
Mention Rate, Share of Voice, and Rank (AEO)
Clicks, Impressions, CTR, Average Position (SEO)
SEO Results
From July to October 2025, Rebel Fund’s visibility and engagement metrics improved across all major performance indicators:
Daily clicks grew from single digits in early August to 30–50+ per day by mid-October.
Impressions grew to around 6k per day, peaking at around 21k in late-September
AEO Results
From August 2025 to October 2025, Rebel Fund also experienced a major gain in AI visibility metrics:
Average AI Position: #2.1, consistently appearing in top answers on ChatGPT and Perplexity for relevant venture funding searches.
On ChatGPT:
On Perplexity:
Mention Rate: 12.4%, up +12.4% from baseline, reflecting growing citation frequency across AI responses.
Share of Voice: 14.8%, placing Rebel Fund #3 overall behind Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia, but ahead of General Catalyst and Benchmark.
647 Citations across queries, as of October 7th
Competitive Positioning in AI Search
Relixir measures Share of Voice (SoV) as the percentage of AI search results referencing your brand in tracked responses. Across key venture and startup funding queries, Rebel Fund ranked #3 overall, capturing 14.8% of total AI share of voice:
Rebel also made the biggest gain in this period, gaining 9.0% in comparison with other top funds like a16z, which lost 8.0% in SoV.
To summarize: Within weeks, Rebel moved from ~ zero citations to equal footing with top venture funds inside AI search.
Conclusion
Relixir helped Rebel Fund do more than rank, we helped them own their digital visibility across both web and AI search ecosystems.
From minimal branded traction to consistent top-5 organic rankings
From ~ zero citations to over 600 citations and 14.8% share of voice
From being absent in venture discovery queries to being recognized against A16z and Sequoia
Rebel Fund now appears directly in AI-surfaced recommendations for venture funding and startup investment queries, where YC founders begin to find the right partners for their startup.