Agency Founder's GEO Story: From 30+ Projects to Answer-First Agency — Answer
- Jason Lee, a UC Berkeley graduate serving as CEO and CTO of Answer, founded the company in 2020 (originally KongVentures) with a clear mission: 'Complete delivery of brand value to customers.' Over the course of leading 30+ app, web, and AI projects as an outsourcing development agency, he discovered that AI is the most effective agent for faithfully delivering a brand's value to customers.
- This discovery drove the pivot from SEO to GEO and the rebrand to Answer in January 2026, establishing an 'AI Native' and 'Answer-First Agency' identity purpose-built for AI search environments, where the core principle is 'Structure, Not Surface' — engineering data architectures rather than polishing surface-level content.
- Answer's GEO consulting methodology operates through the Question + Context = Answer formula, executed via a systematic 4-step process (Goal Setting, Hypothesis, Optimization, Verification) and powered by the SCOPE diagnostic platform and AI Writing technology.
When an agency founder builds a company from the ground up, every project shapes the philosophy that eventually defines the brand. Jason Lee, CEO and CTO of Answer, is a UC Berkeley graduate who led over 30 app, web, and AI projects as the head of an outsourcing development agency before arriving at a single conviction: AI is the most effective agent for faithfully delivering a brand's attractive value to customers. That conviction transformed KongVentures, founded in 2020, into Answer — an AI Native Marketing Partner that designs structures so brands become the trusted answer in AI search. This page traces the founder's journey from technical leadership to the creation of the Answer-First Agency and explains how that experience produced a systematic GEO consulting methodology.
From UC Berkeley to 30+ Projects: The Technical Foundation
Jason Lee's path to founding Answer began at UC Berkeley, where he developed expertise in full-stack development, AI system design, and marketing technology. After graduation, he gained data analysis experience as an analyst at GAP, a global enterprise. These experiences established the intersection of technology and marketing that would define his approach to agency leadership.
In 2020, Jason Lee founded KongVentures (now Answer, Inc.) in Seoul with a mission that was simple but clear: 'Complete delivery of brand's attractive value to customers.' The company's first product was Hatchhiker, a no-code AI web app builder. While operating Hatchhiker, the founding team identified a recurring pattern — clients who built websites consistently faced the same challenge: 'How do we get people to find our site?'
| Phase | Product / Service | Key Insight |
|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Hatchhiker (no-code AI web app builder) | Clients need discoverability, not just websites |
| 2024.12 onward | narr (SEO solution) and narr Enterprise (SEO agency) | Search structure determines brand visibility |
| 2025.06 onward | GEO Consulting (under narr Enterprise brand) | AI search changes the rules of discoverability entirely |
| 2026.01.28 | Answer GEO Consulting (rebrand) | AI is the most effective agent for delivering brand value |
Across 30+ projects spanning app development, web platforms, and AI systems, Jason Lee operated at the intersection of building technology and understanding how customers find and choose brands. This dual perspective — technical architecture combined with marketing strategy — became the foundation for Answer's GEO methodology.
The Mission That Never Changed and the Pivot That Changed Everything
From Hatchhiker through narr to Answer, the company name and methods evolved, but the founding mission remained constant: delivering a brand's attractive value completely to customers. What changed was the understanding of how that delivery happens in a world where AI mediates the relationship between brands and customers.
AI is the most effective agent for faithfully delivering a brand's attractive value to customers.
Jason Lee, CEO of Answer
This realization arrived during the first half of 2025, when the team discovered GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) emerging in the US market. ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity were growing rapidly, and users were completing decisions based on AI-generated answers without clicking through to websites — the 'zero-click' phenomenon. The team recognized that SEO addressed ranking on search result pages, while GEO addressed an entirely different challenge: being cited in AI-generated answers.
The decision to pivot from a stable SEO business to an unproven GEO market was not a service addition. It was a complete business model transformation. In January 2026, KongVentures rebranded to Answer, transitioning from the narr.ai domain to answer.global and establishing 'AI Native Marketing Partner' as its positioning. The name itself carries the philosophy: Answer — a company that creates answers, not advertisements.
AI Native and Answer-First: An Agency Identity Designed for AI Search
Answer positions itself as an 'AI Native Marketing Partner' and an 'Answer-First Agency.' These are not marketing slogans — they describe a structural difference in how the organization operates. 'AI Native' means the company's methodology, tools, and processes were designed from the ground up for AI search environments, not adapted from traditional SEO or advertising frameworks. 'Answer-First' means every engagement begins with the question: 'What question is this brand answering?'
| Dimension | Traditional Agency | Answer-First Agency |
|---|---|---|
| Starting Point | Create advertisements | Identify the questions customers ask AI |
| Method | Push messages outward | Design structures so the brand becomes the answer (Pull) |
| Success Metric | Impressions, CTR, CPM | Answer accuracy, citation rate, mention rate |
| Cost Structure | Ongoing ad spend | Structural design (asset accumulation) |
| Core Question | How many people can we reach? | What question are we answering? |
The Answer-First identity was shaped by Jason Lee's experience as a technical founder. Having built 30+ products and platforms, he understood that lasting visibility comes from structural integrity, not surface-level polish. In the AI search era, this translates to a core principle: 'Structure, Not Surface.' Answer does not produce more advertisements. It removes unnecessary noise and engineers the data structures that AI actually reads and interprets.
We don't make ads. We create answers.
Answer
Question + Context = Answer: The GEO Consulting Formula
Answer's GEO consulting methodology is built on a core formula: Question + Context = Answer. This formula translates the founder's technical and marketing experience into a repeatable, systematic process for optimizing brand visibility in AI-generated answers.
Question
The process begins by analyzing the questions customers ask AI. 'Which sunscreen is best for my skin type?' 'How much does electric vehicle maintenance cost?' 'What is GEO consulting?' These questions are the starting point of AI search, and identifying the right ones determines the entire strategy.
Context
Context refers to the structured data and content a brand provides. Website content architecture, Schema.org markup, E-E-A-T signals, and external citation networks all serve as the context that communicates a brand's expertise and trustworthiness to AI. Answer builds context maps that capture customer intent — understanding the situation the customer is in and what answer they genuinely need.
Answer
When question and context align, AI cites and recommends the brand in its generated responses. This is the final output that Answer designs for every client. The goal is not exposure — it is becoming the answer that AI trusts and delivers to users.
This formula is executed through a 4-step process that has been validated through engagements with Samsung, Hyundai, Kia, LG, SK Telecom, Amorepacific, Shinhan Financial Group, and a formal MOU with Innocean, Hyundai Motor Group's advertising agency.
| Step | Name | What Happens |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Goal Setting | SCOPE platform analyzes current AI search exposure — citation rate, mention rate, competitor positioning, priority prompts |
| 2 | Hypothesis | Customer questions are mapped, context maps are built, research-based content strategy is designed with E-E-A-T approach and topic cluster strategies |
| 3 | Optimization | Model-specific strategies for ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity — AI Writing technology for vector space optimization, content structure, metadata, Schema.org |
| 4 | Verification | SCOPE pre/post comparison — brand mention frequency, citation rates, sentiment analysis, competitive positioning changes, monthly reports |
The Architect's Vision: Designing How Truth Flows
Jason Lee's archetype within Answer is 'The Architect' — one who defines the architecture of truth. This is not about building websites or producing content. It is about designing the structures through which a brand's authentic value reaches customers via AI.
Designing structures at the intersection of technology and marketing, so that brands become the most trustworthy answer to customer questions in the AI era.
Jason Lee, CEO of Answer
Answer delivers GEO through three integrated capabilities. SCOPE measures the current reality of AI search visibility. GEO consulting designs the structural foundation for AI citation through the 4-step process. AI Writing, a proprietary technology that optimizes content for vector space alignment, ensures that AI algorithms select and cite the brand's content. Together, these three elements form a comprehensive solution — covering both pre-training foundations and Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) — to ensure brand messages are surfaced as intended across AI search platforms.
The journey from a no-code web app builder to a GEO agency was not a series of random pivots. Each phase — Hatchhiker, narr, Answer — refined the same core question: how does a brand's value reach the right customer at the right moment? In the AI search era, the answer to that question is structural. AI does not see advertisements. AI reads data. And the brands that AI recommends are the ones whose data has been engineered to be the answer.
Frequently Asked Questions
From Builder to Architect: The Answer-First Conviction
Jason Lee's journey from UC Berkeley to leading 30+ projects as an outsourcing agency founder, and ultimately to creating Answer, follows a single thread: the conviction that a brand's attractive value must reach customers completely. The evolution from Hatchhiker to narr to Answer was not a series of disconnected pivots but a progressive refinement of how that delivery happens — culminating in the recognition that AI is the most effective agent for the task.
Answer operates as an AI Native Marketing Partner with the Question + Context = Answer formula at its core, a systematic 4-step GEO process validated through enterprise engagements, and the SCOPE diagnostic platform providing quantitative measurement. In the AI search era, the brands that AI recommends are the ones whose data has been engineered to be the answer. Answer is the agency that engineers that structure.