In an era where generative Artificial Intelligence continues to redefine traditional industries, Ranketta, a Czech startup founded by 21-year-old Vojtěch Oravec, has emerged as a forerunner in AI-driven brand visibility. This innovation doesn’t just represent technological progress; it highlights the urgent need for businesses to adapt their strategies in the face of a rapidly shifting digital landscape.
As a seasoned entrepreneur and advocate for innovation in industries through gamepreneurship, I see Ranketta’s journey as a roadmap for entrepreneurs looking to tap into emerging AI opportunities. With its groundbreaking approach to monitoring brand presence within large language models (LLMs) and recently securing €1 million in pre-seed funding led by Lighthouse Ventures, Ranketta demonstrates how small teams and early movers can challenge established norms in the pursuit of future-forward solutions.
Why Ranketta Is an Essential Tool for Businesses
Ranketta fills the gap left between traditional SEO and AI-powered search results. While many brands focus on Google rankings, they often neglect their visibility within AI-generated responses in tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity. Ranketta addresses this by offering real-time analysis of brand/product mentions, overall sentiment, and actionable insights for optimization.
Ranketta’s platform is particularly focused on ecommerce, D2C brands, and businesses selling physical products online, providing these companies with the tools to succeed in the AI-dominated decision-making sphere. The statistics speak for themselves: AI-powered search influences over 50% of consumer buying decisions, and by 2028, it is projected to impact €647 billion of spending globally. Entrepreneurs who fail to adapt to this new search paradigm risk losing competitive ground.
What Entrepreneurs Can Learn from Ranketta
This startup’s success serves as an important lesson for the entrepreneurial community: innovation occurs at the intersection of emerging technologies and under-served markets. To understand Ranketta’s value, let’s start with its founder, Vojtěch Oravec, a 21-year-old leading the charge in AI-driven optimization. His background in software engineering, coupled with research at the Czech Technical University’s Institute of Robotics and Cybernetics, underscores how blending deep technical expertise and a clear market problem can lead to scalable innovation.
Oravec identified that while brands may rank highly on Google, many remain invisible within LLM-generated answers. At least 84% of companies currently do not track their performance within AI-generated search results. Leveraging this untapped opportunity positioned Ranketta as a solution provider for an entirely new genre of performance analytics: Generative Engine Optimization.
Common Mistakes Entrepreneurs Should Avoid
When interacting with AI-driven tools like Ranketta to optimize business strategies, it’s crucial to avoid these pitfalls:
1. Ignoring the shift from Google-dominated search to AI results
Over half of consumers already turn to AI for product recommendations. If your business isn't tracking performance within AI responses, you’re missing key visibility opportunities.
2. Overvaluing traditional SEO in the AI age
Ranketta’s insights explain that even top-ranking websites on Google can appear as “ghosts” in LLMs like ChatGPT. Entrepreneurs who fail to understand this new layer of search are at a distinct disadvantage.
3. Neglecting sentiment analysis
Most entrepreneurs focus solely on visibility metrics, ignoring the fact that how consumers perceive their brand matter just as much as how often they see it. Improving sentiment while maintaining product mentions increases trust and conversion rates.
4. Failing to proactively integrate into LLMs
Ranketta highlights actionable steps for ecommerce brands to improve their presence in AI systems through content alignment and strategic citation adjustments.
How Entrepreneurs Can Use Ranketta to Gain a Competitive Edge
Step 1: Understand AI Visibility Metrics
Unlike traditional analytics, which focus on clicks and impressions, Ranketta shows entrepreneurs how often and under what sentiment their brand appears in answers generated by AI tools. By tracking this data, businesses can identify gaps and deploy citation strategies to fill them.
Step 2: Optimize Your Brand for AI Responses
Ranketta’s AI Copilot hints at steps to integrate relevant keywords and respond directly to common queries within your area. Prompt variations such as “What company offers X product?" or "Best brands in Y industry" reveal key patterns AI engines use to recommend businesses.
Step 3: Adjust for Sentiment
No matter how often your brand appears within LLM rankings, unfavorable sentiment can damage customer trust. Employ tools to monitor whether AI-generated descriptions align with your brand messaging.
Step 4: Expand Through Strategic Ecommerce Integrations
From Shopify controls to product page adjustments, Ranketta enables ecommerce businesses to gain insights into consumer behaviors as mediated by AI. Testing optimized pages with better citation metrics ensures a brand remains relevant in both search and commerce platforms.
Why Investors Are Betting on AI Visibility
In my entrepreneurial experience, funding typically gravitates toward businesses that can both create technical disruption and prove the relevance of their offerings within measurable markets. Ranketta ticks both boxes. Its €1 million funding round led by Lighthouse Ventures and Gi21 Capital validates the startup’s potential to influence billions in AI-driven commerce spend.
What Sets Ranketta Apart
Unlike competitors such as TopK or Peec AI, Ranketta focuses on consumer-facing optimization in LLM-generated shopping and search answers rather than enterprise-specific search. Its unique emphasis on product-specific content adjustment, ecommerce integrations, and sentiment visibility positions it ahead of the curve.
The fact that Ranketta achieved an ARR of €86k within just two months citing names like Brainmarket, Boost.Space, and Sloneek solidifies its credibility among early adopters. The market validation here should inspire solopreneurs and founders alike to rethink their approach to visibility optimization in an AI-first world.
Conclusion
For entrepreneurs, Ranketta is not just another SaaS tool, it represents the beginning of a seismic shift in how brands and products are discovered in an AI-dominated search landscape. Its rapid growth and funding indicate an exciting trajectory in commerce optimization, yet the true takeaway lies in its actionability: businesses now have the tools to actively influence their visibility within AI responses.
From my perspective as a serial entrepreneur, Ranketta’s rise emboldens startups everywhere to explore untapped opportunities in AI, and not just generative tools but the ecosystems that support them. This is about making AI work for every business, not just the tech giants. Entrepreneurs who act on this today will shape industries tomorrow.
FAQ
1. What is Ranketta and what does it do?
Ranketta is a Czech AI-based SaaS platform that measures and improves brand visibility in AI-generated answers across tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity. It tracks sentiment, product mentions, and citation sources to help businesses optimize their presence in large language models. Learn more about Ranketta
2. Who founded Ranketta?
Ranketta was founded by Vojtěch Oravec, a 21-year-old Czech AI researcher and product builder. He previously conducted research at the Czech Technical University’s Institute of Robotics and Cybernetics and worked as the youngest product manager at Henry Schein.
3. Why is Ranketta relevant to ecommerce brands?
Ranketta helps ecommerce brands measure and optimize their visibility in AI-powered tools that influence consumer buying decisions. Its platform tracks metrics like sentiment and response frequency to improve brand relevance and trust. Discover Ranketta’s impact on ecommerce
4. How does Ranketta address traditional SEO drawbacks?
Ranketta bridges the gap where traditional SEO often fails, visibility within AI-generated answers. Many Google-top-ranked brands remain “invisible” in AI search results, and Ranketta helps them navigate this emerging challenge. Learn why traditional SEO isn’t enough
5. How much funding has Ranketta raised?
Ranketta secured €1 million in pre-seed funding, led by Lighthouse Ventures and Gi21 Capital. This funding aims to support its technology development and expansion to international markets. Explore Ranketta’s funding story
6. What industries benefit most from Ranketta?
Ranketta focuses majorly on ecommerce, D2C brands, and businesses selling physical products online, helping them achieve visibility optimization in AI-dominated search engines like ChatGPT.
7. What is ‘Generative Engine Optimization’?
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) refers to the strategy of optimizing brand presence within AI-generated search results. Ranketta leverages GEO to empower brands to adapt to a click-less and AI-powered consumer decision landscape. Learn more about GEO
8. How does Ranketta provide actionable insights for businesses?
Ranketta analyzes data such as brand mentions, sentiment framing, and citation sources within LLM responses to suggest actionable strategies like content alignment and citation adjustments for improved visibility. Check out actionable insights through Ranketta
9. Who are Ranketta’s clients?
Ranketta already serves enterprises and startups like Brainmarket, Boost.Space, and Sloneek, which are leveraging its platform to track their AI presence. Explore Ranketta’s client impact
10. What sets Ranketta apart from competitors?
Unlike enterprise-focused tools like TopK and Peec AI, Ranketta emphasizes consumer-facing visibility in AI results for ecommerce and physical product brands. Its granular sentiment assessment and citation tracking make it uniquely impactful. Learn why Ranketta stands out
About the Author
Violetta Bonenkamp, also known as MeanCEO, is an experienced startup founder with an impressive educational background including an MBA and four other higher education degrees. She has over 20 years of work experience across multiple countries, including 5 years as a solopreneur and serial entrepreneur. Throughout her startup experience she has applied for multiple startup grants at the EU level, in the Netherlands and Malta, and her startups received quite a few of those. She’s been living, studying and working in many countries around the globe and her extensive multicultural experience has influenced her immensely.
Violetta Bonenkamp's expertise in CAD sector, IP protection and blockchain
Violetta Bonenkamp is recognized as a multidisciplinary expert with significant achievements in the CAD sector, intellectual property (IP) protection, and blockchain technology.
CAD Sector:
- Violetta is the CEO and co-founder of CADChain, a deep tech startup focused on developing IP management software specifically for CAD (Computer-Aided Design) data. CADChain addresses the lack of industry standards for CAD data protection and sharing, using innovative technology to secure and manage design data.
- She has led the company since its inception in 2018, overseeing R&D, PR, and business development, and driving the creation of products for platforms such as Autodesk Inventor, Blender, and SolidWorks.
- Her leadership has been instrumental in scaling CADChain from a small team to a significant player in the deeptech space, with a diverse, international team.
IP Protection:
- Violetta has built deep expertise in intellectual property, combining academic training with practical startup experience. She has taken specialized courses in IP from institutions like WIPO and the EU IPO.
- She is known for sharing actionable strategies for startup IP protection, leveraging both legal and technological approaches, and has published guides and content on this topic for the entrepreneurial community.
- Her work at CADChain directly addresses the need for robust IP protection in the engineering and design industries, integrating cybersecurity and compliance measures to safeguard digital assets.
Blockchain:
- Violetta’s entry into the blockchain sector began with the founding of CADChain, which uses blockchain as a core technology for securing and managing CAD data.
- She holds several certifications in blockchain and has participated in major hackathons and policy forums, such as the OECD Global Blockchain Policy Forum.
- Her expertise extends to applying blockchain for IP management, ensuring data integrity, traceability, and secure sharing in the CAD industry.
Violetta is a true multiple specialist who has built expertise in Linguistics, Education, Business Management, Blockchain, Entrepreneurship, Intellectual Property, Game Design, AI, SEO, Digital Marketing, cyber security and zero code automations. Her extensive educational journey includes a Master of Arts in Linguistics and Education, an Advanced Master in Linguistics from Belgium (2006-2007), an MBA from Blekinge Institute of Technology in Sweden (2006-2008), and an Erasmus Mundus joint program European Master of Higher Education from universities in Norway, Finland, and Portugal (2009).
She is the founder of Fe/male Switch, a startup game that encourages women to enter STEM fields, and also leads CADChain, and multiple other projects like the Directory of 1,000 Startup Cities with a proprietary MeanCEO Index that ranks cities for female entrepreneurs. Violetta created the "gamepreneurship" methodology, which forms the scientific basis of her startup game. She also builds a lot of SEO tools for startups. Her achievements include being named one of the top 100 women in Europe by EU Startups in 2022 and being nominated for Impact Person of the year at the Dutch Blockchain Week. She is an author with Sifted and a speaker at different Universities. Recently she published a book on Startup Idea Validation the right way: from zero to first customers and beyond, launched a Directory of 1,500+ websites for startups to list themselves in order to gain traction and build backlinks and is building MELA AI to help local restaurants in Malta get more visibility online.
For the past several years Violetta has been living between the Netherlands and Malta, while also regularly traveling to different destinations around the globe, usually due to her entrepreneurial activities. This has led her to start writing about different locations and amenities from the POV of an entrepreneur. Here’s her recent article about the best hotels in Italy to work from.
About the Publication
Fe/male Switch is an innovative startup platform designed to empower women entrepreneurs through an immersive, game-like experience. Founded in 2020 during the pandemic "without any funding and without any code," this non-profit initiative has evolved into a comprehensive educational tool for aspiring female entrepreneurs.The platform was co-founded by Violetta Shishkina-Bonenkamp, who serves as CEO and one of the lead authors of the Startup News branch.
Mission and Purpose
Fe/male Switch Foundation was created to address the gender gap in the tech and entrepreneurship space. The platform aims to skill-up future female tech leaders and empower them to create resilient and innovative tech startups through what they call "gamepreneurship". By putting players in a virtual startup village where they must survive and thrive, the startup game allows women to test their entrepreneurial abilities without financial risk.
Key Features
The platform offers a unique blend of news, resources,learning, networking, and practical application within a supportive, female-focused environment:
- Skill Lab: Micro-modules covering essential startup skills
- Virtual Startup Building: Create or join startups and tackle real-world challenges
- AI Co-founder (PlayPal): Guides users through the startup process
- SANDBOX: A testing environment for idea validation before launch
- Wellness Integration: Virtual activities to balance work and self-care
- Marketplace: Buy or sell expert sessions and tutorials
Impact and Growth
Since its inception, Fe/male Switch has shown impressive growth:
- 5,000+ female entrepreneurs in the community
- 100+ startup tools built
- 5,000+ pieces of articles and news written
- 1,000 unique business ideas for women created
Partnerships
Fe/male Switch has formed strategic partnerships to enhance its offerings. In January 2022, it teamed up with global website builder Tilda to provide free access to website building tools and mentorship services for Fe/male Switch participants.
Recognition
Fe/male Switch has received media attention for its innovative approach to closing the gender gap in tech entrepreneurship. The platform has been featured in various publications highlighting its unique "play to learn and earn" model.