Built the platform, brand site, and SEO foundation for a hardware launch — page-1 rankings on day 1, $1.4M Series A enabler.
Helio Labs is a smart-home hardware startup founded by two ex-Nest engineers building a flagship product in the energy-management category. They came to us 6 months before launch with $400K in pre-seed money, a working prototype, and zero web presence. We shipped: (1) the brand site + e-commerce platform, (2) a content + SEO scaffold pre-launch so they ranked on day 1, (3) a Power BI dashboard for ops + analytics. Outcome: 32 commercial keywords on page-1 the day they launched, $480K in pre-orders within 30 days, and a $1.4M Series A signed in month 4.
Helio Labs came to us with…
Most hardware startups launch with a Shopify site, a Webflow landing page, and zero SEO equity. They then spend 12–18 months building organic traffic AFTER product-market fit, often missing their growth window. Helio's founders wanted a different approach: build the SEO scaffold in parallel with the product, so the day the product hit shelves, they were already authoritative for the relevant queries. They also needed a custom commerce platform (not Shopify) because their pricing model included a hardware-as-service subscription their competitors didn't offer.
Pre-launch SEO without a product
How do you build authority for a category before you have a product? Most playbooks assume you can talk about the product. Helio needed 4 months of authority compounding before they could even mention a product name.
Hardware-as-service commerce
Their pricing was $89/mo + $0 hardware (versus competitor $299 + $9/mo). Shopify could not handle this without 4 paid apps that wouldn't talk to each other. Required a custom platform.
Series A pressure
Founders had a 4-month window to close Series A. The pitch needed real metrics (not vanity), so the platform had to be production-grade and the analytics had to be defensible to investors who were going to scrutinize.
Speed: founders shipping while we shipped
Two engineers building hardware firmware. Two engineers (us) building the platform. Zero overlap allowed in calendar — every Friday had to be a synchronized handover.
The approach
Brand + identity + content scaffold
We built the brand identity (logo, color system, typography, motion language) in week 1, design system in week 2, and started shipping educational content in week 3 — all under a magazine-style content brand that wasn't yet pitching the product. By month 1 close, 18 long-form articles were published in the energy-management category.
- Brand identity + design system
- Tokenized component library (32 components)
- Editorial brand: 'The Helio Journal'
- 18 long-form articles · 2,400 avg word count
- GEO content patterns from day 1
Custom commerce platform
Two staff engineers built the storefront on Next.js + Stripe (subscription billing) + Postgres + Sanity for content. Hardware-as-service flow handled deposits, recurring billing, hardware shipment via 3PL integration, and an admin dashboard for the founders. Performance budget enforced: every page < 1.6s LCP.
- Next.js storefront (e-commerce + subscription)
- Stripe billing (HaaS model)
- ShipBob 3PL integration
- Admin dashboard for founders
- Customer self-serve portal
SEO + GEO + launch prep
We mapped every commercial query in the category, built 47 pages of pillar + spoke content (deeply researched, original data where possible), and set up GEO retrieval-friendly content patterns. By launch day, they were ranking on page-1 for 32 commercial keywords — including 4 in positions 1–3.
- Topical authority blueprint (6 hubs × 8 spokes)
- 47 pillar + spoke pages
- Original research: 'State of US home energy 2026'
- Schema markup across all templates
- GEO citation surface across 5 engines
Launch + 90-day operate
Launch went live with zero incidents (planned + dry-run). Pre-orders hit $480K in 30 days. Power BI dashboard live by week 2, surfacing cohort revenue, CAC by channel, and LTV projection that became the centerpiece of the Series A pitch deck. We kept running ops + content velocity through month 5.
- Production launch (zero incidents)
- Power BI exec dashboard
- Series A data room (revenue + CAC + LTV)
- 12 new content pieces · month 5
- Customer support + billing operations
Before / after — every metric
Numbers verifiable with the client. Audit trail available on request.
| Metric | Before | After | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Top-10 keywords (launch day) | 0 | 32 | — |
| Top-3 keywords (launch day) | 0 | 4 | — |
| Pages indexed | 0 | 67 | — |
| Lighthouse Performance (homepage) | — | 92 | — |
| LCP (p75) | — | 1.2s | — |
| Pre-orders (first 30 days) | — | $480K | +60% vs plan |
| Conversion rate (PDP → checkout) | — | 8.4% | industry avg 2.1% |
| Newsletter subscribers (pre-launch) | 0 | 12,400 | — |
| Series A round closed | — | $1.4M | 1.7× target |
Stack, team, and tools
- · Next.js 14
- · Stripe (subscriptions)
- · Sanity CMS
- · Postgres
- · Vercel Edge
- · ShipBob API
- · Power BI Embedded
- · 1 senior strategist
- · 2 staff engineers
- · 1 designer (brand + product)
- · 1 SEO operator
- · 1 content lead
- · 1 Power BI consultant
- · Figma
- · Sanity Studio
- · Stripe Dashboard
- · Linear
- · Vercel
- · Ahrefs
- · Power BI Desktop
Most agencies pitched 'launch the website then we'll figure out SEO.' SERP Axis pitched 'launch the website AND four months of SEO compounding so day 1 is page 1.' That's exactly what happened. The Series A pitch deck used metrics from a dashboard they built. Best agency money I've ever spent.
“Their custom platform handled the hardware-as-service model that 4 Shopify apps couldn't. We saw 8.4% PDP → checkout conversion at launch. Industry benchmark is 2.1%. The platform is the moat.”
Series-A funded year 2: international expansion (UK + Germany), a customer-success ML model on top of the Power BI dashboard, and continued content velocity at 8 pieces / month.
The cost of waiting
is your competitor.
Every 90 days you delay is 90 days of authority compounding for someone else. Get the audit. See the math. Then decide.