When it comes to entrepreneurship, failure is par for the course. In fact, according to the research organization Startup Genome, more than 90% of startups fail. 

Having endured the pain of business closures himself, Brendan Mahony founded Sunset in 2023 to help venture-backed startups manage their shutdowns. By providing support with the return of unused capital, the sale of assets, and company dissolutions, Sunset helps founders navigate the complex business wind-down process. This way, they can move on to their next venture with as few headaches as possible. 

As a fledgling startup of its own, however, Sunset needed to put the right gears in motion to grow its business. For their highly niche space, Sunset’s team saw the potential of investing in an organic growth channel like content to attract the right audience—entrepreneurs looking for expert shutdown guidance—but they lacked the resources to do it internally. That's when they decided to turn to daydream.

❗ The challenge: Starting from scratch in a niche market with SEO

The process of shutting down a startup involves a variety of legal, financial, and operational hurdles that founders are unprepared to tackle. Naturally, this leads many to turn to Google for answers. 

Sunset founder and CEO Brendan knew from personal experience. Aside from consulting with a lawyer when he was closing his own business, he also “Googled a bunch.” While doing so, he spotted a lack of resources—part of the problem that’d eventually lead him to launch Sunset.

“When doing searches around dissolving entities, it just did not seem like the competition was incredibly high,” Brendan recalls. 

This observation stuck with him. When he launched Sunset, Brendan knew he wanted to invest in content, specifically SEO. 

“For our line of business, content makes a lot more sense [than paid ads] to have brand awareness,” he says. “But also, even for folks who already know about us, they can see we’re more trustworthy and not just a one-page creepy site. … And I know that SEO is a long game, so I just wanted to get started early.”

While Sunset wanted to become the go-to resource for founders, the website’s low domain authority made it difficult to gain traction. In addition, because of its small team size, Sunset had limited in-house resources to dedicate to SEO and content. Unfortunately, traditional content agencies Brendan spoke with gave him exorbitant rates—charging as much as $2,500 per piece of content.

For these reasons, Brendan decided to partner with daydream. Compared to traditional editorial content, programmatic SEO (pSEO) offered a faster and more scalable solution to content production. By partnering with daydream, Brendan hoped to implement a scalable pSEO strategy that could help Sunset increase its search visibility and organic traffic.

⚡ The solution: Build topical authority with daydream through programmatic SEO

Sunset began working with daydream in April 2024 to create a robust pSEO content strategy that could establish Sunset’s expertise on topics related to company shutdowns and layoffs. By publishing content about the unique challenges faced by startups going through dissolution, Sunset could not only establish its credibility in the space but also build topical authority for long-term SEO success.

To kick things off, daydream proposed a content plan focused on targeting long-tail keywords relevant to the startup shutdown process. We identified keywords with strong potential and then proposed several programmatic page templates.

With Sunset’s low domain authority in mind, we recommended starting with a low-competition strategy—that is, focusing on topics that were less saturated with content and thus presented higher ranking potential. 

This led to choosing the “[Startup] Layoffs” template from our initial brainstorm, which focused on targeting keywords related to high-profile layoffs in the tech sector. By creating content about these layoffs, Sunset could establish topical authority in startup shutdowns. Sample keywords include:

• Peloton layoffs

• Robinhood layoffs

• Shopify layoffs

Based on our research, keywords for this topic had substantial search volume, but current content did not fully satisfy the user intent behind them. Top search results often directed users to news articles, some of which offered more speculative info about company politics and performance than concrete details about the layoffs themselves.

To better address users’ search intent, daydream’s “[Startup] Layoffs” strategy focused on providing a concise overview of company layoffs according to the following outline:

• Title: [Startup] Layoffs: What Happened & Why?

• H2: Why did [Startup] have layoffs?

• H2: Financial Impact and Future Directions

• H2: Impact on Industry

• H2: Conclusion

For an example, take a look at Sunset’s “Robinhood Layoffs: What Happened & Why?” page.

Unlike news articles with winding narratives, the new “[Startup] Layoffs” pages offered more straightforward factual accounts of company layoffs.

📈 The impact: 27,000+ organic visitors/month and hundreds of thousands of search impressions

Within six months of partnering, daydream helped Sunset create more than 1,450 programmatic “[Startup] Layoffs” pages, each optimized for their respective keywords. The pages were published under Sunset’s broader Layoff Tracker subfolder (/layoff-tracker), which essentially functions as a repository for summaries of recent layoffs in the tech and startup world.

Before working with daydream, Sunset generated minimal organic traffic. Only two or three blog posts were live on the site. However, the launch of daydream’s “[Startup] Layoffs” strategy quickly leveled up Sunset’s online visibility. 

Google Search Console shows that within six months of going live, Sunset’s layoffs pages began generating hundreds of thousands of search impressions per month.

According to Ahrefs, many of the layoff pages rank #1-3 for their target keywords, including “robinhood layoffs,” “zoom layoffs,” and “uber layoffs.” This has, in turn, helped to skyrocket Sunset’s organic visitors from virtually 0 to more than 27,000 organic visitors per month. 

Beyond traffic growth, the content produced by daydream has also naturally attracted backlinks from reputable sources like the media outlet Axios. This has not only helped to boost Sunset’s domain authority but also solidified its reputation as a credible expert in the startup dissolution space.

Encouraged by these early successes, Sunset is continuing to expand its pSEO strategy with daydream. We’ve begun working on other programmatic page templates focused on dissolving specific legal entities and filing for bankruptcy in particular states. It’s still early but within one month of publishing, we’re already seeing search impressions climb for relevant keywords. 

🔮 daydream can help unlock your business’s SEO potential

Instead of simply generating generic content, daydream worked closely with Sunset to create useful and relevant articles aligned with the company's brand voice. By leveraging daydream’s expertise, Sunset has transformed from a relatively unknown player in the market to a leading resource for founders in need of dissolution guidance. 

We can help your startup, too. No matter the industry, daydream helps businesses accelerate organic growth through AI-driven pSEO content. If you’re interested in building a high-performing growth channel with the support of automation, reach out to us at thenuka@withdaydream.com.