Reddit, Inc.
The self-described front page of the internet spent nineteen years as a scrappy forum before going public. Now its archive of human argument has become one of the most valuable training grounds in artificial intelligence.
Ethan Smith
In this episode of Lenny's Podcast, Ethan Smith, CEO of Graphite and a veteran SEO expert, breaks down answer engine optimization (AEO) - the practice of getting your product to show up inside answers from ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity. He explains why AEO is the second-biggest shift in his 18-year SEO career, how it differs from traditional SEO (the head and the tail are different), why being mentioned most often across citations matters more than ranking first, and shares a tactical seven-step playbook covering question research, tracking, landing pages, and off-site citation strategies across YouTube, Reddit, and affiliates. He also debunks widespread AEO misinformation and warns of the dangers of AI-generated content and model collapse.
Peter Yang
Peter Yang is a product leader turned creator economy educator, currently a Principal Product Lead at Roblox with a decade of experience shipping features at Facebook, Twitter, Twitch, Credit Karma, and Reddit. He runs Behind the Craft, a Substack newsletter and podcast with 148,000+ subscribers focused on practical AI tutorials and interviews with top product and AI leaders. He invented Twitch Raids, launched Reddit Talk, and grew Facebook Live from zero to millions of viewers — and now teaches 100,000+ subscribers how to build products and careers in the AI era.