ChatGPT sent five of our seven leads

Late on Sunday night, October 11th, a stranger booked a 15 minute call on my calendar for Tuesday afternoon.

No questionnaire. No intro. He used the booking link and that was it.

I wrote back: “Hey, what do you need help with?”

He answered with a short note. Nice to meet you. He wanted a prior art search and a provisional patent, maybe a nonprovisional later. He explained his idea. He had a few questions. Then he asked if we could go over 15 minutes.

I said yes, sure.

On Tuesday, October 13th, I asked him how he found us. He said ChatGPT.

I was quite surprised.

Tao IP, the patent law firm I am building with Michael, was a few days old. I had a plan for the first clients, and it was not ChatGPT. It was warm introductions. My network. My founder friends. My close friends. That is how a law firm gets its first clients. Someone you trust says call this person.

Then I counted. Seven leads since launch. One from Google. One from my network. Five from ChatGPT.

I did not do anything special for that. No AEO work. No SEO work. We put up a website that says what we are: an AI native patent law firm. Then I went back to the thing I thought mattered, our outbound go to market plan. I kept iterating on the portal and the website, late nights at home. While I was planning outbound, ChatGPT was sending us people.

I also thought it would be slow. Choosing a law firm usually takes a couple of weeks to a couple of months. People talk to a few firms. They think. They wait.

The Sunday night booking did not wait that long. He talked with Michael on a joint call on October 20th. Michael knows his subject matter, and that mattered to him. That same night he asked if he could lock in our solo inventor pricing. Within two weeks of that Sunday night, he signed the engagement letter.

And now, I still do not know why ChatGPT recommends us. I am still working on our outbound strategy.