Inside Dax Hamman’s Boldest AI Vision for the Future of Search

What we talked about.

In this episode of the Sunny Ray Show, host Sunny Ray sits down with Dax Hamman, founder of FOMO.ai, an AI search marketing company helping brands win visibility in Google AI overviews, AI mode, and ChatGPT. Hamman traces his path from a working class upbringing around his parents' nursing homes in northwest England, through a biology and evolutionary genetics degree at UCL, to founding his first company, Cape Media, in 1998. He recounts building and exiting Chango, an early real time data driven ad tech company, for 122 million dollars, and the harder lessons learned from his agency work with brands like Coca Cola and Virgin and the failure of a later venture, Fireside. Hamman explains why FOMO.ai is deliberately built as an AI and human hybrid business, why he avoided big venture funding, and why he believes SEO is being replaced by a broader AI search discipline. He also shares family stories, including his son's new startup, and reflects on the advice he would give his younger self about slowing down and exploring more before committing to one path.

FOMO.ai founder Dax Hamman on AI search, an $122M ad tech exit, and betting on humans plus AI.

The questions, and the answers.

Can you give a sentence or two on what FOMO does?

FOMO.ai generates sales and leads for companies using the AI search opportunity, since everyone wants to be the trusted cited source in Google AI overviews, AI mode, and ChatGPT. We're ultimately a tech company, which means we can deliver solutions faster, cheaper, and better than what people typically get from an agency.

What were you like as a kid? Was there anything early on that hinted you'd be building companies?

My parents ran nursing homes, and I lived in a back room of the first one when I was born, so I was always exposed to the default of building your own thing. At 13 I probably had my first business, selling copied VHS tapes out of my school locker from about 15, and working for my parents from age 16.

You co-founded your first company, Cape Media, in 1998 while still at UCL. What gave you the confidence to start so young?

My sister and I were raised as small adults more than children, which meant I grew up thinking like a 40 year old man as a teenager. I also married at 21 while still in my final year of university. So starting Cape Media, an early web design shop, didn't feel like it needed audacity, it just felt normal by that point.

You worked with big brands like Coca-Cola, Hilton, and Virgin in ad agencies. What made you shift away from that world?

I loved agency life in my 20s, it was a thrill, and I learned my marketing there. But it was always hard to push things in the direction and speed you wanted. I'm a startup person who loves the zero to twenty sprint, not the twenty one to one hundred scaling sprint, so big brand agency work was frustrating rather than something I was disillusioned by outright.

What was the breakthrough insight that made Chango work when so many ad tech companies were failing?

My co-founder Chris had the real insight. We were building one of the first DSPs, but nobody was using real time data for real time media buying. His idea was to fuel decisioning with real time search data, so at one point we were scraping 14 billion searches a month, which actually pushed Google to lock down search term visibility in Analytics.

Is it true Chango was acquired by Rubicon for 122 million dollars?

It was, and it taught me a lesson I carried into FOMO. Chango was built to sell within a certain timeframe, so while competitors raised hundreds of millions, we raised only 14 and still got a 122 million dollar exit. With FOMO we raised just 1.4 million and grew mostly from paying clients starting month two.

FOMO describes itself as an AI human hybrid company. Why did you bet on that model instead of going full AI?

Most business owners and marketers aren't ready to trust AI solo yet, they want humans in the loop for QA and to confirm direction, especially on things like medical grade content. I also think human roles will have a renaissance, in person sales especially, because soon you won't know if you're talking to a human or AI. It's also why we avoided VC money that only wanted pure SaaS scaling.