Pittsburgh Venture Studio Leverages Trends and AI to Grow 21 Companies, Raise $234 Million

For Joey Rahimi, entrepreneurship has often been about the process of creating what he needs and wants, but can't find. He began his journey into building businesses while still in college, with the launch of Niche.com. From there, Rahimi started a mobile commerce company and got the chance to power many of the apps that launched on early versions of the iPhone.

Today, he runs Aiken House, a Pittsburgh venture studio that helps other entrepreneurs turn their ideas into brands. In short, it's what Rahimi himself needed, wanted, and created in his own entrepreneurial journey—and made available to others.

The Importance of Staying Ahead of the Curve

"I invest in startups, but also realize that my marketing background really helps startups make the right decisions," Rahimi said. "A majority of the money raised in Silicon Valley goes right back into Google and Meta's pockets, right? Many years ago, I thought, "I need to prevent that from happening, because there's probably a lot of marketing waste."

Rahimi describes his job as being the guy who's ahead of the curve; the person other founders can trust to know what's popular now—and what will be in the near future.

"Someone who comes to me is normally an entrepreneur that is either in the process of raising a big seed round or series A funding, or they're an established company that wants a hired gun approach to shake things up," Rahimi said. "I have to be the one that vets everything, really understands what's hot, and can explain it to companies that reach out to me…my job is to keep up with the trends for everything: technology, marketing, and macroeconomics."

Being the go-to marketing guy for up-and-coming companies comes with a lot of responsibility and work. But through his years of entrepreneurship, Rahimi's learned how to build a good schedule, and an even better team.

"I have a full-time team [of eight] that works for me and helps me across all the different companies with marketing, design, and development," said Rahimi. "They've been with me for over ten years."

In that time, Aiken House has built 21 companies and raised $234 million across all ventures, though they prefer a more lean and bootstrapped approach when possible.

A Realistic Approach to Generative AI

While much of this success is due to Rahimi's team and leadership, having access to the right tools helps Aiken House operations run smoothly, too. Rahimi makes sure to regularly vet and test new technology for both his team and his clients.

"I definitely can't live without certain AI tools right now, so I understand the urgency there. But there's a lot of overselling and overhyping that founders get caught up in, and unfortunately it creates a shiny new object syndrome," said Rahimi. "People are making claims on Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn…I'm the one that sanitizes it and tells people whether or not it's believable. Every now and then, you know, maybe there's something there, but 99% of it is hogwash."

That said, Aiken is all-in on AI—he's just a realist about the technology's capabilities and limitations.

"At Aiken House, we do a lot of content creation across all of our properties that we own because we want to be thought leaders," said Rahimi. "We use Claude to assist in enhancing the quality of our articles…it's a huge part of our workflow for content creation."

Claude isn't the only AI-powered tool in the Aiken House tech stack, either. Rahimi and his team use Hailuo AI for image and video generation on a regular basis.

"We use Hailuo AI to create visuals and videos where it doesn't look like AI," said Rahimi. "We start with reference images so the quality we produce feels very organic."

The Aiken House rule is that if something looks like AI, they won't use it.

"Generative AI made us a million times more productive, and able to do things we could never do before," said Rahimi. "It helps us enhance our blogs even further, create social posts, and make ads that perform pretty well."

Rahimi also relies on Exploding Topics' blend of machine learning and human expertise to point him in the direction of relevant trends.

"I started to use Exploding Topics when it launched and thought, this is genius," said Rahimi. "The emails alone are so valuable—it always triggers me to remember things."

While Rahimi likes browsing the Exploding Topics trend database at large, he also looks for specific signals to help him identify the trends that will have the most impact on his portfolio of companies.

Trend Research That Helps Investors

Rahimi starts by looking into the trends for each industry that his portfolio companies fall into.

"I'm essentially trying to hop on a term that doesn't have much competition because it hasn't experienced long-term growth yet—that's why it's called Exploding Topics," said Rahimi. "And this can apply to any business; any business is going to want to either find a new topic to write about, cover, add a feature, or add a product."

In one example, Rahimi used Exploding Topics to:

• Identify trends focused on GLP-1 weight loss drugs
• Dig deeper into trends around supplements that support patients' GLP-1 journeys
• Worked with a supplement company in his portfolio to create new products serving the GLP-1 user audience

"All of the products we created are still alive today, still work, and still drive a significant amount of revenue," Rahimi said. "So we're constantly checking Exploding Topics to see if there's ever anything else we can add."

Exploding Topics also serves as a valuable source of information for Rahimi when he's exploring new companies to invest in.

"I do a lot of investing here in Pittsburgh, and I'm part of a lot of investment communities. And whenever I see something hot that Exploding Topics reports, I look into it further and send it to my investment buddies,"said Rahimi. "Exploding Topics is source-of-truth type information. Google Trends can only do so much."

Aiken House's Five Lessons for Founders

Rahimi recommends that all founders do five specific things—whether they're interested in improving their marketing for sales purposes or they'd like to grow with acquisition in mind:

1. Build a reputation if you don't already have one
2. Treat that reputation like gold
3. Have a content strategy in place
4. Create thought leadership internally
5. Work with others to create content that references your brand

"Go as fast as you can, and treat AI as your mentor. And when you hit a roadblock, leverage your network," said Rahimi.

While Rahimi's business expertise has come through years of experience, anyone can access the same kind of reliable data that he uses to identify trends and find valuable investment opportunities—regardless of where they are in their career.

It's all available through Exploding Topics. Start your research like Rahimi for free with a seven day trial of any Exploding Topics Pro plan for trend data, startup information, and other valuable insights for any founder or investor.