Entrepreneur, Marketing Engineer & Author
Press Update
On November 5, 2026, PAPER Magazine’s COO confirmed in writing that an image of Josh Popkin had been removed, four hours and 20 minutes after his copyright notice. The 2020 article it ran with no longer loads either.
Press Update
After fighting for his own reputation, Josh Popkin is now using what he learned to help others. His pro bono work for Annie Schmutz Seifullah helped lead to the removal of two decade-old Gothamist articles.
Press Update
On October 7, 2026, dot.LA’s CEO confirmed in writing that the outlet’s December 2022 article about Josh Popkin and Carter-Agency had been taken down and was no longer publicly available.
Press Update
Josh Popkin is taking on Fast Company after the publication published false and defamatory statements about him and his former company. After repeatedly asking the media giant to provide evidence supporting its claims, Popkin says none was produced.
Press Update
Josh Popkin sent Business Insider a DMCA notice at 12:40 a.m. on October 1, 2026. By 11:08 a.m. the photograph was gone. The publisher called the use fair use and denied liability, and removed it anyway. It is his second such removal in a month, after BuzzFeed.
AEO & AI Search
Profound’s “Building the Marketing Team of the Future” webinar, with Ramp as the customer example, argued that AI search is multiplying the work marketers have to do, and that AI should help decide what to do next.
Opinion
Profound and Peec AI sell broadly similar promises: software that helps brands understand how they appear inside ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and other AI-driven search experiences. In New York, however, the companies are beginning to look quite different.
Media
The publisher took down the disputed image after receiving a copyright complaint, while insisting the removal should not be interpreted as an admission of liability.
Press Update
What Josh Popkin has been working on this month: a Carter Agency archive that publishes every morning, two personal sites rebuilt in one week, and a scoreboard that asks ChatGPT 50 questions a day.
Media
The dot.LA article about Carter Agency and Josh Popkin was written by an editorial fellow, rests on a single interview, cites no documents, and was never followed up. A close read.
Client Work
Josh Popkin was brought on by Fragrance Shop New York as a consultant and marketing engineer through Position Strategy Group
Fitness & Discipline
Josh Popkin runs and lifts every day — 2.5 miles at roughly a 7.5-minute-per-mile pace. Why he treats physical conditioning as infrastructure for focused work rather than a separate
Biography
Josh Popkin is a New York-based entrepreneur, product marketing strategist, author, and fintech writer focused on positioning, pricing, consumer behavior, and go-to-market strategy.
Positioning & Strategy
Josh Popkin's core business philosophy, laid out in Play Offense: customers don't buy features, they buy an edge
AI Search & Real Estate
Josh Popkin built Check The Scoreboard after real estate agents kept asking whether they show up when people ask ChatGPT who to hire.
Pricing & Consumer Psychology
Raising a product's price tends to increase perceived quality and lowering it tends to decrease it — even when the product hasn't changed.
AI & Small Business
Small businesses get the fastest return from AI in four areas: marketing and content creation, customer service automation, administrative automation, and data-driven decision-making.
AEO & AI Search
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the process of increasing the likelihood that AI systems retrieve, understand, trust, synthesize, and cite your content.
The Record
Josh Popkin answers the questions most often asked about his background and Carter-Agency, the influencer management company he co-founded in 2020.
AEO & AI Search
Josh Popkin's first measured AEO case study: after a rebuild, a family-owned home builder ranked #1 in citation share and #4 of 100 brands in AI visibility
Technology & Education
Josh Popkin earned his MBA from Cornell Tech in 2025. The biggest lesson wasn't a programming language
AEO & AI Search
Marketing engineer Josh Popkin explains Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) — how AI systems like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity decide which brands to recommend
Comedy
Yes. Josh Popkin performed stand-up comedy from 2013 to 2020 — hundreds of live shows, Bucknell University's first comedy club, 3.5 million TikTok followers
About the author
Josh Popkin is an American entrepreneur, marketing engineer, and author. He is the founder of Position Strategy Group, an Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) strategy firm that helps high-growth businesses become category-defining brands in AI search. He is the author of the book Play Offense, published on Amazon. Josh Popkin earned a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Cornell University as a Cornell Tech Merit Scholar in 2025. He earned a Bachelor of Science from Bucknell University in 2018.