Gartner findings published on September 22, 2026, reported that 57% of surveyed U.S. consumers said AI-generated content had made them less trusting of brand messaging overall. The insight arrives as the broader marketing industry confronts what analysts have begun calling a structural credibility problem: content production scaled without credibility scaling alongside it, and audiences are penalizing brands that got that order of operations wrong. For companies operating in complex or regulated markets—where a buyer, investor or partner conducts serious due diligence before any engagement—that erosion carries particular weight.

Andre Dezigner, founder and CEO of CYCLE, a go-to-market operator working with founder-led teams in Web3, AI, fintech and deep-tech infrastructure, has built the company around one principle: verifiable credibility must precede scale rather than follow it. In practice, that means taking responsibility for connecting a company's positioning, proof layer, distribution and execution into one coordinated system, rather than a set of disconnected vendor activities.

Metaverse Post spoke with Dezigner to explore this model, understand what the rise of synthetic content means for companies that need to build lasting trust, and find out what founders should do in the months before a major launch.

From Vendor List to Operating Layer

CYCLE calls itself a GTM operator. For Dezigner, "operator" means taking responsibility for go-to-market decisions as well as execution. The firm works alongside the founder to decide which audience matters first, what that audience needs to understand, what evidence supports the story, and what action the company wants people to take. Those decisions are then turned into positioning, founder-led content, proof assets, launch plans and coordinated distribution.

"A company can have capable PR, content and community specialists and still leave the founder responsible for every connection between them," Dezigner said. "We take ownership of that operating layer: priorities, briefs, quality, timing and learning from the market."

Marketing services are part of what CYCLE delivers; "GTM operator" describes how it decides what should be delivered, in what order, and why.

Founder-led go-to-market, in his view, is not primarily about making the founder more visible. It is about turning the founder's knowledge into something the business can use: clearer positioning, better product explanations, stronger sales materials and more useful answers to customer questions. The founder should not have to explain the company from scratch in every conversation. "Founder-led should not mean founder-dependent," he said.

One Trust Problem Across Web3, AI and Fintech

Asked about the core trust problem these industries share, Dezigner identified a common dynamic: an outsider cannot easily judge the substance behind the promise. An AI company might claim that its product transforms a workflow. A fintech company asks people to trust it with important financial activity. A Web3 project may combine a technical product, a token and a community. In each case, people need help understanding what truly works, what remains a plan and what they can verify.

Conventional marketing still has a role, he said, but it becomes ineffective when visibility is expected to resolve those questions by itself. A polished campaign can introduce a company, yet the audience still needs a credible explanation, relevant evidence and clear answers. "The task is to make evaluating the company easier," Dezigner said. "More attention becomes useful when people have something substantial to evaluate."

'Proof Before Distribution': Trust Before Attention

At the center of CYCLE's model sits a concept Dezigner calls "proof before distribution"—trust before attention. It means being ready for the scrutiny that attention brings.

He asked readers to imagine someone discovering a project through a respected creator. They visit the website, look up the founders, check the product and read what other people are saying. The credibility of that first recommendation now depends on what they find.

Proof can take different forms: a working demonstration, a specific customer example, clear documentation, a verifiable partnership or an honest account of what has been built so far. The right evidence depends on the promise being made. An early-stage company can communicate early and learn in public, provided it is clear about its stage and supports the claims it makes.

"'Proof before distribution' is about matching the strength of the message to the strength of the evidence before increasing its reach," Dezigner said.

Different Starting Points: OKX, Solarious and Cyberbase

CYCLE's portfolio includes an OKX regional PR campaign, the Web3 Epic Challenge partnership involving Bybit, and earlier-stage projects such as Solarious and Cyberbase. The starting point, Dezigner said, changes considerably between them.

An established exchange already has recognition, a product and a market history. The work can be more focused: reaching a particular region, explaining a development or building relevance with a specific audience. The OKX case, for example, involved crypto-media coverage and expert commentary in business media for the CIS market.

With an earlier-stage project, more of the explanation may need to be developed. Solarious required work around its Proof-of-Energy positioning and how to communicate that concept to partners, media and the community. Cyberbase presented another kind of task: traffic, social growth and community around a Telegram mini-app. Bybit's involvement in the portfolio came through the Web3 Epic Challenge partnership.

"Those are different engagements, so I would avoid applying one formula simply because all the projects operate in Web3," Dezigner said.

Behind the Web3 Epic Challenge Numbers

Asked what work lay behind the Web3 Epic Challenge with Bybit, which generated 280,000 participants and 25 million impressions, Dezigner described the foundation as a shared campaign that gave several projects a reason to participate together.

Web3 Epic Challenge combined a Zealy quest format, headline partners, more than ten participating projects in each campaign and a prize pool. The initiative included campaigns with The Sandbox and Bybit as headline partners. The work lay in bringing those elements together: coordinating participation, shaping the activities, connecting partner communication and giving audiences a clear reason to explore the other projects involved. "The partnership had to become something people could actually take part in," he said.

According to Dezigner, the results were more than 320,000 participants and over 25 million impressions for the campaign. He noted that the metrics measure different things—impressions are repeated exposures, not unique people—and that campaign participation should also be distinguished from long-term product adoption, which needs its own measurement.

KOL Marketing: Right Tool, Wrong Sequence

Key opinion leader (KOL) marketing divides opinion in Web3. Dezigner has argued that it is neither inherently good nor bad, but that most teams use it in the wrong sequence.

"A creator can introduce a project to a relevant audience and help explain why it matters," he said. "The next part depends on the project itself." If people arrive and cannot understand the product, verify the main claims or find a useful next step, much of that attention may be lost. Teams can then conclude that the creator was ineffective, even though the weakness was elsewhere.

The sequence should reflect what the project is ready to support: clarify the audience and proposition, prepare the evidence and the experience people will encounter, then choose creators who can communicate it credibly. There is also a useful role for creators earlier on—testing explanations or gathering feedback. That is a different assignment from a large promotional campaign and should be briefed and measured accordingly.

Coordinating the Vendors a Company Already Has

For companies that already have KOL, PR and community vendors, CYCLE provides coordination and judgment across their work. A PR specialist needs a strong, supportable story. A creator needs a clear brief and a relevant audience. A community team needs accurate information and a way to handle the questions that promotion generates. Decisions made in one area affect the others.

CYCLE's role is to connect the objective, message, evidence, timing and responsibilities. That includes identifying gaps between suppliers, resolving conflicting messages and making sure feedback from the market reaches the people making decisions. Existing specialists can remain in place; if a company already has strong internal leadership doing this effectively, it may only need a specific service. The broader operating role becomes valuable when coordination keeps falling back onto the founder.

Solarious: A Clear Path Through Complexity

Dezigner has described the goal of his work as making companies easier to understand, verify, trust and buy from. The project that best demonstrates it, he said, is Solarious, which brings together solar production, hardware verification and a Proof-of-Energy blockchain model. The challenge was to make that story understandable without blurring what had been built and what still needed to be demonstrated.

The work connected positioning, founder narrative, proof mapping and media-ready materials. A partner, journalist or prospective participant needed to understand the same core model while finding the evidence relevant to their own questions. "That is what I mean by making a company easier to evaluate: not simplifying away the complexity, but giving people a clear path through it," Dezigner said.

The best time to bring CYCLE in, he added, is when a company has real substance but its website, founder narrative, proof and channel activity still tell different stories. The firm starts by identifying the gap and deciding what needs to change first.

When the Founder's Voice Matters Most

On the founder's own public presence in a go-to-market strategy, Dezigner said it matters most when understanding the founder's judgment helps people understand the company—often the case with an early-stage or technically complex product. The founder can explain why the problem matters, why the team chose a particular approach and which trade-offs it has made. Those explanations are difficult to replace with generic corporate content.

A useful public presence can be quite focused: a clear profile, thoughtful commentary, occasional demonstrations and direct answers to important questions. The format should suit the person and the audience. As the company develops, customer evidence, product performance and the wider team should carry more of the explanation. The founder's voice helps establish accountability, while the business gradually builds a broader foundation for trust.

Expanding Beyond Web3

As AI and deep-tech companies face similar trust challenges, Dezigner sees a natural extension into companies whose products require explanation before a buyer can make a confident decision. CYCLE's strongest case history is in Web3, which has given the firm experience with technical complexity, public skepticism, communities and the need to make ambitious claims understandable. Some of those challenges also appear in AI, fintech and deep tech.

The approach needs to respect the differences. An enterprise AI buyer may need a repeatable evaluation, a clear implementation story and answers about data handling. An infrastructure project may need technical documentation and evidence of adoption. The direction Dezigner wants for CYCLE is to get better at connecting those requirements to communication and execution. "Expansion should follow relevant expertise and demonstrable work, with evidence built in each category," he said.

Synthetic Content Raises the Bar for Evidence

On AI flooding the market with synthetic content and automated reach, Dezigner said it raises the importance of what sits behind the content. When a company can produce polished articles, visuals and presentations quickly, presentation alone tells the audience less about its competence. People have more reason to look for the origin of a claim, the method behind a result and the people accountable for it.

For a company, that makes original evidence especially valuable: a real demonstration, a clearly explained test, a specific customer example or a thoughtful account of a difficult decision. AI can help organise information, draft material and adapt it to different formats, but the company still needs to own the accuracy of what it publishes. "I would use the time saved to improve the underlying evidence and answer better questions," Dezigner said.

Six Months Before Launch: Build the Evidence First

For a founder six months from a major launch or fundraising round, Dezigner's advice is to start building the evidence you want to be able to show in six months.

Work backwards from the decision you want someone to make. A prospective customer, partner and investor will each need different things to become comfortable with that decision. Identify the most important uncertainties early enough to do something about them. That might mean running a useful pilot, documenting customer feedback, improving a demonstration or making a technical explanation easier to follow. Some evidence takes time to create, and a communications team cannot produce it at the last minute.

"A launch date gives you a deadline for telling the story," Dezigner said. "Use the months before it to make that story stronger through the work itself."

This interview was originally published on Metaverse Post.