Yard started as a manual influencer agency working with technical creators. After a successful campaign for Empromptu, demand grew faster than their internal operations could handle.
They were managing over 20,000 technical creators across spreadsheets, Slack, and email. CMOs were already asking for their Yard GEO product before it was fully launched, but manual processes and technical debt made it hard to scale. Yard partnered with Empromptu to build an AI first creator intelligence platform without expanding the engineering team.
The challenge - scaling beyond manual processes
Yard reached a point where operational complexity directly capped growth.
As Karl put it, they were already throttled on the number of customers they could take on and could not accept more. CMOs were interested in Yard GEO, but the underlying systems were not ready for that level of demand.
The team faced three core issues:
- •Manual operations that did not scale
- •Fragmented creator data across multiple tools
- •Technical debt from a legacy platform that had outlived its intended lifetime
Fragmented creator data
Managing 20,000+ technical creators meant information was scattered everywhere.
Creator profiles, contact history, rates, and outcomes lived across:
- •Spreadsheets
- •Slack
- •An older internal database
For a single creator, they might have messages in Slack, email threads, entries in Excel, and separate records in a database. There was no single source of truth that tied together who had been contacted, what they had been paid, or how previous campaigns had performed.
The team also manually tracked 200 to 300 videos across campaigns, with contracts, invoicing, and performance spread across various systems.
Technical debt from Yard V1
Yard V1 was built as a quick six month solution and was still in use two years later.
That stopgap platform had evolved into a source of significant technical debt, with code Karl described as awful and poorly documented. It was not the right foundation for an AI native product, but rewriting it from scratch while keeping up with client work was risky.
Attempts to bolt on AI tools like Claude or Day.ai for CRM did not solve the deeper problem of managing complex creator relationships and data at scale.
Analysis paralysis in the AI era
Karl delayed rebuilding the platform for a year, unsure whether AI tooling was stable enough to build on. With AI moving so quickly, it was hard to know when to commit to a direction.
At the same time, Yard did not have specialized AI engineers, could not pull existing staff away from client delivery, and risked falling behind competitors if they stayed manual.
They needed a way to become AI native without pausing the business or hiring a new technical team.
The solution - AI native platform without team expansion
Yard engaged Empromptu to build production ready AI features that integrate with their existing operations instead of forcing a full reboot. The goal was to move from a manual services model to an AI driven platform model while keeping the core team focused on clients.
Empromptu provided the application builder, enterprise database, and AI integration layer, so Yard could get to a working system without hiring specialised AI engineers or managing new infrastructure alone.
What Yard is building with Empromptu
Creator database and CRM
A central intelligence hub for more than 20,000 technical creators, including:
- •Automated profile enrichment from sources like YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter or X, and GitHub
- •Weekly refreshes of engagement metrics
- •Contact history and rate negotiation records
- •Relationship management across all channels
This replaces scattered spreadsheets and messages with one place to understand each creator.
Campaign management
A single source of truth for campaigns that replaces ad hoc tracking.
Key capabilities include:
- •AI powered client profile management based on creative briefs
- •Single and multi influencer campaign coordination
- •Tracking of contracts, videos, invoices, and outcomes
- •AI for creator scoring, outreach prioritization, and predictive engagement
This lets the team manage concurrent campaigns and measure performance without jumping between tools.
Yard GEO - LLM content optimization
An observability platform focused on how AI models surface client content.
Clients can submit 50 to 100 target questions and answers. Yard GEO then:
- •Tracks how different AI assistants like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity answer those questions
- •Reports how often and where client content is being referenced
- •Provides rankings and citations per platform
- •Surfaces trends, mention frequency, and content insights in a client dashboard
This allows clients to see how their content shows up in LLMs and where they need to improve coverage.
Why Empromptu was different
Empromptu addressed the structural problems holding Yard back.
- •Production ready from day one
Empromptu builds complete applications with frontend, backend, database, and AI integration designed for real use, not prototypes. - •Enterprise database without complexity
The platform automatically provisions TigerDB (TimescaleDB) for AI applications and handles data ingestion without requiring database expertise. - •No full platform rewrite required
Empromptu builds alongside Yard’s existing systems, making it possible to transition gradually instead of stopping everything to rebuild. - •Forward deployed engineer network
Yard had access to pre vetted AI engineers on a project basis and three-way Slack communication with Empromptu’s core team when needed.
The vision - definitive technical creator intelligence platform
Yard is not just fixing internal operational problems. They are aiming to become the definitive technical creator intelligence platform in what Karl calls the GEO era.
CMOs are already showing strong interest in Yard GEO, because it provides comprehensive observability into how AI models surface content driven by influencer campaigns, PR, and media placements.
By combining the Creator Database, Campaign Management, and Yard GEO, Yard is transitioning from a manual agency to a scalable AI platform that:
- •Manages creators and campaigns in real time
- •Provides visibility into AI driven content performance
- •Supports growth without headcount expansion
All of this is happening without a full rewrite of their platform or hiring specialized AI engineers.
Key takeaways
- •Yard is scaling to an AI native platform without expanding its core team.
- •Empromptu delivers production grade apps that integrate with real data from day one.
- •Fragmented creator and campaign data is being centralized into an enterprise ready database.
- •Yard GEO positions the company for first mover advantage in LLM content observability for technical creators.
