Founder
Building on curiosity.
I'm Tom Parling — entrepreneur, investor, and founder of growthvibe.
I'm Tom Parling — entrepreneur, investor, and founder of growthvibe.
I'm an entrepreneur driven by curiosity, a strong sense of opportunity, and a preference for exploring beyond conventional thinking.
I spent much of my career building Ocere, a digital marketing agency I founded and grew from zero to an international acquisition. Today, Ocere is part of European Digital Group, headquartered in Paris.
During that time, we worked with over 3,000 clients to improve their visibility across Google, with particular strength in multilingual and highly competitive markets such as trading and gaming. In 2021, this work was recognised with a Queen's Award for Enterprise.
Alongside operating, I've been active as an early-stage venture investor, backing more than 80 companies across the US, UK, Europe, and Latin America. Outcomes have ranged widely, but include several exceptional successes — from 49x returns to companies reaching > $bn valuations.
The shift from links to answers is one of the biggest changes in how companies get found. Half of all searches now surface AI-generated answers. ChatGPT handles billions of requests a day. AI referral traffic grew 10× in eight months. And most brands aren't ready.
I've spent nearly two decades in search — building a company, serving thousands of clients, and watching this industry evolve through every major platform shift. This one is different. The brands that understand it early will own their categories for the next decade. The ones that don't will slowly become invisible.
growthvibe exists to make sure the right businesses end up on the right side of that divide.
growthvibe is not a traditional marketing agency. It's an AI-native growth consultancy — built from the ground up to help ambitious brands win visibility, demand, and authority in the age of answer engines.
We sit at the intersection of AI, search, and commercial growth strategy. Our focus is Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) — the discipline of engineering how AI systems discover, evaluate, and recommend your brand.
Being found inside AI-generated answers — across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, and the wider answer engine ecosystem.
Converting AI visibility into measurable pipeline, traffic, and revenue. Not vanity metrics — commercial outcomes.
Building the entity signals, content infrastructure, and citation authority that compound over time. Early movers lock in advantages that are very difficult to reverse.
I'm naturally drawn to challenge and things that take time. Outside of work, I've completed four Marmotte Alpine sportives, two Ironman triathlons, and most recently an (unplanned!) 50km ultra across the Black Rock Desert. Long story.
The through-line is the same in business and in sport — patience, preparation, and a willingness to commit to things that take years to compound.
I enjoy working with people who want to build meaningful things over time — not chase short-term tricks. The best client relationships I've had, across both Ocere and growthvibe, share a few things in common:
You don't wait for consensus. You see the shift happening and want to move while there's still a genuine first-mover advantage.
You're excellent at what you do. Your business deserves to be found. AI just hasn't caught up to that yet.
You think in years, not weeks. You understand that compounding authority takes time, and you're willing to invest accordingly.
You want a thinking partner, not a task vendor. Strategy is a conversation, not a deliverable.
I'd love to hear from ambitious and enthusiastic people who want to join me on this journey — whether as a client, a collaborator, or just someone who sees the same shift happening.
Or email me directly — tom@growthvibe.com