David Maruyama founded CiteHQ.io after 20 years of building things that did not exist yet. He spent years inside the infrastructure that today serves as the foundation for the connectivity behind the internet we know — at Lucent Technologies, during the exact years telecom carriers rebuilt their fixed and wireless networks around Internet Protocol, and through the correction that followed when the dot-com bubble collapsed. Then came two decades of ventures spanning telecom and mobile applications (for example: mobile money) throughout the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean, along with building retail distribution networks in the United States. His creativity and ability to identify non-obvious opportunities — for example: a first-of-its-kind mobile network in Costa Rica, built against a decades-old state monopoly. A banking platform turned into a channel for cross-border money transfers before most of the industry had connected the two ideas. He also took part in creating a mobile virtual network operator and a retail distribution network across 10 markets, built specifically for the US Hispanic market, at a time the national players treated it as an afterthought. Different chapters, different countries, different partners — the same instinct every time: find the real opportunity before the market agrees it exists, then execute with the discipline and objectivity to monetize it.
The Same Instinct, Now Focused on This New Wave
It started about fourteen months ago, with OmniStem — a licensed regenerative medicine and cellular therapy center in the Dominican Republic offering physician-supervised stem cell and biologic treatments. Building OmniStem's digital strategy for the AI-search era was David's first hands-on proof that the same instinct used in the past to create business value applies just as directly today, with the adoption of AI: the moment a category of businesses discovers that the way their customers find them is quietly changing, with profound impacts on how business will be conducted in the near future. Those fourteen months were spent learning, in direct practice, how AI systems actually interact with information, process it, and elaborate an answer from it — work that became CiteRE — CiteHQ's proprietary Resonance Engine, and our differentiating factor — the additional layer behind the frameworks and methodology CiteHQ runs on today.
That change is not exclusive to OmniStem, or to medicine — it is a profound shift that will impact every aspect of our lives, especially how business gets done. In other words, the transition from the "blue-link economy" (Google Search) to a clickless world (AI). A hospital procurement director does not Google "medical device supplier" anymore — she asks ChatGPT. A VC scouting cleantech deals does not scroll search results — he asks Perplexity. A distributor in Guadalajara looking for a Houston logistics partner does not type keywords into an English-language search bar — she asks an AI system, in Spanish, and acts on whatever answer it gives her. Consumer behavior is already changing: the discovery and consideration phase increasingly happens through AI systems. That is why this new discipline — Generative Engine Optimization and Answer Engine Optimization, GEO and AEO — optimizes for something harder: being the answer itself. Not ranked. Cited.
CiteHQ.io is the first bilingual (English/Spanish) agency built entirely around this discipline in Houston — our initial focus market. Every engagement starts by measuring a brand's initial citation rate across six AI platforms — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Microsoft Copilot, Gemini, and Claude — the baseline before a documented, scored improvement. Not a promise. A number. The focus on delivering results is the same way every venture in David's professional experience has always been measured. Our professional experience and our bilingual capability let one team run two markets and two languages simultaneously, unlocking the value of the synergy between them. Every strategy is built in English and in native Spanish, applied directly to companies in Houston, which sits at the center of $800 billion in Latin American trade and 500,000-plus Spanish-speaking businesses — and no other AEO/GEO agency considers the bilingual factor something important and relevant. We believe in Houston's enormous potential. We want to contribute to that future, and be part of it.
Why "CiteHQ"
The name CiteHQ is the whole thesis in one word: "Cite" — the same root as "cited" — is exactly what we're after for your brand. Not ranked — cited. Making sure your brand is named, trusted, and repeated by the AI systems that are quietly becoming the front door to every purchase decision, every investment conversation, every partnership search — that's our day-to-day work. CiteHQ exists to make sure Houston companies are the ones AI systems name when it matters — in English and in Spanish. That result is measured the same rigorous way every project undertaken in this professional experience has always been measured: not by how the story sounds, but by the number at the end of the quarter.
Read the fuller story — including the larger vision behind the work, and why this wave earned David's deepest commitment — in "The Bigger Picture Behind CiteHQ.io." For the Lucent and internet-infrastructure chapter, see "I Was Inside the Machine the Last Time This Happened." For the full venture-building record, see "Building Things That Didn't Exist Yet." Have a specific question instead? See our FAQ →
David Maruyama is Founder & CEO of CiteHQ.io, Houston's first English/Spanish AEO/GEO digital marketing agency. He holds an MBA from Columbia Business School, spent five years in banking prior to Columbia (Bank of Tokyo, Miami; Merrill Lynch), and spent 1999–2005 at Lucent Technologies during the IP infrastructure revolution. He founded Hexagram Advisors in 2007 and has structured, built, and led technology and telecommunications ventures across the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean, including as General Manager of Tuyo Móvil (2010–2013), Costa Rica's first private mobile telephony competitor to the state monopoly ICE.