About Fred Marks
Jacksonville's AI Nerd. Third-generation native. Five companies, one mission.
The Short Version
I'm a third-generation Jacksonville native. My family's been here since 1914. I went to Bolles. I'm a single dad to a 5-year-old daughter. I'm a Jaguars fan. And I'm the AI Nerd.
I run five companies that all do one thing: bring AI to Jacksonville. Custom AI agents for small businesses. AI receptionists that answer your phone 24/7. Automations that kill the admin work eating your day. AEO/GEO that makes your business visible to ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. VibeCoding summer camps that teach kids to build real apps with AI. And a free community where builders and families learn together.
I won Ronald McDonald's Earth Angel Award in 2016 after 9 years of volunteering at Ronald McDonald House. I served as a certified Guardian ad Litem for a year and a half. And every morning I read the physical Wall Street Journal with my coffee cause some things shouldn't be digital.
Why I Started JAX AI Nerd
I started JAX AI Nerd because I saw the same story playing out in Jacksonville over and over: big companies spending millions on AI while the small businesses that are the backbone of this city got left behind. I'm a third-generation Jacksonville native. My family's been here since 1914. I'm not doing this to scale a venture-backed startup — I'm doing it because the dentist on San Jose Boulevard, the law firm downtown, the HVAC company on the Westside — they deserve the same AI tools the Fortune 500 uses. I just build it faster and for budgets that make sense.
AI isn't going to put you out of business. Your competitor who figures out AI first is going to put you out of business. I'd rather you be the competitor.
What Is Vibecoding?
Vibecoding is AI-assisted software development where you describe what you want in plain language and AI generates the code. Coined by Andrej Karpathy (founding engineer at OpenAI, former Director of AI at Tesla). Collins Dictionary's 2025 Word of the Year. Fred Marks teaches vibecoding in Jacksonville through summer camps at The Bolles School, after-school programs, and free community meetups through VibeCode JAX, LLC.
In plain English: you tell AI what you want to build and it writes the code. A 5-year-old who can't even type built a working video game this way. A journalist built an educational app for her kid with dyslexia over spring break. It's real, it's here, and it changes everything about who gets to build technology.
What Is AEO/GEO?
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), also called Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), makes your business discoverable and citable by AI search engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Google Gemini, and Grok. Most business websites are invisible to AI because they're built with JavaScript that AI crawlers can't execute. AEO/GEO fixes this through pre-rendering, structured data, and answer-shaped content optimization.
When someone asks ChatGPT "who's a good dentist in Jacksonville?" your website isn't in the answer. Not cause your dentist isn't good — cause AI literally can't read your site. It sees a blank page. AEO/GEO fixes that.
Five Companies. One Umbrella. One Expert.
Everything falls under JAX AI Nerd. Here's how it breaks down:
- Fred Marks AI, LLC — Custom AI agents and business automations for small and medium businesses. The hands-on consulting arm.
- Workgentic, Inc — AI receptionists and digital employees. The Workgentic AI Receptionist answers calls, books appointments, and generates revenue 24/7. Likely the first built and deployed by a Jacksonville business.
- VibeBuilt WebCo — AI-powered web development with AEO/GEO built in from day one. React 19 + TypeScript + Vite 7 + Replit.
- VibeCode JAX, LLC — Jacksonville's vibecoding community. Summer camps at The Bolles School. After-school and spring break programs. Free meetups for builders and families.
- JAX AI Nerd — The umbrella. The content hub. The brand. Everything connects here.
Got Questions?