Your Fund's Next Hire Should Be a Documentary Filmmaker

YC has 77 million YouTube views. Harry Stebbings built a $400 million fund on content.

But for many funds "media strategy" means a dusty LinkedIn repost about new investments.

While it can feel like every avenue is saturated, one REAL opportunity is documentary form storytelling.

One organisation is building a massive audience and founder magnet by documenting the actual journey of building companies. And they're doing it from a 42,000 sq ft campus in San Francisco's Fort Mason.

The Founders Inc Model

Furqan Rydhan envisioned something different from another investment fund - he wanted to build “a place to build the future.”

At 18, he dreamed of a collaborative environment for tinkering and experimentation with like-minded peers – a vision that would eventually become the Fort Mason campus.

Furqan was previously CTO at AppLovin, where he helped scale the company to unicorn status (now $141B). Then he joined Monkey Inferno, British Billionaire Michael Birch's startup studio that was, in retrospect, halfway to what Founders Inc would become. The name perfectly captured the controlled chaos of early-stage entrepreneurship, and Furqhan absorbed the YC-esque rhythm - ship fast, kill quickly, double down on what works. But as he and Shaan Puri have since acknowledged, they were never truly all-in on any single project. In VC terms, Monkey Inferno largely failed, with Bebo as its only semi-meaningful exit (even that carried irony, since Birch had already sold Bebo for $800M to fund Monkey Inferno before buying it back to experiment with again).

This experience crystallized the vision for Founders Inc. which operates in what Furqan calls the "-1 to 0" stage - that raw liminal space before a company becomes a company, paired with an environment designed to remove friction.

Today, the campus houses 80+ founders with dedicated desks, hardware labs, a media studio, and chef-prepared lunches. But the innovation is the layer deeper than the space – that it is set up to document everything happening inside it.

This documentation drives their business model. By publishing founders' journeys, they built distribution for projects and attract top-tier founder applications.

Founders get proximity to other builders, friction-free infrastructure, and amplified visibility. In return, Founders Inc invests up to $250,000 for 3–5% equity, focusing on AI, hardware, and emerging tech - transforming the traditional accelerator by emphasising environment and content over formal programming.

The Content Machine

The media team – led by Aiden Blumenstein – came from Buildspace, which grew from 85k to 235k Instagram followers before shutting down. They also brought proven storytelling expertise like Mohammad Mustafa (Creative Director) and Vishal Kolar to create systematic content from every aspect of Founders Inc's operations.

Media Strategy:

Founders inc focus on Storytelling as the core asset, the YouTube thumbnails, titles and editing are all A* and this has compounded steady growth. Then with dozens of visual assets they use X, TikTok and Instagram to redistribute high volumes of video where their ICP of Founder lives.

Since joining founders inc the team has pulled:

• 50M views on socials

• 90% open rate on emails

Demo Day as Media Event:

Their March 2025 showcase of 60 founders from their four-week "Ship It" program was content gold. Compressed timelines (founders get "two weeks notice" before flying in globally) create authentic urgency and struggle narratives.

• Founder story videos regularly hit 50k-100k views. Which builds distribution for the founders. I actually joined the waitlist for the below AI toy based off the YouTube channel.

• Another example is MakeAgent: CAD copilot, 3,000 users in weeks, interest from Autodesk from their video.

Systematic Content Generation

Four Annual Cohorts: Each 4-6 week program becomes a content series documenting founder transformation from "-1 to 0." With 100-150 founders working from campus weekly, this creates natural content opportunities rather than manufactured marketing moments.

Event-Driven Programming: Weekly "Ship-its," demo days, and founder talks provide consistent content anchors. Recent events like hosting Greg Isenberg drive engagement spikes and convert viewers into applicants globally.

Narrative-Driven Marketing: The June 2025 "Offseason" promotional video opened with Steve Jobs selling his Volkswagen van to fund Apple, immediately positioning participants as modern innovators. Classic storytelling arc: historical analogy → problem → solution.

They treat content distribution itself as a core product, constantly refining reach and conversion from viewers to applicants. This creates a talent density of 100-150 founders working from campus weekly, generating natural content opportunities rather than manufactured marketing moments, while attracting builders worldwide who discover Founders Inc through authentic documentation rather than traditional networking.

The Media Strategy Lessons

1. Document Process, Not Just Outcomes

Traditional VCs announce investments. Founders Inc shows the entire evaluation process, making their "no pitch decks" approach into compelling content about how they actually work.

2. Create Content Infrastructure

The campus media studio signals that documentation is core to the experience. Most funds treat content as an afterthought – Founders Inc built it into their physical space.

Did you see this tweet from 20VC?

We have recently been asked by a few funds, if we can stay on with their fund to create Video assets for new portfolio companies. I think this will become the norm! (btw, we can do this for you… just reply!)

Lots of alpha here for Pre-Seed/Seed funds too (shoutout to Arian!)

3. Event-Driven Content Strategy

Regular programming provides content calendars and engagement spikes. Each cohort, demo day, and guest speaker becomes systematic content opportunities. Their team produces consistent, high-volume content across platforms while maintaining authentic founder stories. This requires dedicated creative talent, not just social media management.

So What?

My opinion is this model would be especially powerful outside SF where authentic community documentation is uncommon.

I'd love to see someone like Entrepreneurs First replicate this in London – documenting cohort selection, founder journeys, and ecosystem building in real time.

For Large Funds $$$:

• Document Deal Partners' Daily Routines: Follow partners through a week of pitch meetings, showing their thought process, what excites them, and why they pass on certain companies. Turn due diligence into compelling behind-the-scenes content.

• Create Portfolio Founder Documentary Series: Commission monthly deep-dives on portfolio companies' growth challenges, pivot decisions, and breakthrough moments. Your existing relationships provide unlimited content if documented systematically.

For Smaller Funds $:

• Live-Stream Investment Committee Meetings: Show the real debates, research process, and decision-making that leads to investments. This transparency would be unprecedented and magnetic for founders seeking authentic investors.

• Turn Your Expertise Into Educational Content: Document your thesis development, market research, and founder evaluation frameworks. Small funds can compete by being radically transparent about their unique perspective and process.

No fund is showing this level of transparency, and it would be a magnet for founders globally. If these moments aren't captured on video, you're missing massive opportunities to showcase your community and expertise.

The funds that will dominate will find the best deal flow through storytelling, build their founders distribution through storytelling, and then build their reputation through telling their fund’s story through that!

So… your next hire doesn’t have to be an associate... It could be someone who can turn your fund's and portco’s unique perspective into content that builders actually want to watch.

Laurie, Refinery Media