What Video Your Startup Needs at Each Stage

Most startups don't need a lot of video. They need the right one at the right time. A brand film at pre-seed is usually money spent too early, and a Series A company with no product demo is making every sales call harder than it has to be. Here's how we'd think about it by stage, based on what the startups we film actually use.

Pre-seed and seed: the founder is the brand

At this stage, people are buying into the founder as much as the product. The most useful videos are simple:

• A founder launch video. One minute, the founder on camera, posted on X and LinkedIn on launch day. See our guide to founder-led launch videos.
• A short product demo. A screen recording with a clear voice-over is often enough.
• A short founder intro for the website and investor updates.

One shoot can cover all three. Quillon filmed their launch video during a short trip to San Francisco.

Seed to Series A: show that it works

Once you have customers, the video should prove it:

• Customer stories. A customer describing the problem in their own words beats any claim you can make yourself.
• A proper product video for the homepage and sales calls.
• A launch video for each major release. Akuity did this for its Agentic Control Plane.

Series A and later: build an audience

Now it makes sense to invest in something ongoing:

• A founder-hosted video podcast. It builds relationships with the people your buyers already follow and gives you weeks of clips from each episode. Contour AI's The Last Mile is a good example.
• Event coverage, for your own events and the conferences you attend.
• A brand film, once your positioning is settled and won't change in six months.

When a brand film makes sense

A brand film is worth it when a few things are true: your positioning is stable, you have places to use it (homepage, fundraising, recruiting, events), and the basics above are already covered. If the pitch still changes every month, put the budget into launch videos and demos instead.

How to tell if a video is working

Views alone won't tell you much. Judge each video by what it was made for:

• Launch video: reach on launch day, demo requests and signups that week
• Product demo: shorter sales calls and better questions from prospects
• Podcast: guests you couldn't reach otherwise, and who gets in touch after each episode
• Recruiting video: candidates who mention it in interviews

If you can't connect a video to a goal like one of these, you probably didn't need it.

Planning your first video? Read how to prepare for your first professional shoot or tell us what you're working on.