Why AI Startups Are Hiring In-House Filmmakers

In the wake of the digital media revolution, companies worldwide started devoting serious resources to social media and video content. The favored method? Outsourcing content creation to a creative agency or a marketing firm.

But in a surprising reversal, many businesses are slowly pivoting back to in-house content creation in the hopes of securing faster turnaround times, media with deeper technical context, and content production that's always on. Even highly technical companies like AI startups are shifting back toward in-house video, with brands like Notion and Composio bringing on full-time filmmakers to produce high-fidelity content that's true to their offerings.

Here's what's driving this evolution and why in-house filmmakers offer a solution that traditional marketing cannot match.

The Rise of the In-House Filmmaker

In-house filmmakers are embedded in internal teams, owning the writing, directing, shooting, and editing of all visual content and often operating as a one-person studio. These professionals handle everything from cinematic launch films and promotional short-form clips to hiring videos and behind-the-scenes documentaries.

While these roles come with several benefits for the filmmakers themselves (including autonomy, creative freedom, and job security), it's the brands that are the true winners here. As it turns out, there are several advantages that come with bringing content back in-house:

Production Speed

Most in-house filmmakers can produce content much faster than any outsourced agency. When a company launches a new product or updates an existing feature, an embedded filmmaker can produce a demo or explainer video within days, while a typical agency could take weeks to months. In a market where competitors ship constantly, and developers expect up-to-date information, that speed makes all the difference in the world.

Technical Accuracy for AI Products

AI products are often abstract and the messaging incredibly technical, but the audience still expects clear (yet dense) information. Visual content can bridge that gap without oversimplifying or misrepresenting functionality, but it's incredibly difficult to produce it when you're siloed in an agency halfway around the world.

In-house creators can attend product meetings, read internal documentation, monitor engineering discussions, and work directly with developers to ensure technical accuracy without sacrificing production speed.

Agility for Modern Platforms

A marketing firm can create polished social media content, but they can't sit behind the wheel of an X account mid-launch and produce same-day content. They can't delete a TikTok video that's not working and re-shoot it within minutes. They can't sit next to the engineer who wrote the code and go through live comments to incorporate into the next day's YouTube Short.

Increasingly so, companies need creators who can produce, publish, test, and iterate for these modern platforms in real time. The one-person studio model allows for this kind of agility.

A Pattern Emerging Across Tech

Given the above benefits, it should come as no surprise that this trend is picking up speed and appearing across brands of all shapes and sizes. Recently, several high-profile hires and team formations have signaled a shift toward bringing creative work in-house:

• Notion: A household name among productivity software, Notion recently announced a global storytelling team, led by Akshay Kothari, that merges internal and external communications to shape how the company is presented to employees and the public.
• The Browser Company: This brand recently created Browser Co. Productions, an internal unit led by Emmy-nominated filmmaker Josh Lee, who produces all of the company's video content.
• Bondu: This is a seed-stage AI toy company where Maria "Gelli" Pascual works as a filmmaker, producing content for the consumer product launch.
• Catalyx Space: Catalyx is a space infrastructure startup where filmmakers Udbhav Kharetia and Aakash Vishwakarma document orbital missions and technology development.

Programs and accelerators are also recognizing this shift and equipping the next generation of in-house filmmakers to fill this valuable role. Founders, Inc., a San Francisco-based startup accelerator, recently brought on Aiden Blumenstein as Head of Programs & Storytelling after he grew Buildspace's program from 30,000 to 75,000 students through video content. Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), a venture capital firm, recently launched New Media, a program that includes a fellowship for creators and filmmakers.

Why are so many brands abandoning the established agency-driven model for content creation? Besides all the benefits that come with in-house talent, the industry is finding that most agencies simply lack the necessary depth that it takes to develop content around AI infrastructure—they don't understand API aggregation, agent orchestration, or, in some cases, what makes developer tools different from consumer SaaS. When you consider these fundamental breakdowns in conjunction with the rapid speed and iteration that an in-house filmmaker can bring, the only surprise is that it's taken this long for the pendulum to swing in the other direction.

For an in-depth look into one of the newest entrants in this industry shift, let's turn to Composio's Vikrant Patankar.

Case Study: Vikrant Patankar at Composio

When Vikrant Patankar posted a video application on X in early 2025, he really only wanted to reach Buildspace founder Farza Majeed, hoping his network could boost his chances of being noticed for a filmmaking job at the company. Instead, the post went viral, reaching tech founders around the world. This included Soham Ganatra, CEO of Composio, who took special interest and brought on Patankar as the company's founding filmmaker at age 25 in May 2025. His first major project was a $25 million Series A launch film, which landed over 1 million views and was featured on TBPN.

What Patankar loves most about these in-house roles (and, at times, what's most challenging) is the fact that they often come with complete creative freedom: "These roles are very autonomous, which is a double-edged sword," he explains. "It gives you complete freedom, but it also means you make big decisions yourself: what to prioritize, what's important, etc."

He, like many other filmmakers, has zero tech background whatsoever. It's a challenge that's nearly insurmountable for an external agency, but it's only a minor hurdle for an embedded creative like Patankar. He finds himself spending much of his time keeping up with developer terminology and product updates, whether that's by reading internal documentation on Notion, monitoring Slack channels, or joining developer calls to understand what the product does and how it works. And before shooting any content related to the product, he shares his scripts with engineers to ensure accuracy.

Patankar's take on this overarching industry trend? He's not surprised. "People are tired of relying on creative or ad agencies," he says. "They want the talent present all the time: for TikTok, YouTube, launch films on Twitter, brand films on LinkedIn, whatever."

He goes on to say: "For a long time, people in tech didn't take filmmaking seriously, and they outsourced everything to agencies. Over the past year, that's finally changing. I've been fortunate to be part of that transition—helping prove that great films can come from within startups too."

Outside of his work with Composio, Vikrant Patankar is building Museyard, a platform designed to help artists and creators identify and track their own aesthetic preferences over time (what he calls a taste graph for the creative economy). He also pursues personal projects like a 40-minute video essay about his decade-long relationship with Christopher Nolan's Interstellar, as well as an in-development short film inspired by a childhood crush that explores innocent love and the quiet ache of disappearance through the eyes of a five-year-old.

What This Signals for Startup Media

When engineers and filmmakers sit in the same room, content becomes an extension of product development rather than a downstream marketing function. This integration (filmmakers as team members rather than vendors) produces work that external agencies can't replicate, regardless of budget or talent.

For AI startups specifically, it's a model that solves the dual problem of explaining complex products while maintaining the velocity that venture-backed companies demand. So, as it becomes increasingly important to tell the story of your highly technical product in a clear, impactful way, the advantage will belong to whoever has the filmmaker in the room.