The Case for Founder Video

Would you say yes to a 60 Minutes interview?

Most founders would, without thinking twice. A sit-down on a national news show feels like the moment a company becomes real: the credibility, the reach, the clip you send to investors.

Now look at who is watching. In Nielsen’s ratings for the 2019 to 2020 season, the median 60 Minutes viewer was 65.2 years old. The people who sign B2B contracts today are mostly Millennials and Gen Z, and they spend their working hours on LinkedIn, not in front of Sunday night television.

The audience hasn’t gotten younger. When 60 Minutes opened its 2026 season, early Nielsen data counted 1.5 million viewers between 25 and 54, out of 7.7 million.

Then think about what you would actually do with the interview. You would cut the best two minutes and post them on LinkedIn, because that is where your buyers would see it. The broadcast was never the distribution. The clip was.

The clip is the most valuable thing any press appearance produces, and a founder can make it now. A founder interview, filmed and edited properly, posted on your own profile. No booker, and no waiting for a producer to call.

Why does founder video matter now?

Founder video matters now because B2B buyers have changed. They are younger, they research on their own, and most of the decision is made before they talk to anyone.

This is a generation that grew up on video. They look a company up the way they look anything up: they scroll, they read, they watch. What they find when they search your name is the first pitch, and you are not in the room for it.

They also wait a long time before they reach out. In 6sense’s 2023 buyer research, buyers first contacted a vendor about 70% of the way through their buying journey.

By then the shortlist is set. In the same research, 84% of buyers said the first vendor they contacted ended up winning the business. The founder a buyer already knows is the one they call first.

Why video instead of text?

Video carries far more of a person than text does, and that is the whole point. When you watch someone on video you get their voice, their tone, their body language, their face and expressions, the way they move their hands, the room they are in, what they are wearing, the lighting, the editing, the music and the pacing. Text carries almost none of that.

That gap matters more every month. With AI, anyone can sound like a seasoned pro in text. Video is the one format where you actually have to show up as yourself. You can’t fake all of those things at once the way you can fake a text post with ChatGPT.

Picture two founders with the same ideas. One is a paragraph on a screen. The other is a face and a voice, with conviction you can feel. Most people know which one they would trust.

Founders who want authority are still writing newspaper articles, at the moment the television was invented and they can have their own channel. Video killed the paragraph. It just hasn’t reached most founders yet.

Why LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is where B2B buyers spend their professional attention, and the platform is putting video in front of them. In its October 2024 earnings highlights, LinkedIn said total video viewership was up 36% year over year.

Very few people are meeting that demand. Most of LinkedIn reads and watches without posting. In 2019, ERE reported that of LinkedIn’s 500 million users, just 3 million shared content weekly. That number is old, but in my experience posting is still rare, and founders posting video rarer still.

When demand for video is rising and the supply is thin, the bar to stand out is low. A founder who shows up on camera, consistently and well, has very little competition for that attention.

Should video come from the founder or the company page?

From the founder. People follow people, and the same post reaches and engages more people from a person’s profile than from a brand’s.

Refine Labs ran that test on seven employees, so read it as a direction, not a law. It matches the logic of the rest of this piece: a buyer can trust a person in a way they can’t trust a logo.

What did the music industry learn first?

Music went through this shift first. Discovery moved to short-form video, and the artists who showed up there won. According to TikTok and Luminate, 84% of songs that entered the Billboard Global 200 in 2024 went viral on TikTok first.

I was in the middle of it. I have made short-form video since 2019, and I co-founded Social Cinema, a music marketing and production agency in Los Angeles that made videos for more than 100 artists, including Diplo, Polo G and Jutes. My work has passed 200 million views across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook.

I tend to catch these waves early. When short-form took over music, I was one of the producers artists in LA relied on for it. The same shift is now reaching founders, and almost no one serious is on it yet.

What does a founder actually have to do?

Show up for one filmed conversation. Everything else is planning, directing and editing.

You are the most qualified person to answer the questions your buyers ask. The job is to get that on camera and cut it into clips people watch to the end. In a directed interview, a good line that comes out with a stumble gets another take, and the sharpest point buried in a long answer gets said again on its own.

You stay a founder. Video doesn’t turn you into a content creator. It sharpens what you are already known for.

At FounderYP, Tosh Carr and I build this around a launch. One shoot gives you a launch film and a month of founder clips after it.

Zach Metzger

Founder of FounderYP

Zach has made short-form video since 2019 and his work has passed 200M views across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook. He co-founded Social Cinema, a music marketing and production agency in Los Angeles, before starting FounderYP to put founders on camera.

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Published October 29, 2026. Last updated October 29, 2026.