More brands are leaning on founders to drive social content

Creator Playbooks // July 22, 2026 More brands are leaning on founders to drive social content By Melissa Daniels Ivy Liu Katina Mountanos never wanted to be an influencer.

But when the founder and CEO of olive oil brand Kostarina started posting on social media about product specs and the category as a whole, it launched her into a whole new skill set: being on camera and making short-form videos. “I’d explain, ‘This is what to look for when you’re shopping for olive oil in the grocery store.

This is how to tell if your olive oil is real or fake.’ And then I would sit down with my team, and they’d say, ‘This post of you performed the best out of all the posts this month. We need more of those.’ And it started to, like, creep up,” she said.

Mountanos is one of countless brand leaders navigating the ins and outs of short-form video at a founder-led brand. While having a founder as the face of a company is hardly a new strategy, the prevalence of short-form video and broader influencer culture has put more pressure on founders to get in front of the camera.

Not only is there the opportunity to connect with would-be customers, but retailers eyeing brands for wholesale may have unofficial requirements around a strong founder-led social presence, as that could potentially drive in-store traffic. In response, founders are increasingly taking on the role of creator.

Digital marketing platform Constant Contact found in a survey of over 5,000 people that nearly three out of four small business owners are adopting a “creator” identity. And nearly half of them, or 47%, personally manage their company’s social media presence.

The business case is clear: HubSpot’s 2026 State of Marketing Report found nearly half of brand marketers said that short-form video had the highest ROI of any visual format. But adopting and maintaining a social video strategy comes with its own set of challenges.

Not only are founders tasked with finding time in their calendar to shoot brand content amid day-to-day operations, but some may also need to stretch outside their comfort zone. That may include scheduling time on the calendar to be meeting-free and camera-ready, or providing behind-the-scenes peeks into their lifestyle.

Mountanos said one of the biggest points to be mindful of is not just posting for virality’s sake and making sure that short-form videos stay true to the brand’s positioning. While controversy drives views — her take on U. S. olives being cured in lye is an all-time top-performing post — she’s wary of fear-mongering or pandering to drive views.

Instead, she focuses her content on her background as an olive oil sommelier and expert on the Mediterranean diet. “The Mediterranean diet has been voted the best diet for health year after year, so it’s not viral, and it’s not controversial,” she said.

“If I was going to post that you should be paleo or carnivore or something like that, it would probably get so many more views. But we just stay true to our roots.” Balancing authenticity and algorithms Madison Hilson and Valentina Thompson, co-founders of women’s outdoor apparel brand Seniq, have been posting from the brand account since its launch in 2024.

They started with more behind-the-scenes content about start-up life. But as Seniq has grown — it now has wholesale accounts with retailers including Dick’s Sporting Goods — it’s had to mix up its formula.

Shoppers want to see more the behind-the-scenes and the personality behind the brand, while the wholesale side of the business is driven by campaign imagery or more product-focused content. “Now, we make sure to show our faces when we’re having big brand moments,” Hilson said.

“We’re having to balance between what our D2C customer wants to see from us and what we need to provide for our wholesale business.” The Seniq team reviews analytics in meetings to figure out what hooks or formulas are working to drive views and engagement.

It also uses the e-commerce intelligence platform Triple Whale to help figure out the “nitty-gritty” of what content and when drives the most sales from social, Hilson said. Some of the best-performing videos are the founders trying on their products and showing off its features.

But they also get significant lift from videos that highlight their big brand moments, like when Seniq launched in Backcountry stores this spring. In addition, Thompson shot a video from an REI location that outperformed other videos.

But the founders have also looked to stay true to themselves as a women-focused brand that embodies an outdoorsy-yet-fun lifestyle. Hilson said she cringes a bit looking back on early videos that felt too stiff and serious. Fast forward to this summer, where the founders are