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 “camp counselors” bouncing around a cabin to Sabrina Carpenter’s “House Tour.”
“One conversation we’ve had is, like, ‘OK, is this too silly?’ But we end up just posting it because it’s us, and we want to be authentic,” Hilson said. “I think it’s more important to show up as who you really are and what your brand is really about. That is what matters more than having a polished Instagram.”
Nick Stenson, founder of Nick Stenson Beauty and a former executive at Ulta, has evolved his strategy around videos and posting over time via his Instagram and TikTok accounts. Initially, he wanted to keep the focus on the brand’s products. But his team has egged him on to share more about his day-to-day life, whether that’s parties, travels or even photos of his lunches.
“I’m like, ‘Who cares? Nobody cares about this.’ But the reality is that they do,” he said. “I lose this battle 10 out of 10 times. When I give them something, I’m like, ‘This is dumb, but here you go. Do something with it.’ And it’s what performs the best.”
Perhaps the most vulnerable sharing Stenson has done to date was around his cancer diagnosis and recovery in the past year. At first, he was going to keep the news private, but reconsidered when he thought that it might raise questions. Stenson said he ended up being glad he went public with the news because he’s connected with more fans and followers who have gone thorugh similar experiences, whether through receiving encouraging DMs from other survivors or being able to cheer on someone else in the comments.
“It put a very human side — a very real, raw, authentic side — to a guy that has this great brand and looks like he lives a glamorous life,” he said. “But then they see that adversity hits him, too, and he’s being transparent about it. And I think that people really respected that. And I respected the outpouring of support that I got.”
Creating routines for content and development
Stenson, who left Ulta last year to focus on Nick Stenson Beauty full-time, said one of the biggest challenges is balancing video creation with his day-to-day routine. Being fully focused on the brand has helped him become more intentional about what to post on why. “What I realized really quickly was that, if I wanted to scale this brand to be a household name, I needed to be 100% invested in the brand,” he said. “I now have time to think and can go, ‘Wait a minute, let’s revisit that strategy. Is that the right one? Are we reaching the right audience? And are we hitting the right demographic?'”
He has also learned the importance of repeating content formulas. Not everyone is tuned into your channel 24/7, he said, and so what may feel like a standard topic is new to the potential audience it can reach. In the hair world, that content is often around how to use a product the right way or achieve a certain style.
Some founders keep to a tight schedule to help ensure they can keep creating. Mountanos from Kostarina said she carves out Monday mornings as a time to shoot content. She’ll make sure she’s camera-ready and meeting-free, and then record what videos are needed for the week ahead. She’ll also try to carve out a half-day without meetings for any brainstorming or planning instead of trying to cram it into a tight schedule.
“It’s very hard to transition from something like a finance meeting to saying, ‘OK, you have a half hour now, so be creative and make some content,'” she said. “Compartmentalizing into specific content days works the best.”
Logistically, Mountanos leans on a full-time employee as well as a part-time social media and video editor to get content out — resources that may not be available when a company is in startup mode. “Having a resource for that has been tremendously helpful,” she said.
When audiences want more
One drawback founders may run into is the call to keep sharing. That may be from their audience, who develop parasocial relationships with those they follow, or their own social teams, who see promise in the founder’s ability to authentically engage with their community.
Mountanos said, while she wants to keep her content focused on the brand and Mediterranean diet, she does like to pop into the comments or DMs when people are sharing their healthy journeys or asking for something like travel tips in Greece. But she is averse to going outside of her areas of expertise. People have also started asking her for cooking videos, for instance. But she has opted to keep her focus on Kostarina products, the olive oil category and the healthy bona fides of the Mediterranean diet.
“I am not a chef. I make the most basic Mediterranean dishes, and that’s pretty much it,” she said. “So it’s still mostly educational content from me. Our whole team’s ‘why’ is around consumer health, and so that’s the type of content I’m most focused on.”
Stenson said there are times he still “gets it wrong,” whether that’s posting something that doesn’t perform as expected or feels like he could’ve done a better job. But he’s abandoned the idea of perfection and is instead focused on figuring out what will work next.
“There’s no perfect formula on how to do this,” he said. “That’s a good part about social media. You have so many opportunities to pivot and change and to really connect with your consumer in a different way.”
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