Venture capital is going through what Refinery Media’s Laurie Owen calls a “TikTokification.” In his view, short-form platforms have become the real top of funnel for modern decision-makers. Founders, LPs, investors and tech workers already spend large amounts of attention on TikTok and Instagram Reels, while VC as a category still commits relatively little to those channels.
Owen uses a simple comparison. If every top founder and LP spent each night in the same bar, every venture firm would rush to buy the permanent drinks menu. That bar, he argues, already exists. It has billions of people in it. Most venture firms just have not stepped up to the counter.
Four short-form playbooks are emerging in venture
Owen groups current VC short-form strategy into four broad models: News-jackers, Translators, Personality plays and Institutions. Those approaches are starting to show how content can turn into brand equity, LP introductions and even dealflow.
News-jackers turn tech moments into traffic
The first category is what Owen calls News-jackers. These investors react quickly when a major event hits the tech industry, record short commentary, then direct that attention toward newsletters or other long-form channels.
He points to FGV Capital’s Drew Glover and Mission One Capital’s Atlas Berry as examples. Both move fast on major tech stories and re-edit material to fit Instagram and TikTok rather than simply chopping longer videos into clips.
Atlas Berry, who runs a relatively small solo GP fund, has built an Instagram following of more than 300,000. For Owen, that shows content reach does not need to scale with fund size.
Atas VC’s Andrew Chan takes a much higher-volume route, centering his output on “revealing VC secrets.” Over one year, he published 1,112 videos and at peak volume posted 6 to 10 in a single day. Owen says that pattern resembles venture’s own power law. Not every post works. A small number of outliers carry the portfolio, and higher output increases the odds of landing a breakout hit.
Translators explain venture in founder language
The second group is Translators. These investors do not have to chase every major industry event. Instead, they answer the questions founders ask most often: how to prepare a data room, how to pitch a VC, and how a fund actually makes investment decisions.
Owen cites Animal Capital’s Marshall Sandman and Park Rangers’ Erica Wenger, both of whom produce large amounts of practical Q&A content. baukunst’s Kate McAndrew leans more heavily into visual formats, including pitch deck breakdowns, data analysis and day-in-the-life material. Haatch’s Charlie WW goes one step further by positioning himself as a “Gen Z VC” and explaining venture mechanics in more accessible language.
Owen’s point is that the value here is not limited to education. This content lets founders understand how an investor thinks about them before any formal meeting takes place.
Personality-led content can build a moat around the investor
Owen argues that the third category, Personality plays, may matter even more.
Moxxie’s Mitch Harounian invests in consumer companies, so he films where consumers already are. He talks about Barry’s business model inside a Barry’s workout class, explains power law from Yankee Stadium, and shoots portfolio company shelf placements inside Whole Foods. Production does not always need to be expensive. Sometimes the setting itself is enough to create the hook.
Wischoff Ventures’ Nichole Wischoff has built close to 100,000 followers on TikTok by analyzing business models such as coffee shops and gyms while mixing in career and personal-life content. Owen says the audience that forms around this kind of work becomes more than an asset attached to the fund. It becomes a personal moat that travels with the investor.
Some firms are starting to operate like media companies
The fourth model is institutional. This is no longer about one GP posting as an individual. It is about an entire firm building native short-form capability.
Owen specifically names 20VC, Andreessen Horowitz, Hartmann Capital and Redpoint. 20VC founder Harry Stebbings has started producing green-screen short videos. For Owen, that shift matters on its own. When a team with a large podcast brand actively moves into short-form, it signals that audience attention is moving too.
He describes a16z as one of the most mature VC operators on Instagram. The firm does not just repost what it already publishes on LinkedIn or X. Instead, it treats Instagram as a standalone premium media publication, redesigning founder origin stories, business case studies and complex ideas for the platform. The goal is saves and shares, not simple reach.
Redpoint goes further still. Its content creator Rashad Assir produces comedy skits for the firm. Owen says that makes Redpoint more approachable to founders and gives founders a sense of what kind of people they will meet before the first meeting happens.
He also argues that Redpoint has built a genuine in-house competence: it knows how to make content that people actually want to watch. Over time, that skill could also be used in service of portfolio companies.
The goal is not just to be known, but to be known well
Owen says many venture firms misunderstand content marketing by treating it as a tool to become more known. The real advantage, he argues, is being known well.
That means a founder understands who you are, what you care about, how you think, and whether they want you on the cap table before the two sides have even spoken. He gives Indie VC’s Bryce Roberts as an example. Roberts initially posted more personal short-form content, including business conversations with family members and everyday reflections. As that body of work grew, Owen says, the audience started sending dealflow directly to the fund.
Why Owen thinks short-form still offers open ground for VC
Owen says a search for “venture capital” on TikTok still shows very few traditional tier-one VC firms. Compared with X or LinkedIn, that leaves short-form platforms far more open.
He also warns that the easiest style of content will saturate first. Talking to a phone camera and sharing opinions still works today, but anyone can start doing that tomorrow, which makes it the easiest format to commoditize. The harder path to copy is a move toward more structure: editing, visual hooks, repeatable storytelling formats, or turning complex ideas into platform-native visual products.
At a16z, one of the strongest Instagram formats is not video
Owen also stresses that short-form does not have to mean video. One of a16z’s strongest-performing Instagram formats is the carousel. He gives the example of Ben Horowitz’s views being redesigned into seven visual slides.
That format is already mature in other parts of Instagram, he says, but venture has barely used it in any systematic way.
He adds one more idea: the biggest undeveloped content asset at large funds may be their own history. Tier-one VC firms often invested in 50 to 100 widely known companies, yet the branding value of those wins is weakening with a newer generation of founders. Owen’s example is eBay. Even if it remains one of venture’s most successful historical investments, a 24-year-old founder today may see it as a very distant company.
For that reason, he says large VC firms should retell how their legendary portfolio companies first got started. In his framing, short-form founding stories could help those firms rebuild recognition with younger founders.