What began as a Gen Z internet joke — aura farming, or curating an effortless, cool online presence — is fast becoming a serious job role inside technology startups. Across India and Silicon Valley, founders are hiring full-time filmmakers to live inside their companies, document everyday work and turn startup life into an ongoing cinematic narrative.
Rather than outsourcing branding to agencies, startups are increasingly building storytelling as an in-house function, placing creators alongside engineers and product teams.
Filmmakers join startups as employees
At AI infrastructure startup Composio, 25-year-old filmmaker Vikrant Patankar was hired as a full-time employee, not a vendor. His role blends filmmaking, storytelling and recruitment.
“This is a narrative setting where founders are more transparent and outspoken,” Patankar said, explaining that his audience includes potential enterprise customers as well as job candidates assessing company culture.
The aim, he said, is not just to look good online but to make the company “the talk of town in the tech world”.
‘Founding creator’ model gains traction
The shift has been publicly endorsed by former Coinbase CTO and ex-a16z general partner Balaji Srinivasan, who has argued that startups should treat content as a core function. On a podcast with investor Erik Torenberg, he proposed the idea of a “founding creator” — a role as central as a founding engineer or business cofounder.
That thinking is now being institutionalised. Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) recently launched the New Media Fellowship, a programme designed to train highly online creators in writing, video, podcasting and distribution. Torenberg jokingly described it as a “Thiel Fellowship for the terminally online”.
From software to space startups
The trend is spreading beyond software into hard-tech sectors. Catalyx Space, a young Ahmedabad-based company building what it calls an “AWS for space infrastructure”, recently advertised for India’s top filmmakers and editors for a three-month residency.
Co-founder Saqib Hussain said the goal is to document the “day-to-day grind”, not just major rocket moments. He recalled a visit by a senior ISRO scientist from the Chandrayaan missions who was surprised to see 24-year-olds building complex space technology.
“Filming moments like that inspires engineers to join us and reassures investors,” Hussain said.
Storytelling as strategy
Filmmaker Donald Jewkes, who has worked with multiple AI startups, says fast-growing companies are now investing early in narrative and world-building. The idea is to make the “soul” of a team visible — attracting talent motivated by purpose, not just pay.
Across startups, storytelling and technology are increasingly being built side by side, by creators on the payroll rather than outsiders hired for campaigns. In today’s startup culture, aura is no longer accidental — it’s engineered.