Founder stories that recruit, raise and renew.
Steve Hayton works inside accelerator programs like an entrepreneur in residence, except his speciality is media. He sits down with your founders, finds the story worth telling, and turns each conversation into Shorts, investor cuts and LinkedIn content that people actually watch.
Pick the door that fits
Programs bring Steve in to work across a cohort. Founders bring him in to keep their own story moving every month. Same interviews, same format, same results.
An EIR for your program's media
Steve embeds with your program and gives each founder what they need, from a Shorts series to an investor cut, billed by the hour against a block you set.
- Recruit stronger applicants with stories they want to be part of
- Show investors and sponsors what your founders are building
- Capture alumni stories before they're too busy to call back
A month of content from one conversation
A 40-minute interview each month becomes LinkedIn posts, daily Shorts and an investor update, written from your own words.
- 8 LinkedIn posts and around 30 Shorts a month
- Your investor update drafted from the same interview
- From $750 for a single session
Same kind of founders. Different storytelling. Several times the views.
Steve produces Pivot, a founder story channel built on the same kind of founders, startups and program stories that accelerators have. The difference is how the stories are found and packaged.
Hooks, not labels
Most program channels title Shorts with the series and the founder's name. That works for people who already know them, but the Shorts feed shows strangers. Every Pivot Short opens on the line that earns the next ten seconds.
The moment, not the summary
Each Short is cut around one surprising or emotional beat from a longer interview, usually 20 to 55 seconds. That only works if the interview found those beats in the first place.
Cadence that compounds
A Short a day, every day. The algorithm needs volume to find which stories travel, and the hits come from consistent output, not guessing in advance.
Pivot figures from YouTube Studio, November 2026. The accelerator comparison matches Pivot's recent Shorts against those of a leading US accelerator's channel, using public view counts. It covers Shorts only, not any program's wider content. See the channel on YouTube.
One two-hour shoot. A month of marketing.
Justen Wack runs Wacka, which sends price alerts for outdoor gear, and was building it inside an accelerator studio. Steve worked with him the way an entrepreneur in residence would: figure out what the company needs next, then make it.
Before filming, Steve built the interview around what was in the news that week: a tough Colorado ski season, tariffs pushing up the price of winter gear, Google moving into price alerts. That gave Justen something sharper to say than "here's what we do", and gave every clip a reason to exist.
The same conversation became an investor cut for the raise, a nurture sequence for his marketing lead and a daily stream of Shorts, all in Justen's own words.
Conversation first. Content second.
Find the story
Steve preps around the founder's market and what's in the news, then leads the conversation. Founders share things they'd never put in a brief, and that's where the best content comes from.
Package it to travel
Every clip opens on a hook and runs around one beat. Long-form becomes an investor cut. The transcript becomes posts in the founder's own voice.
Publish every day
Shorts go out daily, posts go out weekly, and the numbers come back to you, so you can see which stories are working.
A journalist who has spent years inside accelerators
Steve Hayton is a British-born journalist and entrepreneur who works with founders and the programs that back them. He has the interviewer's instinct for the story underneath the story, and the investor's instinct for what makes a founder worth backing.
- Investigative journalist whose work was featured on the BBC and Top Gear, including the investigation that helped expose Dieselgate
- Four years as Chief Experience Officer at GAN and GVN, designing programs for accelerator and venture studio leaders around the world
- General Partner at Venture Builders Fund, a seed-stage fund backing US founders, and producer of its founder story channel, Pivot
- Has filmed founders on site at accelerators including AlphaLab in Pittsburgh and Blue Startups in Honolulu
"Steve has been an invaluable connector for both my company and for me personally as a founder. He's incredibly quick to respond and consistently makes thoughtful introductions that have opened meaningful doors for us. You can tell he genuinely thrives on helping his network succeed."
Founder, Base (High Alpha portfolio company)
Founder stories, in your inbox
The best moments from new interviews, what's working in founder content, and notes from the accelerators Steve works with.
Your founders already have the stories. Let's get them watched.
Thirty minutes is enough to work out whether a residency or a founder package fits, and what the first month would look like.