What the Research Says About Video, Trust, and Raising Money

Founders who use video get funded more often

The most cited study comes from Ethan Mollick at Wharton. He looked at 48,526 Kickstarter projects from 2009 to 2012 and found that projects with a video were more likely to reach their funding goal. His explanation was simple. Making a video takes effort, and backers read that effort as a sign the founder is serious and prepared. A study of 47,139 Indiegogo campaigns by Cumming and colleagues found the same pattern.

In 2022, Kolbe, Mansouri, and Momtaz published a paper in the Journal of Economics and Business that tried to explain why. Looking at token offerings, they found that companies that published a pitch video raised money at valuations 133 percent higher on average than companies that didn't. Their conclusion was that video gives investors real information they can't easily get anywhere else. The effect was strongest when there was little other information available about the company. Early-stage startups are almost always in that position.

Professional investors respond to video too. Allen Hu and Song Ma, in a study published through the National Bureau of Economic Research, analyzed more than 1,100 pitch videos that founders submitted to a startup accelerator. They measured what founders said and how they said it, including facial expression, tone of voice, and word choice. Founders who came across as warm and passionate were more likely to get funded. Investors were judging the person on screen as much as the business plan.

Why video builds trust

Every early-stage raise has the same basic problem. The founder knows far more about the company than the investor does, and the investor has limited time to decide whether to believe them. A deck is a list of claims. A video lets the investor see how you talk about the problem, watch the product actually work, and get a sense of whether you're someone worth backing for the next five years. People pick up a lot from a face and a voice that they can't get from bullet points.

This isn't limited to investors. A 2025 study in Scientific Reports by Luo and colleagues found that video that is useful, easy to follow, and engaging increases viewers' trust, and that trust is what moves them toward a decision. Earlier research by Orús, Gurrea, and Flavián found that product videos help people picture how a product works, which makes them more likely to buy. Customers, candidates, and journalists are all asking a version of the investor's question. Should I believe this company?

Where a startup film gets used

A good film does its most important work after the first meeting. It goes at the top of your homepage, so anyone who searches for you sees it first. It goes in follow-up emails after events like Disrupt, where an investor met you for five minutes and met a hundred other founders the same week. It gets forwarded to partners who were never in the room. It gets played before an investment committee meeting you won't attend.

The same shoot also gives you shorter cuts for social, a version for recruiting, and footage for launch announcements. One film ends up being used in a lot of places for a long time.

What we've seen with our clients

For Speakology AI, we made a brand film during their raise, built around the founders and their real results. After they started sending it, their investor reply rate went up 86 percent, and the round closed 120 percent above the original ask. Fuse AI used their launch film in investor outreach during their $3 million seed round.

Our launch film for Polaris, an AI creative companion, reached 2.4 million views across YouTube and X. Flowy AI's launch brought in more than 350,000 organic views and 45,000 signups without any paid ads. Auxos got more than 800 reactions and 340 comments on their launch, and their client base started doubling week over week afterward.

Those results line up with the research. In each case, people who had never met the founders watched the film and decided they believed them.

Working with us

Horizon Studios makes brand and launch films for AI and tech companies, with teams in San Francisco and Los Angeles. If you have a raise or launch coming up and want a film that helps investors and customers trust you, get in touch.

Sources

1. Mollick, E. (2014). The dynamics of crowdfunding: An exploratory study. Journal of Business Venturing, 29(1). Analysis of 48,526 Kickstarter projects.

2. Cumming, D. et al. (2017). Analysis of 47,139 Indiegogo campaigns, as summarized in Kolbe et al. (2022).

3. Kolbe, M., Mansouri, S., & Momtaz, P. (2022). Why do video pitches matter in crowdfunding? Journal of Economics and Business. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148619522000376

4. Hu, A., & Ma, S. (2021). Persuading investors: A video-based study. NBER Working Paper 29048. https://www.nber.org/papers/w29048

5. Luo, C., Mohd Hasan, N. A., Ahmad, A. M. Z., & Lei, G. (2025). Influence of short video content on consumers' purchase intentions on social media platforms with trust as a mediator. Scientific Reports, 15, 16605. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-94994-z

6. Orús, C., Gurrea, R., & Flavián, C. (2017). Facilitating imaginations through online product presentation videos. Electronic Commerce Research, 17(4), 661–700.

7. TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 event page. https://techcrunch.com/events/techcrunch-disrupt/

Horizon Studios is a brand film and cinematic video studio for technology companies, based in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Recent work includes Polaris, Speakology AI, Flowy AI, and Fuse AI. See the full portfolio at horizonstudios.us/projects.