Jaden Kwan Built a Launch Studio for Startups Becoming Their Own Broadcasters

As venture firms build media capabilities in-house, Kwan has created an independent studio around the idea that a startup launch should be treated as a major business moment rather than a routine announcement.

A startup can spend a year building a product and preparing for launch, then give the announcement itself only a fraction of that attention. Jaden Kwan has built his work around the opposite idea. As the founder and director of Tastefully, he leads launch films and go-to-market campaigns for venture-backed AI startups, treating the moment a company introduces itself or a new product as a major piece of strategy. In the first four months of producing launch videos, the bootstrapped studio generated roughly $300,000 in revenue, while its product-launch work has accumulated more than 25 million organic views without paid advertising.

That philosophy has become more relevant as the way startups communicate has changed. Kwan sees companies relying less on traditional announcement channels and putting more weight on founder-led films and owned distribution. He points to the rise of dedicated New Media teams inside venture firms as evidence that launch storytelling is becoming a more formal part of startup infrastructure. Andreessen Horowitz, for example, has developed an in-house New Media operation for its portfolio companies that includes launch support and embedded media talent.

Kwan built Tastefully as an independent version of that model. Rather than serving a large volume of companies through conventional agency retainers, he says he prefers deeper relationships with a smaller number of startups. He directs the launch film and helps shape the surrounding rollout across online channels. Tastefully also operates with a seven-person full-time in-house post-production team handling VFX and motion graphics, giving Kwan the infrastructure to execute launch campaigns without outsourcing the entire creative process.

“I want to be inside the room during the important launch moments,” Kwan said. “The model is to direct the story from within rather than take a brief from outside the company.”

That approach is central to how Kwan wants the studio to evolve. He describes the role as closer to a fractional head of media than a traditional vendor relationship, with the studio participating in critical launch periods rather than appearing only at the end to produce assets. His longer-term direction is to deepen that model with a select group of AI companies and continue operating as an independent launch studio in North America.

The commercial record gives the model some weight. Tastefully has worked with cleared clients including Dedalus Labs, Yutori, ORO, Airlearn, Nucleo Research, and Synthetic Society. Multiple launch films have surpassed one million views, and Kwan says the studio’s more than 25 million organic views were generated without paid advertising. Those results are part of why he treats launch day as a business event rather than a branding exercise.

“A launch should create movement,” Kwan said. “It should give people a reason to pay attention and understand the company. If it only marks the fact that something happened, the opportunity was much bigger than the execution.”

His view is shaped partly by the changing economics of attention. Kwan argues that startups can no longer assume traditional media will carry their story for them, especially as technology coverage has contracted and online feeds have become more crowded. At the same time, AI has made content production faster and cheaper, increasing the amount of material competing for the same audience. He believes that combination is pushing companies toward stronger owned-media capabilities.

Kwan’s response is to avoid the volume-driven agency model. He argues that companies gain more from a relationship in which the person directing the launch understands the product closely and is involved before the final announcement window. That preference also appears in the way he talks about growth. His advice to other marketers is to commit fully to fewer relationships rather than spreading attention across a long roster of shallow retainers.

“The companies I work most closely with need more than a video at the end of the process,” Kwan said. “I want to be involved early enough to help shape how the company introduces itself.”

Kwan also rejects the idea that launch day should be treated as the end of a long product cycle. He sees it as the opening move of a broader campaign. A strong launch can bring in customers or help with hiring while also shaping how the company is understood afterward.

The category Kwan is working in is still being defined, but the shift around it is already visible. Venture firms are investing in internal media teams, while startup founders are taking greater responsibility for how their stories reach the market. Kwan’s work sits inside that transition, with a studio built around the idea that launch storytelling belongs closer to core company strategy than to an outsourced communications checklist.

For Kwan, that creates an opening for independent studios able to operate with the speed and proximity of an internal team. Early-stage AI companies may have sophisticated products and little public recognition. His role is to help them use the launch itself to change that.