A new venture studio called AND Media launches with a focus on providing infrastructure and business support to progressive creators in the digital media space, per The Hollywood Reporter.

Christian Tom, Aisha Shah, and Landon Morgado founded the company, bringing experience from Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, GoFundMe, Twitter, NowThis, and the White House. The venture studio aims to help creator-led brands develop into scalable formats and independent studios.

“We believe that the value in digital media, cultural, monetary, and otherwise lies in the scalable formats, stories, franchises, and IP (Intellectual Property) born from creator-led brands,” Tom said in a statement. “And we think that is the tectonic shift that is happening in culture today and, in our assessment, is increasingly shaped by digital creators, as opposed to kind of traditional institutions.”

AND Media’s launch slate includes Kareem Rahma’s “Keep the Meter Running,” known for his Subway Takes series. The company also supports Hunter Prosper’s expansion of “Stories From a Stranger” to YouTube, a video podcast adaptation of the newsletter “THAT SOUNDS LIKE A LOT” called “The Small Bow,” and a current events video podcast from comedian and composer Matt Buechele.

Services and Support Model

The venture studio provides production support, monetization assistance, editorial strategy, brand partnerships, legal services, and accounting to creators who operate as production companies.

“Creators on the left are powerful, but they’re really unsupported,” Shah said. “So what we’re building here, as far as the model, is ensuring that we can provide the infrastructure to creators who are basically running full-on production companies kind of by themselves.”

Shah compares AND Media’s services to an operating partner at a venture capital firm. The company engages with creators at the idea development stage and provides tailored support based on individual needs.

Market Positioning

The founders cite a gap in financial stability and infrastructure for left-leaning creators compared to right-leaning counterparts. AND Media spent six months consulting with creators to identify necessary support systems.

“Our goal is to identify, fund, support in the ways that Aisha described, addressing specific needs and scale the left-adjacent or left-leaning, left-coded, use your terminology de rigueur, but the creators who exist in this culture-first non-political spaces into even more prominent media brands than they are now,” Tom said.

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