short-form-video
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Rumble’s Second Act Is Bigger Than Video
The free-speech video challenger is assembling ads, creator tools, crypto payments and AI infrastructure under one roof. Its wager is that independence - from algorithms to servers - can become a business, not just a slogan.
Parrot
Parrot is a San Francisco-based, Y Combinator (Fall 2025) language-learning app that works like TikTok for Spanish. Learners swipe through short, native-speaker videos with tappable subtitles and an AI tutor, absorbing the language through comprehensible input rather than flashcard drills. The company positions itself as the app that actually produces speakers, aiming to turn idle scrolling into real conversational fluency.
Mark Bietz
Mark Bietz is a marketing and ecommerce executive best known for helping build HalloweenCostumes.com and FUN.com into one of the largest online costume and pop-culture merchandise retailers in the world. As Chief Marketing Officer of the Mankato, Minnesota-based company, he led digital growth that scaled revenue roughly 10x-20x, championing data-driven email personalization and short-form video. A self-described curious operator who learned the business from brand to CRM to operations, he now also works as a fractional CMO and advisor to venture-backed and private-equity-backed brands, and speaks widely on modern ecommerce and the rise of agentic commerce.
Viddsee
Viddsee is a Singapore-based video entertainment company that curates, distributes and markets short-form premium content from Asia. Founded in 2013 by engineer-filmmakers Ho Jia Jian and Derek Tan, it began as a Facebook page sharing regional short films and grew into a multi-platform network reaching millions of monthly viewers. Beyond its consumer streaming platform, Viddsee runs Viddsee Studios, a branded-content production arm serving brands and government agencies, and Viddsee for Good, a social-impact storytelling initiative, plus the Viddsee Juree Awards that spotlight emerging Southeast Asian filmmakers.
Hook
Hook is a New York-based music technology company behind an AI-powered social app that lets fans legally remix and mash up licensed songs into short-form clips for social media. By combining a catalog of over 20 million licensed recordings with AI tools for genre-shifting, tempo changes and video editing, Hook aims to turn unauthorized fan remixing into a channel that keeps artists and rights holders in control - and paid. Founded by former JioSaavn COO Gaurav Sharma, the company launched on iOS in early 2026 and raised a $10 million Series A led by Khosla Ventures.
Matador Network
Matador Network is a San Francisco-based travel media company founded in 2006 that publishes original stories, videos, and city guides for modern, adventure-minded travelers. Bootstrapped from an $11,000 start into one of the world's largest independent travel brands, its content reaches well over 100 million people a month across web and social. In 2023 it launched GuideGeek, a free OpenAI-powered travel assistant that answers questions inside Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger, and now licenses white-label versions of that AI to tourism boards and destination marketing organizations worldwide.
Mad Realities
Mad Realities is a New York-based, creator-powered entertainment network making original episodic shows built for the internet-native generation. Co-founded in 2021 by Alice Ma and Devin Lewtan, it pairs television-level production with social-first distribution across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and madrealities.tv - producing viral series like Shop Cats, Hollywood IQ, Proof of Love and Keep the Meter Running. Backed by a $6M seed from Paradigm, Maveron and Paris Hilton's 11:11 Media, the company has racked up hundreds of millions of views and signed with CAA in 2025 to expand into live events, branded deals and consumer products.
Alice Ma
Alice Ma is the co-founder, CEO and Creative Director of Mad Realities, a New York media company building 'the MTV of the internet generation.' She designs unscripted shows made natively for social feeds - Shop Cats, Hollywood IQ, Proof of Love, Keep the Meter Running - that have racked up more than a billion views across just eight shows. Before TV, she helped run ConstitutionDAO, which raised $53 million in seven days, studied computer science, political economy and Arabic at UC Berkeley, and published the first investigation into terrorist crowdfunding on Bitcoin. A Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, she is trying to bootstrap a new Hollywood ecosystem out of the participation mechanics of K-pop and crypto.
Rizzle
Rizzle is an AI video creation, distribution, and monetization platform that turns written content - articles, blogs, newsletters and scripts - into polished, brand-safe videos in minutes. Built for publishers, media companies and content creators, it pairs generative AI drafting with human editorial refinement and pre-licensed assets from Getty Images, ElevenLabs and Soundstripe, then syndicates the finished videos across platforms like MSN, Yahoo and NewsBreak. Founded in 2019 by Vidya Narayanan and Lakshminath Dondeti, Rizzle began as a consumer short-video social app that grew to tens of millions of users before pivoting to an enterprise SaaS model for video-first content at scale.
Luke Davidson
Luke Davidson is a Canadian comedy content creator from Dauphin, Manitoba who turned TikTok sketches into a multi-platform empire. Known for his relatable family-dynamics humor and the signature move of pulling a shirt over his head to play multiple characters, he amassed 15+ million TikTok followers and 17+ million YouTube subscribers before turning 23 - earning YouTube's Diamond Creator Award in 2022. His observational comedy about awkward school moments and everyday family chaos resonates with teenagers and young adults worldwide.