Head of MEdia

Dear Nat Eliason and the hiring team at Founders School,

My name is Andy and I've developed my career by building media around ambitious people. Whether it was entrepreneurs, healthcare leaders, or creators, my job has always been to find ambitious people, capture their stories, and amplify those stories through media systems that cultivate community, connection, and collaboration.

I've learned that great media begins with great people. This job here is to earn the students’ trust, find the moments worth documenting, and build systems that amplify those stories to targeted audiences and world-wide communities of students, parents, and entrepreneurs.

As the first content hire at Betaworks, the longstanding venture studio, technology accelerator, and member community, my job was to build a media and events program that attracted founders, venture investors, and innovation leaders into both our digital community and our Chelsea clubhouse. This is where I learned how to speak "builder" by creating media around founder stories, events, and thought leadership that reflected the ambition of our community.

Earlier in my career, I single-handedly built the brand, voice, and digital presence of The Yard, one of New York's pioneering coworking companies. Long before the creator economy became mainstream, I cultivated a community of founders, freelancers, and entrepreneurs who supported and challenged one another as they built their businesses (including early teams from Uber and OKCupid). My thesis was simple: The Yard would only be as successful as the people building companies there, so my job was to tell their stories of growth, ambition, and success...

Today, at Abridge, I've gone all in on AI-native storytelling. I've rebuilt my creative workflow around Claude, using it to research, analyze source material, draft, edit, and repurpose content into scalable editorial systems. AI has expanded my creative process, allowing me to spend less time on production and more time finding the stories worth telling.

What excites me most about Founders School is that the product is transformation, perseverance, and the grit at the core of entrepreneurship. The best content will be a student landing their first customer after weeks of rejection, a mentor asking the question that changes that student’s perspective, a workshop that sparks an entirely new business. Those are the moments ambitious teenagers share because they're real. They're also the moments parents realize they're watching something extraordinary unfold.

One of my earliest roles was with Roadtrip Nation, an organization that sent recent college graduates like me across the country to interview leaders from business, technology, and the arts about how they transformed their passions into meaningful careers. Every conversation was filmed and became part of a 12-episode documentary series that aired on PBS. So many people reached out to tell me the series had inspired them to rethink their own careers. That experience showed me the power of authentic storytelling to change how people see their own futures.

I've spent years documenting ambitious people in moments of growth and helping build communities around their stories. Founders School feels like the culmination of this journey. I'd love the opportunity to build the media engine that makes Founders School one of the most talked-about schools in the world, because the world can't help but watch what this generation of founders is building.

Thank you for your consideration,
Andy P. Smith